Mozilla Thunderbird Gets Firefox-style Tabs 203
daria42 writes "A developer has added tabbed browsing of e-mail messages to Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client, mimicking one of the most popular features of the Firefox and Opera Web browsers." From the article: "It is unlikely the feature will be found in Mozilla's imminent release of Thunderbird 1.5 -- currently in testing -- but software developer Myk Melez has put test versions of Thunderbird online with the tabbed browsing feature included. However, there are doubts over the suitability of these downloads for production use as they are based on bleeding-edge 'unofficial' code. "
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think that you can complain to MS when IE screws you?
The best of luck, my poor deluded friend.
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:3, Insightful)
You think you can complain to Microsoft and they will actually DO something about it? They haven't had a new browser in 5 years. What makes you think they'll listen to your complaints and make a move?
Mozilla is an open-source product with huge community support. You're MUCH more likely to get a change-request addressed or bug-report fixed in Firefox than you are with Internet Explorer.
Re:Email tabs == good (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'd like to see is a fully tabbed interface where the address book would open in a tab, an integrated Sunbird calendar would open in another tab (if Sunbird is installed), each email would open in their own tabs, etc.
Simply tabbing through previews seems like a half-assed way to do it. It still looks moderately useful at the expense of having an inconsistent interface.
Re:OH BOY! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GMail is the future! (Score:2, Insightful)
There are many reasons for that. Some of them being that I have several email accounts, and an email client checks all my email faster than I'd check it manually. Another being the fact that my email client can regularly check my email without me paying any attention to it, and notify me if I have new messages (I know that there's gmail notifier, and stuff, but again, gmail is not all I use). Also, downloading messages via POP3 is a more viable option than using webmail on non-standard platforms, such as PDAs.
There are several more reasons, but my point is, I still see a lot of use for mail clients, and I don't see them going anytime soon.
Re:Following threads is easier (Score:2, Insightful)
The two statements weren't intended to be consistent - Outlook is, by far, the most prevalent email client, and it is usually detrimental to the experience when the interface is customizable. One can achieve the former in spite of the latter.
In Outlook's case the interface is used in a "stock" manner by the overwhelming majority of users, and Outlook makes changes "difficult" enough that it isn't something you normally do accidentally (the kind where you go "WTF? How did that get there"). I just had one of those experiences with Opera, humorously - I was trying to paste some text, but hit some unknown keyboard shortcut and suddenly it switched to "User Style" mode, with an abhorrent layout. Any possible shortcuts didn't revert it back, so I had to go searching through the menus to determine what the deal was. Worse it was sticky, so I couldn't just close and restart.
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're so right. I mean, over the last five years, the billion dollar company has released so many updates to its browser, while Firefox has more or less been standing still. Clearly, the billion dollar company cared more about their product than those hippies at Mozilla. In fact, I care about IE as much as Microsoft does.
Re:OH BOY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Lotus Notes. Is. BETTER!
Who cares if it looks a little ugly, there are some themes you can skin it with too. If you're thinking about the workspaces with big square icons, that's now a legacy feature: Notes now uses a sidebar with essentially what are folders.
But the real meat is in usability. Maybe it takes a little getting used to, but the interface actually gets pretty efficient when you've used it for a while. Lotus Notes is also 100 times better for mobile users, or even remote users on slow VPN connections. Ever tried to use Outlook remotely? You can be editing an email and the editor will freeze every couple minutes, for a minute or two, while the client check for new mail. Lotus Notes doesn't lock up your client when a connection is lost, and Replication has always been handled well.
Lotus Notes is much more flexible than Outlook, too. We had thousands of forms and applications in Notes, making it easy to do things like get a production report or submit change requests and purchase orders. It's easy to keep them organized and see who did what, and when. I spent several million dollars of company money through that system. Maybe you can set a similar system up in Outlook, I don't know, but at least where I now work no one has bothered. Everything is done via Word documents and no one knows what the most recent version is, and they all look different.
I've used both, and my opinion is that for the users, if you just want to get work done, Notes does the job. Maybe Outlook is easier for you IT administrators to set up, but a few hours of YOUR time is nothing compared to a few hours of everyone in the company's time. I seriously waste time now waiting for Outlook to do something and creating new forms or hunting down a document in a folder somewhere.
Eudora beat them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether the complaint will be thrown to the garbage or positively processed is a different matter.
Re:GMail is the future! (Score:3, Insightful)
I like webmail a lot, I really do - but there are still a couple good reasons for a mail client, such as having a second copy of your mail - if my server storage goes completely south, I still have copies of lots of vital info on my workstation; the ability to use mail when the web server doesn't work - usually, if there's a problem with the webmail I don't know about it until someone tells me, because the SMTP still works; and as I stated above, if for some reason I can't get to the network then I can still access the information I need.
Given our reliance on email communications these days, I think it's wiser to consider webmail as an enhancement rather than a replacement. Hell - what do you do if suddenly Google goes out of the email business? Myself, I have Thunderbird set to check my Gmail account just like the others. They can quit tomorrow, & I'll just file it & use another service.
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why I prefer tabbed browsers? (Score:3, Insightful)
The taskbar is for applications. When I have 10-15 browser sessions open, very quickly I either can't quickly "tab" to my other open apps, or all of my Internet Explorer windows are lumped together into the same taskbar item (depending on my settings) defeating the purpose entirely.
Also with Firefox I can middle click a link and it opens in a new tab without focus. This means I can do a google search and middle click all of the items that appear relevant without losing my origional google search. I can do this with new windows in IE by right clicking, but this is less convienient and the new windows steals the focus. New tabs also open much quicker than new windows.
I can then run down the tabs and as I encounter sites that really weren't relevent, I can middle click the tab to close it and be done.
Not to mention that I can drag and drop tabs to reorganize them.
Re:OH BOY! (Score:1, Insightful)