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Mozilla Quietly Resurrects Eudora
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Sep 05, 2007 03:20 PM
from the thunderous-applause dept.
from the thunderous-applause dept.
Stony Stevenson writes to mention that the Mozilla Foundation has quietly released the first beta version of the revised Eudora email application. This is the first development Eudora has seen since Qualcomm stopped development and turned it over to the open source community in 2006. "Eudora first appeared in 1988 and quickly became one of the first popular email applications, enjoying its heyday in the early 1990s as it developed over the early days of the internet. Use of Eudora began to wane in the mid-1990s as the third-party application was muscled out of the market by web-based services such as Hotmail and bundled applications such as Outlook."
Linux.com has a bit more explanation about why many may not consider this simply a new release of Eudora. According to the release page the new Eudora application is not intended to compete with Thunderbird, but instead to complement it.
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Who knew? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who knew? (Score:5, Informative)
Though I've been recommending Thunderbird to my friends and clients for what seems like forever, I could never convince myself to give up Eudora...
fwiw, adding IE rendering was totally a reaction at the time to the burgeoning popularity of Outlook and HTML-formatted emails. Thankfully it was optional and could be turned off, leaving Eudora as bulletproof as before.
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It's been said... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Eudora, now based on Thunderbird, finally can make that claim.
In that case . . . (Score:5, Funny)
hawk
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's been said... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
That wiki makes my head hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
features added by the Eudora developers, "Penelope" is an extension (also
called an "add-on") that is used in Eudora and can also be used with
Thunderbird. The Eudora installer includes the corresponding version of
Penelope along with it so there is no need to install Penelope if you are
installing Eudora. Most features in Penelope can be accessed when used with
Thunderbird, but there are a few that require Eudora in order to work
correctly and it's not something that gets tested."
Can anyone un-WTF that paragraph for my tired little brain? Eudora is basically like Thunderbird, and Penelope is an extension that works with either to make it behave like...Eudora? Wait, what?
Re: (Score:2)
Penelope will be just an extension, and as such will be missing a few features which can't be done as an extension.
Eudora will be built using the thunderbird code base, allowing for it to have the couple of features that require more extensive modifications.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Can anyone un-WTF that paragraph for my tired little brain? Eudora is basically like Thunderbird, and Penelope is an extension that works with either to make it behave like...Eudora? Wait, what?
From what i can gather, I think you got it.
Why you'd want Thunderbird to behave more like Eudora, I don't know. I guess a lot of Eudora users (full disclosure: I used to use Eudora back when I had dialup and Windows 3.x) might like a version of Thunderbird that behaves like Eudora in terms of key bindings, toolbars, etc.
The question is: If Eudora/Penelope is a plugin for Thunderbird, why not make a 'Linux Eudora' as well?
Re:That wiki makes my head hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good move for the Thunderbird engine, in that context - get millions of new users who don't have to change their ways.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're releasing a new version of Eudora, based on Thunderbird. Many of the changes that make Eudora different from Thunderbird will be made through an extension called "Penelope". So "Eudora" will be a modified version of Thunderbird with Penelope already installed, but you can install Penelope with the normal version of Thunderbird and it should kind of work.
I think that's what they're saying, but I'm not positive.
Re:That wiki makes my head hurt (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> of us really has a clue as to what is going on. I cheerfully admit I don't.
You have to know some background. Chiefly, you have to know what Eudora is. Eudora is (or was, at any rate) one of the major proprietary GUI-based mailreaders. A couple of years ago it was the second-oldest one still under development, and then the company behind it decided for whatever reason that they weren't going to maintain it any more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Penelope is the open source version of Eudora. This extension adds changes to the Thunderbird UI to provide a familiar UI for Eudora users. Many of the Eudora shortcuts are also supported including functionality not offered in Thunderbird.
Penelope is an Add-on to Thunderbird which implements some a Eudora User Interface and some Eudora features.
Re:That wiki makes my head hurt (Score:5, Funny)
It's so simple, anyone could understand it. Sheesh.
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Re:That wiki makes my head hurt (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, except that they haven't. (Score:5, Informative)
When I saw this yesterday, I actually experienced a few seconds of excitement that there might someday be a good X11 mail client. But then I looked a bit further into what it is they've actually created here; functionality-wise, this mostly appears to be Thunderbird with a few of Eudora's icons pasted atop.
If you take a look at the list of bugs submitted by users [mozilla.org], you'll notice that the vast majority of them are regarding the fact that this application behaves nothing like Eudora.
Very disappointing, I'm afraid. I hope that some day there will be X11 mail clients available that aren't simply clones of a clone of Outlook.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not, I'm just saying it comes off as dangerous, irresponsible, and self-centered. If that's the kind of image you want for your business, go right ahead.
Lookin' good thunderbird (Score:5, Funny)
Thunderbird Oh Eudora, you're too good to me!
Re: (Score:2)
Internet Explorer: <burp!> What you doin' with my bitch, you Commie scum.
Eudora: Don't hurt Thunderbird! It's you I loved all along!
Correction and continuation: (Score:5, Funny)
Thunderbird: Oh Eudora, you're too good to me!
Outlook: What you doin' with my bitch, you Commie scum.
Eudora: Don't hurt Thunderbird! It's you I loved all along!
Pine: Might I trouble you kind gents for a bit of bread?!
Outlook I thought I told you never to come out of your hole again!
Parent
Microsoft, Google, etc... have the right idea... (Score:2)
I'd love to see a Mozilla branded 'hotmail' type of mail account I could use. I'd pay for it, if it had functionality that Gmail or Hotmail had but then again, why reinvent the wheel? The rich client for email is on its way out, thin clients are in.
That said, I think I'm the one guy on Slashdot that hates Gmail. I like Yahoo mail, and pay for it
Re:Microsoft, Google, etc... have the right idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'm afraid that I may disagree with you on the broader topic. The reason I hate gmail is that it's webmail, and thus inherently something that is awful and should not be done. And indeed even more broadly, "web applications" are a terrible idea; the web makes a really crappy platform.
I would much rather have an elegant, well-designed, rapidly evolving application platform of my choice on which to run a variety of clients speaking well-defined protocols than try to retroactively turn a simple and reliable content-delivery medium into an entire operating system.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This will probably be as a result of someone not happy with the current protocols inability to naturally support this type of communication without workarounds.
I like the idea of Web Apps and what companies like Google are trying to do, through practicality and experimentation. I'd agree HTTP isn't ideal and that Javascript is involved too much in the work around. It's reasonable to believe that HTTP won't be the pro
Re:Microsoft, Google, etc... have the right idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless I'm missing something, doesn't ssh and mutt/pine/elm/whatever also allow you to get to your mail from anywhere?
I do travel a fair bit, but I'm not willing to give my credentials and email to every random internet cafe machine I pass. And I have to admit, I'm kind of confused by people who are.
I'm really only willing to give my credentials to a machine that I trust, which mostly means a machine of my own. So webmail doesn't really allow me to get to my mail from significantly more places than I can just have a civilized client running anyway.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can a web language be developed that's recursive? How about a protocol definition language? Can we create rich UI's on the fly outside the browser? When are we going to have enough ban
Re:Microsoft, Google, etc... have the right idea.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not saying that the rich web clients are great for some people, just saying there's still plenty of space for the full blown apps.
Parent
GMail has free POP3 access (Score:3, Interesting)
It's "Eudora" in name only, than? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, it's really not Eudora, it's Thunderbird with some Eudora-like widgets thrown in. It's "Eudora" in name only, than?
Re:It's "Eudora" in name only, than? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Looking forward to this... (Score:2)
Time will tell...
Penelope? Eudora? WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, which is it? Are Penelope and Eudora the same thing or not?
Also, I hope this Penelope thing goes through the usual Mozilla trend of changing its name 4 or 5 times, because that name is just not doing it for me. Maybe they should just call it
Eudora - Thunderbird (Score:2)
Complement pomplement - It's a competitor even if it runs on the same technology platform. But that's good, really good. I mean see what competition did to Mozilla/Firefox.
I liked Eudora back in the end of the 90s, not sure if I would nowadays, but I for sure will give it a try.
In todays news... (Score:5, Funny)
webmail, &c. (Score:4, Interesting)
*goes back to gmail*
Seriously though, the days where I used a full email client for personal email are long gone. I have Thunderbird installed here somewhere, I think, and every so often I use it to download and save my gmail messages, but really... webmail has long been the choice for people who are not especially paranoid. (Including businesses, which have to be paranoid for legal reasons, plus there's the bonus of having somebody to fire when something goes wrong with the email.) (I actually am a little paranoid, hence the Thunderbird-downloading-saving, but not enough to forgo the convenience of webmail.)
Re:webmail, &c. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, what? Sorry.
Parent
Re:webmail, &c. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time you want to do something in webmail you have to get a new page, wait, choose, wait, and so forth. With an e-mail client I don't have to wait at all, it's instantaneous. Or how about adding attachments in webmail? That's even more clumsy.
A bonus feature is that I can have my e-mail client open in the background, periodically checking e-mail, and it will alert me when I have received one or more of them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I also work across multiple machines, which was much more hassle-free with gmail than thunderbird.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, I've got a better name for this product (Score:5, Funny)
"PINE"!
It'll stand for "PINE is not Eudora!"
Whaddya mean, "Prior art"?
Why upgrade from my current Eudora? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used a plugin for Google Desktop briefly to index the old messages, but searching was no easier that the built-in search so I just stopped using it.
Eudora is the one I app I have that over the years when I heard there was an upgrade my first thought was "why?" rather than "Great, I've been needing an upgrade".
I also use Gmail, having selected mail from my server go to both my Eudora POP account and my Gmail account. That gives me remote access and another backup If I have some funky formatted email that I don't just toss out, I view it in GMail via Opera where I'm well insulated from malicious attachments.
Eudora: It's old, it's boring, it works.
Driver required? (Score:4, Funny)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's just Thunderbird with some extensions, what's the point in a new product?
It's making my mind wander to the old MSN Explorer of Microsoft, that was a customized Internet Explorer for their MSN network.
But at least MS kept the name reasonably similar to not confuse too much.
Clarifications (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, this is the initial release, intended for developers, not for end users. We're as aware as anyone that it is incomplete.
Thirdly, by "not a competitor", we mean that we intend to make all our work available to Thunderbird. It will be up to the TBird guys to choose what to integrate, of course, but in principle we think they'll take most of it, so that in the long run, the difference between the applications will be largely what they're called and what the default behaviors are.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I look forward to charting the progress of the new Eudora/Penelope.
Keep up the good work.
WARNING: Do Not Install Alongside Thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Excuse me (Score:4, Interesting)
I used Eudora for years, until about the time Thunderbird was gearing up for version 1. What finally kicked me over the threshold was that I do a lot of work with spam detection, and so I needed access to the original format of each message. Eudora reformats messages as they arrive, separating out the attachments, adjusting the headers, and in some cases reformatting text.
At the time I had a ~5-year-old collection of mail in Eudora. I must have imported that corpus dozens of times, looking for things that imported incorrectly, figuring out how to identify whether a message was in plaintext, richtext, HTML, etc. so that the importer could reconstruct the appropriate MIME headers, and filing bugs. By the time 1.0 was ready, it could import my 5 years of mail.
I haven't looked back since then, though I do miss the window layout. It's one of the few MDI designs I actually liked. Eh, there's probably an extension for Thunderbird. Other than Penelope, I mean.
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Re:A sad day (Score:4, Insightful)
It *was* the email client of choice a decade ago. It's reign long ago ended.
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