Thunderbird 0.7 Released

aeinome writes "Right on the heels of the release of Firefox 0.9 comes the official release of Thunderbird 0.7. Updates are similar to Firefox's, with new extension and theme managers and slight increases in speed. Be sure to read the release notes for the complete list of new features, and then download it from the Thunderbird homepage."

Fedora?

[rleibman]

Same questions as for firefox, when can we expect it in the Fedora updates?

Still Room for Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Outlook for a long time before getting fed up with it, and now I'm going through the same thing with Thunderbird. In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.

I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of its history with security, and Outlook 2002's poor compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.

Firefox and Thunderbird are incredible aps but Thunderbird especially has a lot of room for improvement. When Thunderbird can piece together split usenet files and handle Y-EN/C then it will probably truly have arived for many of us. After that you need to out-exchange exchange :) and realize email is a centeral pda application and to that end we need scheduling, adress books that sync with our newtons, and help us manage our lives. Indeed, do Thunderbird right and you can really shake up the world because there's a real hunger and need for an ultra powerful email/usenet/scheduler/contact/pda manager.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Araxen]

Aye, the spam filter sets this email client above all the rest.

Compared to web-based e-mails?

[line.at.infinity]

In the past I've used First Class Client, pine, and currently I'm satisfied with web-based e-mail. What's the benefit of using mail clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook over web-based e-mail? For my web-based e-mail I get

* no ads
* at least 1 GB per mail account
* spam filtering
* impossible to download infected attachments
* etc

I also edited the .forward file for my pine account so I can read those e-mails on my web mail account.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[darien]

I disagree entirely. I used to use Outlook, with SpamBayes [sourceforge.net] as my spam filter. The Thunderbird spam filter is far, far less effective. I have a suspicion it doesn't read email headers or something. All I can say for sure is that after training SpamBayes for two weeks I used to get maybe one email a week in my "suspected spam" folder. Then I moved to TB's built-in spam filter, and since then I get more like three spams a day delivered straight to my inbox. Not good. If this new version doesn't fix that I'm just going to go back to SpamBayes, even though I'll have to run it as a separate process.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Erwos]

I agree, too. One of Evolution's big mistakes was not integrating with SpamAssassin more heavily. I mean, OK, it's pretty stupidly simple to set up right now, but I really would like better integration so I don't have to do _any_ set up.

Well, maybe next version.

-Erwos

so is it better than Eudora from 1995 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Thunderbird finally display progress from separate mail accounts at the same time? Maybe something more than "Downloading 1 of 629" ? Something that indicates how much time is left?

Re:Another question

[mrchaotica]

Thanks, I'd never heard of Nvu until just now.

But to answer your question (with another question, don't you just hate that?), why would mozilla bundle Firefox and Thunderbird together, when a) lots of people only use Firefox, or only use Thunderbird, b) the total file size probably wouldn't be much smaller, and c) even if the total file size was smaller, the people for whom it matters most (dialup users) would still be better off with separate files?

Also, I don't see why mozilla.org would distribute Nvu at all, since they didn't make it (despite the fact that it uses Gecko). (Not that it wouldn't be nice if Mozilla made it; they're more interested in cross-platformness than Lindows, and I wouldn't mind having a version for Mac OS X)

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[mlmitton]

I've been using Thunderbird on Linux (Fedora) since .3 and I love it. However, when I upgraded to .7 from .6, it didn't import all of my mail, account information, and preferences. In all of my previous upgrades, all of these things imported on their own. Did they change the folder where these things get stored? How do you import them?

Exhange Server

[Phoinix]

Can I use it instead of outlook to connect to the Exchange server at work?

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[cheekyboy]

WHY ISNT this info in the TOOLTIP for the write button?

Its little things like that , that really make a great app, proper hints that are usefull, and inteligent software.

No one has the time to read 100 pages of docs.

Dont know if .7 does this, but when you customize your toolbar, you should have the option of adding ANY MENU command into a button!!!!! That is of such usefull and obvious importance.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[ArmorFiend]

I think their plan is eventually to have a little drop down menu next to each of "write", "reply", "forward" etc, that lets you choose text or html. Or maybe I'm getting that confused with inline versus attachment forwarding.

What I really want, though, is to be able to switch a message mid composition from one format to another. Because sometimes you need a little finesse, sometimes you need a lot.

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[barfy]

The stupid drawer, and the fact that delete does not work correctly in the mail view.

I have used mail.app because there was nothing really better on osx, and the mail app is pretty good. But it has now been regulated away. I much prefer the three-pane view over the drawer view, which for mail seems just kinda clunky. Drawers are good, if they are not OPEN all the time.

Actually strike that, I think drawers are a bad UI concept.

And the fact that the list widget doesn't work properly just drives me crazy, and the fact that thunderbirds DOES work properly is enough!

Not sure about 0.7.

[dancingmad]

I've been using Firewhatever since .6 or so (maybe earlier) and I jumped on Thunderbird when it came out. But at school last semester I used webmail. When I came home I reinstalled Thunderbird, .6 and the .7 prerelease and they both stutter on the Inbox screen. I haven't found anymore info on it and it's only in the mail 3 pane view (when viewing an invidiual message it doesn't happen). Anyone know what the deal is?

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Snoopy77]

Though you say that your products are not release ready, people actually USE them as if they were.

And who's fault is this? They tell you that their product is not release ready yet you use it as if it is. Are they suppose to magically make it release ready just because you use it as such?

Surely you knew what you were getting yourself into when you switched to a sub 1.0 program. It was a decision you made so don't blame the developers for your poorly thought out choice.

BTW you promised to start your rant with kudos for the Mozilla developers but I don't see you praising them at all.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Luscious868]

Your exactly right. Before 0.6 almost nothing got through and there were almost never false positives. Now there are 4 or 5 spams that have been getting through every day. I just reset the training data and am going to spend the next week or so retraining the filters. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Believe it or not, I am forced to use Outlook 2003 at the office and it actually does a better job than Thunderbird has been doing since the 0.6 release. Hopefully the developers see the error of their ways and go back to the old filters or further tweak the new ones to work out the kinks.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[node 3]

More to the point, however, if they can't get upgrading to work right in the beta phase, why should we expect them to get it right later?

That doesn't make any sense. In fact, I'd say it's just the opposite: when there are problems in the beta, one expects them to fix it later. Why would you think they won't get it right later? This isn't some patent-laden problem, or an aspect that some see as a feature, and others as a bug. It's just a problem where they'll have to decide how they want to correct it, and go for it.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally would LOVE to help. But what's the point ? There has been public rejection or ignoring of my attempts to get involved. I know I am not alone in this plight.

If you want to help, read the documentation [mozilla.org] on what needs to be done, start hacking [mozilla.org] and come hang out in #mozilla on irc.mozilla.org Since you don't go into details of the rejection, I'll have to guess as to what happened, but I suspect you either 1) posted on mozillazine and your idea was rejected by the fanboys hanging out there, or 2) one of the three or four people working on the firewhatever front-end was typically rude and didn't consider himself to have the time to hold your hand.

If it was the first - that's basically the same as being offended at any random Anonymous Coward here at /. - those people might whine and moan an awful lot, but they have almost zero actual influence on what happens with mozilla. People who write code have influence. And people who write code don't have time to wade through all those threads. (That's not to say that there aren't a few highly dedicated coders who try to be communicative there, but they really get drowned out.)
If it's the second - yeah, they suck. Come work on the back-end instead and either hope for them to relax after 1.0, prove your worth so that they will pay attention to you, or do as most of us, and realize that the Suite really is the product for you anyway. (Firefox is the product designed for clueless IE-loving newbies; Mozilla-proper is for webdevelopers, power-users and programmers - and despite ongoing rumors as to its demise from the afore-mentioned fanboys, you can count on it being around for a very long time yet.)

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason for me to switch from Apple's Mail.app was that it fails to handle message boxes larger than 1000 items. Saddly, I've got several (already sorted and sectioned off) mail folders that have far greater than 1000 ... 15-20k more likely. Thunderbird handles these large folders with ease, whereas it got to the point of Mail.app taking 2-3min or so at 1500 messages just to click on the folder (this on a 1.25GHz PowerBook).

Mail.app is a great program for most users. Thunderbird still has some areas to be worked out, but nothing too terrible for me to use it. And Mail.app simply fails to meet my mail client needs.

Mozilla vs. thunderbird for email.

[Koatdus]

Greetings.

I use Mozilla at work on WinXP and at home on FC1 for IMAP email. Other then being smaller and faster to start (not an issue as I have fast computers in both places) what features does thunderbird offer that Mozilla does not. Or what is better about it that I should switch?

A moan…

[shic]

I like thunderbird 0.6 and 0.7 looks set to extend my good experiences with 0.6 - however (don't laugh) I'm not ready to give up Outlook just yet. As far as I'm concerned Thunderbird is a better mail client than Outlook in all but one respect.

I use email as a productivity tool - I send many emails to many people, on many topics - data entry speed is very important to me - and the clarity of my messages is very important to my recipients. I believe I can spell, and that my grammar is good - but this only means I can be sure my message 'hangs-together' when I've proof-read it a couple of times. When I use Word as my editor it corrects my silly typographic errors on the fly and detects and alerts me about many malformed sentences with its famous "wobbly green line" - which I find invaluable. I realise that as a grammar checker Word's is wanting, and that Thunderbird has a spelling checker... but I, for one, find these differences make using Thunderbird less productive than using Outlook.

Are there any plans to wire in a grammar/style checker?
Will we ever see an "autocorrect" feature like Word's?

As silly as these two might sound, IMHO, they are the single biggest barriers to adoption of open source productivity tools.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[NumbThumb]

well, duh. Ideally, the filtering would be done on the senders box, so the spam would never leave the outbox. But the world isn't perfect, you know? As long as many ISPs don't provide good spam filtering, it's nice for Joe Average to have a mail client that filters out the crud -- without manually setting up a pop proxy, or some such.

why am i replying to an AC, anyway?

Re:A moan…

[shic]

I agree with BenjyD and babbage that it would be absurd to assume Word could ensure anyone could write grammatically correct documents if they were unable to do so unaided. Conversely, as I had hoped I'd made clear, I don't want it to "help me out with subtle grammatical/stylistic problems" but I still find the (very low quality) grammar checker in Word a useful first-pass proofing tool.

It is obvious to anyone who uses Word extensively that it is trivial to write pathetic drivel that Word thinks is OK - and sometimes (though far less frequently) to write something that is clearly valid about which Word complains. While this severely limits the usefulness of Word's grammar checker to reliably verify grammar, the fact remains that it is of significant net benefit when identifying some forms of obvious structural problem in prose.

Rather than make unhelpful remarks that I should learn to write English properly (which I assume were intended humorous) I would welcome constructive discussion about a better tool. There are dozens of improvements I can think of - here are a few:

• Check consistency of spelling (particularly useful for Brits) where, for example, "initialized" and "initialised" are both valid but only one should be used in a related group of documents.
  
• Check consistency of "grammatical person" to avoid awkward association of second-person and third-person sentences.
  
• Cliche identification.
  
• Identification of potential verbiage - for example "policymaking process"; "weather conditions"; "this time around"; "top priority" et. etc.
  
• Identify (inappropriate use of) passive voice - e.g. "a hit b" not "a was hit by b"
  

While it would be a laudable goal to aim for a tool which would accurately identify correct and incorrect grammar, I agree, this is overly ambitious. Conversely, the grammar checker in Word adequately serves as proof-of-concept that significant benefit can be derived even from a simple system which identifies some structural problems in prose.