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Mozilla Sunbird 0.5 Released
linux pickle writes "Mozilla has released version 0.5 of Sunbird, its calendar app. New features in this release include numerous stability and usage improvements, Google Calendar synchronization support, and much improved printing support. Check out the release notes or grab a copy."
Stop the presses holy hell! *head a-splodes*
What I want is for Kalendar to sync with Google Calendar. I like KDE because all the applications integrate, unlike in GNOME, where they seem to be loosely scattered about.
Lightning, which is the Sunbird plugin for the Thunderbird email client, was also released.
Update as usual: Tools > Add-ons > Find Updates
Great work, guys!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Is a combined / integrated application that incorporated Firefox, Thunderbird and this Sunbird... that each part could be run separately if you wished.
It could save on the download because each part would share the UI code, networking code, etc, given that they're all built upon a custom platform layer, and each download replicates that.
Ah well, I'm sure it will never happen.
I'm looking for a way to give my Exchange server a toss (because I hate Exchange *and* because I'm stuck with running it on Windows SBS 2003). How close is Thunderbird/Sunbird to the point where I can go to my manager and make the pitch?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you are dedicated it's possible to pull your appointments from an exchange server, covert to iCal, and then import them into Sunbird.
I still prefer KOrganiser, not least because it has an exchange plug in. Integration with the mail client is also better in my opinion.
In fact Kontact is overall a fantastic piece of software. My only gripe is the fact that it's handling of IMAP mailboxes is horrific, but I believe that is slated for a total revamp in KDE4.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
0.5 to go.
I'm sorry to report that Thunderbird/Sunbird is nowhere near ready to replace Exchange. Depending on your needs, it might be a good fit though.
I'd say download it and try it out. If it's too basic for your needs, and it probably is, then look at some of the open source groupware packages.
There's some neat open source groupware out there.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Screenshots here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/s creenshot.html
I would *love* to use it- but without Exchange calendaring support, it will be effectively a non starter for me and for thousands of other geeks out there who would love to use Thunderbird as their primary mail client at work.
I just installed this a few hours ago and I'm having problems with it crashing firefox. I tried a reinstall but it didn't change anything. Anyone else having these problems?
I already wedged it trying to install it on my Mac. I guess it doesn't like important my huge iCal database, the program is totally frozen.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It just took over 5 minutes to import my iCal database. no big deal, seems to work pretty nicely. So far I like it better than iCal.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Migrating your corporate address book to LDAP is a great start, but I still don't think that Lightning is going to do what you need it to do.
Again, try it out. Hopefully it will meet your needs. But as far a I know, there is no way to automatically schedule meetings based on others' calendars. Most organizations use that ability of Exchange quite heavily.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
This should be the number one priority for the Sunbird team, if it's not already working (anyone have info on this?). Apple will have iCal 2 out with Mac OS X v10.5 in October, and the iCal Server with Mac OS X Server v10.5. Darwin Calendar Server is available for testing on Mac OS X v10.4, and should also run on any UNIX-like system.
You still can't send a meeting request, so who cares? So often the simplest rules are forgotten. Get the basics of useability working, then tweak and upgrade.
Please use your influence as a Microsoft customer to get them to add CalDAV support to Exchange, in the spirit of cooperation and interoperability. Does anybody know if the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is looking to standards for their calendering systems as well?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
what you're describing sounds a lot like what they wanted to do with XUL Runner. Each mozilla app could be packaged as a plugin for XUL Runner. So, you would have XUL Runner installed and then you could just download and install the firefox plugin, the thunderbird plugin, the sunbird plugin, etc... They had scheduled this for firefox 3, but it looks like it's not going to happen at least for now.2 007/05/xul_and_xulrunner_investment.html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/
Getting off topic a little, but I'm surprised that during all the recent talk of Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX, no one brought up XUL or WebKit as an alternative to a rich application framework(don't know what else to call them...). Neither of these is that ready to compete (mainly because of multimedia issues) with flash and silverlight, but they're no less ready than JavaFX at the least.
I've been using Sunbird for a while now as my sole calendaring app for my tech. consulting business. It's been great, given a bug here and there (but who doesn't encounter bugs in OL/Exchange?). I've also installed it as a Webdav shared calendar for one of my clients, and they love it too. Never had a problem with it, save the timezone issue a while back (but who didn't have issues with that?)
Now the events in Sunbird 0.5 are shadowed, looks much nicer. Thanks guys!!
Oh, and if anyone wants to make an opensourced Sunbird Palm sync plugin, I'd be willing to pay for the development. That's one of the only things I'm waiting for with Sunbird - other than that, it's done everything I wanted it to.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I do love this programme, it ties together all the nonsense that I have / am forced to use so that I know what I'm doing...
* my own iBook, running iCal
* iPod sync'ed off of iCal
* Novell Groupwise at work, on both company Dell laptop and desktop
* Windows Mobile 2003 PIM thing as my work mobile phone
And what runs on everything? The open source stuff, running on many platforms and generating files to import for everything. No agenda as to 'doesn't import / export files for other platforms'. Cracking interface too, simplicity itself. Perfection is when there's nothing extraneous left to remove.
Keep up the good work!
considering this thing can't sync with any pda at all ever
I use notes at work, and love the ability to peek at others' calendars and find free time. I'd love that feature at home.
Blar.
I imagine it would also make it an attractive target for Microsoft patent lawyers.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Exchange is a messaging/calendaring/groupware server. Thunderbird/Sunbird are email and calendar client apps.
They're entirely differnt types of software and incapable of replacing one another.
What you're thinking of is Outlook. I knew what you meant, but maybe you could act like the words in our language actually have some kind of meaning.
I was the first one to download Sunbird 0.0.1alpha and try it out, and even use its integration with iCal resources. But it was crashy, and the features it had were flaky. I'm sure they've improved matters since then.
But I'm not gonna use it now, because I've found Google Calendar. SMS support alone is worth the switch. It also has contacts integration so I can invite people to meetings from my contact list, and it has an upsell story: You can run Google Apps for Domains and get the PIM/Groupware features people rely on from Exchange, but managed and cheaper.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Syncing with google calendar is the most profound new feature to me. Having a calendar stored on one computer is no good to someone who moves between several computers. This is the same reason I use IMAP email, store my sent emails on the IMAP server so I can read even them from whereever I am, and why I DONT use gmail: because it doesnt support IMAP.
Off topic: anyone hear any rumors about gmail supporting IMAP?
...because it couldn't when I last used it in March.
Seriously, I tried to organize my SXSW schedule using Sunbird.
1. I added all playings of all movies at SXSW Film that I wanted to see into the SXSW online calendar.
2. Then, I sync'd Sunbird to the online calendar.
3. So that I could make local edits, I exported/reimported the calendar data as a local calendar.
4. I looked at conflicts, etc., and determined which movies I could see on first showing versus catching reruns.
5. When I had it about half done, I saved it and closed Sunbird.
6. The next time I opened Sunbird, I discovered that various events had been shifted by 1 or 4 hours ahead or behind. I could find no way to set the time zone for these events to correspond to my local time zone, and I could not find a pattern between the events that had problems and those that didn't time shift.
7. I tried to manually fix the failures, manually deleting the entries and recreating them locally. It didn't help.
8. ???
9. I gave up and used the crappy SXSW online tool, since I didn't want to sign up for a Google account and those were the only options.
(FYI all online stuff I could find about this related to the DST shift, and told me to install Microsoft patches. All of those patches were already in place before I installed Sunbird or found any of these problems.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
...of apps is making forward progress.
Now all they need to do is to create a decent contact manager. And no, Thunderbird does not count as a contact manager, decent or otherwise.
Sunbird vs Outlook calander features vs Kontact.
My money is on Kontact when it gets release cross platform.
When are the new releases of Cavalier, Skyhawk, and Firenza coming out? But I could care less about Cimarron. ... Oh wait... Nevermind.
Why not use both? I have my Sunbird (Lightning, actually) syncing back and forth with Google Calendar so I get a real desktop client at home, but still can see my schedule online from anywhere.
It's mentioned in the release notes, and you can get the extension here.
If you're looking for an open source calendar server that works nicely with Sunbird, may I humbly recommend Citadel. It syncs up nicely with Sunbird via the webcal (DAV) standard, and also hosts a wonderful array of groupware features such as email, address books, instant messaging, forums, etc. And everything is available via a slick AJAX-style web interface (including that same calendar you're maintaining in Sunbird). Give it a try.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
What? I understand your post is probably flamebait, but... what?
Serious question.. what do you use the desktop client for that you can't do online?
One argument I always hear when I ask that question is "So I can use it when I'm not online." But let's be serious, you're probably online almost all of the time when you have a computer handy. And now I have an additional argument.. my Google Calendar is probably more accessible than an offline laptop simply because it can SMS me alerts, and I can SMS events back to it.
I just don't see any reason to do the calendaring thing outside of a web browser, and I wonder why someone would.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "You're still thinking procedurally! A properly designed light bulb object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class!"
only it uses more space on your hard disk...
- managing my dates and tasks locally on my PC
- synchronize these with my smart phone
- possibly access dates and tasks of my family members (LAN)
- possibly access web calendars (e.g. Google calendar)
Can SeaMonkey/Lightning full fill these rather simple requirements?
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I'm sorry, but you are both pedantic and wrong. I am well aware of the difference between Outlook and Exchange, and Sunbird cannot replace Outlook.
Unless something has changed, Sunbird cannot perform the killer use case of Outlook+Exchange. Not even with CalDAV. And without that use case, Sunbird is useless as a groupware client.
The use case is: User creates a new event, User selects invitees, Invitees' availability is displayed to the user, User clicks "AutoPick Next", System selects the next available timeslot where all invitees are available, User saves meeting, Invitees are emailed an invitation, Invitees select "Accept", "Decline", or "Propose new time", System tracks invitees' responses.
The steps in italics I do not believe to be supported in Sunbird. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but to my knowledge, Sunbird Just Can't Do That. Until it can, it is only a calendar for single users.
I'm sorry if this message came off as a little irritable, but frankly I'm irritated that when I post a response to a question that asks about Exchange vs. Sunbird, I get a half dozen responses about how Exchange is a server app and Sunbird is a client. That may be true, but please explain to me how that should change my answer.
As far as I can tell, all it should change is 's/Exchange/Outlook/g', because Sunbird (or Thunderbird+Lightning) doesn't replace Outlook any more than it replaces Exchange. In my mind, the client vs. server detail doesn't warrant a smarty-pants response. I'm pretty sure all of you knew what I was talking about.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Automatically import email calendar invites? Send email calendar invites from your work account? Pop up reminders for meetings.
For my private life, I use Gcal, but for work I need something a bit more.
And yes, I use Thunderbird/Lightning in an Outlook/Exchange environment.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Google Calendar synchronization support with no offline possibility is quite useless I think, if I have to go online I'll use directly Google calendar..
You've got me on one of those three.. I can send calendar invites from my work account (which is forward to Gmail) but for some reason they don't seem to work for outlook users. The reverse direction does work, and I add items to my calendar that originated in outlook, all the time.
I get reminders by SMS or, if I have calendar open, browser alert. (But usually it's SMS.)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
As far as I can tell - sunbird only works with gcalendar and this new extension when you are online. which makes me ask, what is the point?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
And don't forget syncing with phones/PDAs since I really don't feel like carrying my computer with me wherever I go. As a matter of fact not all of us are online all the time. Seems Google hasn't decided to do a sync client themselves yet, despite the demand.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
This is true to a point. The main difference is the latency of a click on a desktop app is (for all practical purposes) zero and is greater than zero for a browser app, often by quite a bit. When I'm in a clicking frenzy, I don't want to wait for the AJAX to load if I can avoicd it, and with a native app, I can. In time, this issue will go away. For most people, this probably isn't an issue even now--You have to click fast enough to notice.
There is also the annoying issue that I have more than one google account, and my gf uses yet another google account, so there is a constant log in/log out battle going on, where Thunderbird and the associated Google Calendars are always logged in to the account(s) that are set up in it. I'm not sure of any work around for this, and logging out and back in all the time, even with saved passwords is very annoying.
Because I'm interested in web server architectures that scale I have to Google everything you mentioned in your post :-)
If I could I'd mod you up man... that's a lot of info on Java servlets you crammed into one post.
Here's to the crazy ones