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Thunderbird 1.0 RC1 Released

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Dec 02, 2004 10:21 PM
from the mail-call dept.
Mozilla The Internet Upgrades
KingDaveRa writes "Mozilla.org has quietly released Thunderbird 1.0 RC1. 1.0 RC1 includes lots of bug fixes and improvements for features like saved search folders, the RSS reader, mail migration, and message grouping. The default themes have both been updated with new and improved artwork as well."
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  • Popularity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots (753724) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:22PM (#10982374) Homepage
    Is Thunderbird as "spread-like-wild-fire" as Firefox? I just don't hear people talking about TB as much as FF.

    Even in newsgroups where you need a news reader to do anything, people still talk about FF. I'm using TB but I don't have the same enthusiasm to discuss it.

    Is this due to lack of usage, or lack of competition, or something else? Or just me?

    • Re:Popularity (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Any serious usenet junkie will tell you TB won't cut it-- same with OE, though. I like pan [rebelbase.com]. ;)
    • I'm thinking lack of usage. Especially during the aKadamy, KMail seems to have sapped up all the available attention. KDE's whole PIM suite is evolving so rapidly, it's obviously being doted upon by the geek community.

      Outside of that afformentioned community, it seems Outlook/Express is absolutely dominant. Personally, I like Opera's M2.

    • Re:Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by skids (119237) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:31PM (#10982450) Homepage
      The geek fanbase for thunderbird is smaller, so it gets less free publicity.

      You can't really live without a graphical web browser (well, at least without impairing access to a lot of stuff), but the same isn't true of email. There are a number af very good text-mode mail readers, and most people I know prefer something like PINE, and really dread the day when you can't live without a graphical email reader.

      So far we've done a fair job of beating back the perpetually looming encroachment of non-plain-text email. (There's even an ASCII ribbon campaign :-)

      • Re:Popularity (Score:5, Funny)

        by pcmanjon (735165) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:33PM (#10982472)
        "and most people I know prefer something like PINE"

        Wow, and I'm still using the GNU ``mail`` command. I didn't know they had an ncurses based mail client yet.

        • Re:Popularity (Score:4, Insightful)

          by rsidd (6328) on Friday December 03 2004, @01:17AM (#10983468)
          Wow, and I'm still using the GNU ``mail`` command.

          You mean the BSD mail command?

          rpm -qif /bin/mail
          Name : mailx...
          License: BSD ...
          Packager : Red Hat, Inc.

          Not everything in the world is GNU...

        • Re:Popularity (Score:4, Funny)

          by Metteyya (790458) on Friday December 03 2004, @05:09AM (#10984277)
          Wow, and I'm still using the GNU ``mail`` command. I didn't know they had an ncurses based mail client yet.

          You must be using Debian Stable, don't you?

      • Re:Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Swaffs (470184) <swaff@fDEGASudo.org minus painter> on Friday December 03 2004, @03:21AM (#10983938) Homepage
        I think much moreso than text-mode mail readers is that many people use only webmail. I know a lot of people who don't realize they can get an email address through their ISP, but have hotmail addresses because that's what they know. Also, many use gmail or their ISP's webmail option since its so portable.
    • Outlook has so many more features then thunderbird. Since I dont use outlook I will give my mom's answer when she looked at thunderbird for her office. Can I use it to schedule the presentation rooms? Can I use it to sync? With email filters pretty much grabbing all the outlook viruses anyways, most buisness shouldnt be too concerned running outlook. Firefox was different it has MORE features and protects in ways that just arent too realistic on win2k in an office enviroment. When employees go home, general

      • Re:Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AstroDrabb (534369) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:56PM (#10982642)
        Outlook has so many more features then thunderbird. Since I dont use outlook I will give my mom's answer when she looked at thunderbird for her office. Can I use it to schedule the presentation rooms?
        Why would you compare MS Outlook, a groupware application, to an email application? A better comparison would be MS Outlook Express to Thunderbird. MS Outlook Express cannot schedule the presentation rooms either. Thunderbird is far better then OE and has far better default security.

        For office type groupware, MS Outlook is currently the best product out there. But for a typical _home_ user email program, Thunderbird is very good and much better then MS Outlook Express IMO.

        • You make a very fair point - Thunderbird is a sound replacement for anyone usine OE at home.

          However, the Moz suite - either as one application, Mozilla, or as a pick and choose set of Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird will, eventually pose a serious threat to Outlook's dominance on the corporate desktop.

          One thing that I do wonder about though is syncing with other programs, especially mobile phones. Is there any pressure being put on Symbian etc to make their phones sync contacts with an LDAP server, email w

          • Last I checked, Mozilla's roadmap did not include making it into a Groupware application.
            So no. The only serious threats to Outlook are compatable web-based systems, and Evolution.

        • Re:Popularity (Score:5, Interesting)

          by EvilStein (414640) <spamNO@SPAMpbp.net> on Friday December 03 2004, @02:25AM (#10983749) Homepage
          I've itched about this before as well - Thunderbird very well could blow away Outlook in many organizations, but the CALENDAR *SUCKS* - Sorry, Sunbird sucks more ass than anything that has even sucked ass before. The last time I tried it, it was incapable of recognizing its own calendar files, instead they were opening as plain old text in Mozilla.

          Here's my idea: Ditch flippin Chatzilla. Put a lot of effort towards the calendar.

          The Calendar is one of the big reasons (that I have found) that people stick with Microsoft Outlook.

          It doesn't even have to be the whiz-bang calendar like Outlook has, but it'd be nice if it would actually work worth a crap.

            • Re:Reasons to use Outlook Express (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Pxtl (151020) on Friday December 03 2004, @09:05AM (#10985387) Homepage
              Speaking of which, Thunderbird's IMAP support, while pretty, has one idiotic fault: there's no built-in way to purge deleted email messages. If you do manual purges with the purge button extension, you can't use the "move to deleted items folder" mode.

              The "move to deleted items folder" doesn't actually remove the deleted messages from the inbox, just flags them as deleted. This sucks if your IMAP system is ever accessed from anywhere else (which is the whole freaking point of IMAP) because when you log in, you find that all the junk-email and deleted items are still sitting flagged right in your inbox.

              This is a serious pisser.

      • How many of them are useful features? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Brave Guy (457657) on Friday December 03 2004, @07:34AM (#10984801)

        It's true that Outlook can do much more than Thunderbird, and as someone else already pointed out, Outlook Express would be a fairer alternative to compare against.

        Still, I prefer Thunderbird even to Outlook, for a simple reason: I don't need those extra features. All I want is a mail client that can:

        • read mail effectively (including avoiding HTML bugs, not filtering out genuine .exes, etc.)
        • provide a simple and effective address book
        • provide decent mail processing rules
        • back up and restore mail without losing data
        without zillions of stability and security issues. I switched to Thunderbird after a system failure (caused by an official MS update, in fact) took out my MS-based mail system.

        I doubt I'm the only one in the world who really doesn't care about scheduling meetings and booking rooms using Outlook. I'd rather just have a simple, effective tool that helps me do my job. Trying to schedule meetings using Outlook is far less efficient than simply e-mailing, picking up the phone or (shock!) walking around and talking to people, IME.

  • i read my mail (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:22PM (#10982376)
    using my OS, emacs

  • Handling in Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thephotoman (791574) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:22PM (#10982380) Journal
    How does it do with mailto: links from Firefox in Linux? That's the one question burning on my mind.

    • Re:Handling in Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:27PM (#10982423) Journal
      Under Gnome, clicking a mailto: link in firefox launches the default mail program you select under Preferred Applications in gnome-control-center. If Thunderbird is your default mail client, it will launch that.
    • My question is somewhat related... can you open a link in a new tab in FF by middle-clicking in TB? And in general, from a user point of view, are FF and TB as tightly integrated as Mozilla Mail and Mozilla-the-browser?

  • Multiple identities/accounts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nadsat (652200) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:24PM (#10982395) Homepage
    Problem with Thunderbird is that I never liked the way it handled multiple-acounts. And could not import multiple identities from Outlook very well. Hopefully this is resolved. Looking forward to Thunderbird dropping presents all over the place from the sky.
    • Problem with Thunderbird is that I never liked the way it handled multiple-acounts.

      I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but I have a feeling you didn't like the way the mail was split up, with one "Inbox" per account? A lot of people didn't like that.

      Well, the good news is that you now have a choice. For each email account, you can choose whether the mail goes into an account-specific Inbox OR a "global Inbox". So you can have all your mail in one big Inbox, if that's what you like.

      Personally, I like having separate Inboxes for each mail account, because I have many mail accounts and each one has a pretty specific purpose. One for spam, one for friends, several for business/website-related purposes, etc. But apparently the majority of users want a global Inbox, and the developers listened. Pretty cool if you ask me. :)

  • Thunderbird is missing something (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:25PM (#10982402)
    I'm a Thunderbird user and have been for a long time, about as long as it has existed. It's a fine email client, a good one, in fact. However, it's missing something. Missing what? I don't know. But it's missing something that would make people want to switch from the client they're already using. If it's your first client, or you're not happy with the one you're using, it's a good choice. But if you are happy, I'm not sure how to convince you to change to it.

    Spam filters? Available in other clients, either natively or through add-ons. RSS reader? I think most people that read RSS already have a reader they like. It's not the fanciest looking client, and it still has some bugs. So, how would you convince someone to use it?
    • You know one big advantage it has over it's competition (at least the MS flavor of competition?)

      I know exactly where my e-mail is stored on my computer. If T-bird ever crashes or if I need to copy the entire in-box I can do it easilly.

      In Outlook Express, the location of the mail is hidden. With absolutely no information on how to find it in the help-files or MS website. Further you can't export your mail to any easilly accesible format. I can't count how many messages I've lost simply because I was up

    • Re:Thunderbird is missing something (Score:5, Informative)

      by gavinjolly (584983) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:40PM (#10982524) Journal

      I have recently moved a client Off thunderbird due to issues. Refer here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1710 10 [mozillazine.org] for my post to the Tunderbird forums. Here is the summary of the issues from my message for those too lazy to click on the link

      • No spell check suggester
      • Limited signatures - Only one per account and no way to insert during editing a message. A pain for us who use signatures as an Autotext/proforma facility.
      • Searching for emails - In OE and other mail clients when the list is sorted by Sender clicking M will take you to the first M entry.
      • Formatting HTML emails - You cannot select HTML text and then set to the same text size from the formatting toolbar, you must go through the menu (Format > Size > Medium)

      I still use it myself as a preference.

      • Re:Thunderbird is missing something (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Oscar_Wilde (170568) on Friday December 03 2004, @02:03AM (#10983689) Homepage
        No spell check suggester

        And on systems that have spell checking ability built into every GUI element that can contain text (Cocoa apps on OS X at least but I'm sure there are others) there is still no spell checking.

        It just doesn't feel right on a mac when text boxes don't let you spell check things. Perhaps this kind of thing will be more common when the rest of the software world catches up ;-)

      • Seconded (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RedBear (207369) <redbear AT redbearnet DOT com> on Friday December 03 2004, @02:23AM (#10983741) Homepage
        That signature issue in particular is a good indicator, I think, of the general reason why Thunderbird (and Mozilla Mail before it) never really "spread like wildfire". I'm not sure what somebody was thinking. I mean, come on. You have to create some kind of text file outside of Mozilla with Notepad or something, save it somewhere (no default location), and then go in to the preferences and browse to the location of that text file that you somehow figured out how to create. And you can only have that one text file, so only one signature unless you go through that process again. And it's either there or it isn't.

        The whole process is totally nonsensical to your average user. Other email clients will just let you choose a signature to insert from a list. That's the kind of thing people like. Thunderbird and Mozilla Mail have just been kind of rough in spots until now. Built in mail filtering not withstanding, it just hasn't had anything special to pull people away from Eudora, OE, Pegasus or Opera Mail.

        And yes, we are talking about the average Windows user here, the 95% of the population that this software is supposedly being marketed to. In that world there are a lot of users who do not know how to create a simple plain text file with Notepad.

        On Mac OS X the case for TB is pretty hopeless. Apple Mail integrates with the rest of the OS like clockwork and is a hell of a lot prettier. I'm actually kind of surprised to see Thunderbird getting to 1.0 so fast. In my opinion it still needs a lot of usability enhancements and beautifying to really compete with other email clients the way Firefox can compete on level ground with all the other browsers. Maybe a miracle has happened since 0.9, but I doubt it.

        Of course I'll still be forcing my users to use it anyway, since it's a hell of a lot better than OE on Windows.

    • Re:Thunderbird is missing something (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nimey (114278) on Thursday December 02 2004, @11:10PM (#10982742) Homepage Journal
      What T-bird is missing vs Firefox is a monopolized market. There are a lot more email clients out there than web browsers, and I doubt that Outhouse Excess's marketshare is quite as high as IE's.
    • I made a small list of features where Thunderbird scores over Outlook express. Here use it for advocacy :-)
      1. Inbuilt junk filter
      2. Spell Checker (OE doesn't have spell checker if MS Office is not installed)
      3. Save Searches as Folders
      4. Integrated RSS reader
      5. Inline search (no separate window is popped for simple searches, has a neat search box on top)
      6. Allows creating simple Rules for filtering mail automatically
      7. Option to view contacts in a sidebar for easy finding and insertion in compose window
      8. Inline search in

      • Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by bogie (31020) on Thursday December 02 2004, @11:43PM (#10982932) Journal
        Contrary to what many people say its no competition for Outlook. Outlook Express, sure. But its really lacking in features for business and expecially corporate users. No built-in mature calendar, no real full featured palm syncing. How useful is syncing ONLY your address book? I'm not talking about a full blown Exchange client here, but there are certain basics people expect. Unfortunately judging by the response over the last few years those types of features and turning Thunderbird into something that competes with Outlook proper is not something the dev(s) is interested in.

        I hope Thunderbird fans don't think I'm just bashing it. I suggest and install Thunderbird for any OE users I encounter. OE is just not safe to use. I'm just kinda let down because its hasn't turned out the way I had envisioned it.

        Oh and as the other person pointed out, on Linux Evolution is very nice. Perhaps one day it will be availabe for Windows.

  • Desired Features (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:31PM (#10982455) Journal
    What I really wish Thunderbird would do is sync with my PocketPC. At the very least I wish it was easier to sync my address book. I also hope they have better support for vCard exporting. On a side note, does anyone know the timetable for the next major mozilla.orf milestone, Mozilla Suite 2.0, to be released?

  • A couple of things: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lawpoop (604919) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:34PM (#10982474) Homepage Journal
    1. The importing process seems to only have a wizard to import from other email programs. I would like to have the option to point to a directory or file of email to be imported.

    2. It would be really cool to have automatic virtual directories. I have my email sorted into subfolder by email address. I have rules set up to put emails into folders. Why not have this be automatic? Sort by email address, sort by folders. I wonder why no popular email client has this.

    • Re:A couple of things: (Score:5, Informative)

      by jeffehobbs (419930) on Thursday December 02 2004, @11:01PM (#10982679) Homepage

      It would be really cool to have automatic virtual directories. I have my email sorted into subfolder by email address. I have rules set up to put emails into folders. Why not have this be automatic?

      Saved Search Folders [mozillazine.org] is exactly, precisely what you want, and it's in Thunderbird right now. It's an insanely great feature.

      ~jeff

        • Re:A couple of things: (Score:5, Informative)

          by jeffehobbs (419930) on Thursday December 02 2004, @11:21PM (#10982813) Homepage

          Then it sounds like you're a candidate for "Grouped by Sort", which is a dumb name for a cool feature:

          1) sort your mail by sender.

          2) hit "G". Now all your mail is arranged in little collapsed subgroups depending on the sender/email address.

          This doesn't use folders per se, so I agree that it's not exactly, precisely what you want, but the end result is similar.

          ~jeff

  • promoting Thunderbird is a timing thing (Score:5, Funny)

    by bersl2 (689221) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:34PM (#10982477) Journal
    1. Someone complains about Outlook Express on USENET or in a forum.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!---er... Download!

  • Why Mail and News? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fred911 (83970) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:41PM (#10982530)
    I don't understand why people want a browser that has a POP and NEWS client built in? If I want to use
    POP I use my POP client (not outhouse). If I want to use NNTP I use a NEWS client.

    Why expose yourself to such a mess?

    • Re:Why Mail and News? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by znark (77857) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:59PM (#10982661) Homepage
      I don't understand why people want a browser that has a POP and NEWS client built in? If I want to use POP I use my POP client (not outhouse). If I want to use NNTP I use a NEWS client.

      E-mail and news (and offline dial-up BBS messaging of the old days) are all sides of the same coin, communication-wise:

      • You have paragraphs of text.
      • You have quoting.
      • You have signatures.
      • You need to have a message editor.
      • You usually have a need to archive important messages into folders of your own choosing.
      • Most often you would like to keep a record of what you have yourself written.
      • You need some search facilities.
      • There must be a way to see a list of new messages, and an option to thread them into coherent discussions.

      A well-written news message is the same as a well-written e-mail message. The line between the two further blurs when you subscribe to mailing lists. Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?

      -- znark
    • I don't understand why people want a browser that has a POP and NEWS client built in? If I want to use
      POP I use my POP client (not outhouse). If I want to use NNTP I use a NEWS client.

      The same as I consider editing, compiling, and debugging as one integrated development task I see browsing, reading email, instant messaging, and news reading as one integrated web communications task, that is why I'm sticking with Mozilla as long as I can. It's just plain convenient not to have to launch five applications

  • KMail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Helios1182 (629010) on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:45PM (#10982563)
    I used Thunderbird back in the Windows days (say, 9 months ago or so). Since I switched to Linus (Suse w/ KDE) I've been using K-Mail. It works great, integrates well, and does everything I need. Quite frankly see no reason for Thunderbird at this point. I do have a copy installed so I can walk my Grandparents through when they have problems, but thats it. If I still had Windows I would probably use it still.
  • Tbird is one of the few mail readers that support 'Secure Password Authentication' for people that want to read email off of a Windows 2003 POP server without Entourage on the Mac.

  • Thunderbird adoption (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pugugly (152978) on Friday December 03 2004, @12:27AM (#10983201)
    As a helpdesk techie, I think Thunderbird is going to have a rougher ride than Firefox.

    The problem strangely enough, is that Outlook Express was so much worse than Internet Explorer. IE isn't a great browser, but for most people until this last set of security flaws (Infection via Jpg? Yeah, that's tied too bloody close), it's "Good Enuff" - they could work around it. the only other browsers out their had fanbases, but weren't so head and shoulders above to be worth dealing with. I never cared for netscape, didn't like the packaging of mozilla, and didn't wan't to pay for opera - So I tweaked IE's security and stayed with the one that was "Good Enuff".

    So when Firefox came to maturity just as the last set of flaws finally did things even my ultra paranoid security settings (Never had an adware get through) couldn't compensate for, people were primed to leave en masse. And it's great - I can tweak it, it's portable, and it does stand head and shoulders over IE.

    Outlook express on the other hand never was "Good Enuff", for anything besides simple Email. It's really only used by people that have never bothered to try anything else. Pine and Elm have more capabilities. Everybody else moved, and has gotten to using something else that *is* good enough, and doesn't have the security holes IE had to jolt them. I have fifty+ filters I'd have to port from Eudora, others use Pegasus, or elm, webmail, or whatever.

    So the people who wanted to move, have. The people who haven't moved yet aren't just waiting on Thunderbird the way I was waiting for a browser I *liked*.

    So it's not going to hit OE as hard as Firefox hit IE.

  • Thunderbird still doesn't support MS-TNEF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ptbarnett (159784) on Friday December 03 2004, @12:29AM (#10983215)
    I know that MS-TNEF is generated by a lame Outlook. But, I get a lot of email from corporate clients that I wouldn't be able to read (either partially or entirely), and it's not appropriate for me to tell them it's their problem.

    I have to forward it to an account where I can use Outlook, or launch a web browser and use SquirrelMail to open the IMAP folder and read the message. I had to install a plug-in to SquirrelMail to read MS-TNEF email. If the Thunderbird team doesn't want to put it into the default installation, they could at least develop an MS-TNEF extension/plug-in for Thunderbird.

    This issue is the one that prevents me (and others) from abandoning Outlook altogether and switching to Thunderbird. Yes, I know there are some programs available that will interpret MS-TNEF. But, that requires a lot of manual effort and makes it difficult to convince the typical business user to use Thunderbird.

    • Re:Gmail (Score:5, Informative)

      by cetan (61150) <cetan_post@yahoo.com> on Thursday December 02 2004, @10:32PM (#10982462) Journal
      with gmail providing pop3 access, you /could/ integrate the two :)

      But really, I use both. gmail has taken over "web" duty from my old yahoo account and thunderbird controls mail from my domains.
      • GMail provides specific directions for setting up POP access for many different mail clients, including Thunderbird:

        # Outlook Express and Outlook 2002 (and older) (Windows)
        # Outlook Express and Outlook 2002 (and older) (Mac)
        # Outlook 2003
        # Entourage 2004
        # Entourage X
        # Eudora 5.1 (and higher) (Sponsored & Paid Mode)
        # Eudora 5.1 (and higher) (Light Mode)
        # Netscape Mail 7.x
        # Netscape Mail 6.2
        # Netscape Mail 4.5, 4.6, or 4.7
        # Apple Mail
        # Mozilla 1.7
        # Thunderbird 0.x

    • Re:What's keeping me from switching from Outlook - (Score:5, Interesting)

      by boomgopher (627124) on Friday December 03 2004, @12:08AM (#10983103) Journal
      Why doesn't TB offer something like SpamBayes: Good Mail, Maybe Spam, Spam. I tried TB a few months ago and don't like the idea of having to check dozens of spam messages to make sure a good e-mail didn't end up in there

      Dude, I've used TB for year or two now, and get a few thousand spams a week on my work account - couldn't live without Tbird. TB's spam filter trains rapidly like within a day or so it seems, and is very accurate. My account would be unusable without it.

      I have a work copy of Outlook 2003, which looked neat, but tried it for a few days with SpamBayes (well, I think it was spam bayes), and... I hated it. It took longer to train than TB, and I don't know about you, but I don't trust MS with freaking anything when it comes to security. Especially not my personal and professional emails.

      Though see my sig for a humorous bug/feature of tbird :).


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