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. "
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Looks out of place (Score:4, Interesting)
After using Lotus (not by choice) I have grown quite fond of tabbed emails. It can be a real convienance when you need to have several emails open and don't want new windows for each as it will get cluttery. Just like with many web pages when it was a pretabed browsing world.
Tabs... for email... hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing I would like to se (and it is prolly there, but I just haven't looked for it) is heirarchical email display. Instead of showing me messages, show me entire threads as a single entity. Also, clean it up and make it look nice. That would be a greater asset.
one use (Score:5, Interesting)
But for regular email? I don't open multiple email windows in thunderbird and never really had a desire to. So why would I need tabs?
Email tabs == good (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I've switched from Opera to Kmail for my email it's the one thing I've missed. Don't knock it until you try it. With any luck, Thunderbird tabs will be implemented as well as Opera tabs.
Extension (Score:2, Interesting)
Good idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, if you could use thunderbird to filter out a person in usenet and replies to his post without taking out the entire thread, that would be cool too.
Re:Welcome to Lotus Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just wondering when better newsgroup browsing is coming. Last time I used T-bird for newsgroups I found it just as cumbersome as OE.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Usually, it's when I'm composing a message containing a composite of information from a number of past emails. Happens most when I'm coordinating between different people.
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) so you can centralize your web-browsing experience. i.e. so browsing doesn't take up your entire taskbar and you can easily switch to your (tabbed) IM window, etc. Just like virtual desktops/workspaces. Email is on workspace 2, browsing/IM on workspace 1, music on workspace 3, work on workspace 4. (I use them in a square so email is above work, so the left column is play and the right is work.)
2) Some people consider tabs like a pile -- you go to news.google.com and you middle-click to open all of the stories you'd like to read in tabs. that way you don't have to bother with them (since a new tab loads in the background) and they are ready for you when you are finished with the first article and you close that tab.
I mix the two. I rarely have more than one browser window open, unless a second (or third) window is meant for an explicit purpose -- like if i'm researching a particular topic. And I'm glad I use firefox. I currently have about 25 tabs open. I wouldn't want to have to deal with that many windows.
And to answer one of your questions, when you hover over a tab it tells you the title of the website. This isn't needed, though, when you don't have so many that you can still read the title in the tab.
And as for a multi-billion dollar company backing it? Then I guess you never use new products from anything but the most well-established companies.
A parallel can be drawn with GNU/linux systems. When I started using linux in 1996 there were already companies supporting it. I have no doubt that as corperations adopt gecko-based solutions they will either start offering support themselves or some other kind of support structure will pop up.
I think you're thinking about free software falsely, though. I trust popular free software because I trust that there is a large enough section of the tech-proficient population that is good that I can trust them to poke through the code. The population that gets to deal with IE's code is much smaller, so the chance of there being a decently sized ethical population among them is much smaller.
Thunderbird Wishlist (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Following threads is easier (Score:2, Interesting)
Lotus Notes is hardly the model of current business applications. If you want to model a business app, clone Outlook (which doesn't feature tabs).
As with any other feature it should be selectable.
This is a double edged sword - users really don't like when the interface is inconsistent (be it jumping between machines, or accidentally toggling a setting), especially when it's accidentally toggled - you know they're trying to hit a shortcut key and hit the wrong thing, and suddenly the entire layout is screwed because they accidentally enabled/disabled something.
90% of the time when there is a "choice", the designers should have had the balls to save everyone the trouble and just picked one model. Less code, more consistency, and a committment to that decision. Not a bunch of half-hearted, poorly-implemented options to give users the impression that any failure is just that they haven't toggled all of the checkboxes properly.
Re:Following threads is easier (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree Outlook is a nice user-friendly app (and MUCH better than Notes IMO), I don't see the above statements to be all that consistant. Outlook probably has more "choices" than just about any basic app out there. Now there are certainly other apps with more, but trying to think of "generic" apps used by huge numbers of people I don't know if I can think of any others which are more customizable, have more options, etc.
Re:Looks out of place (Score:2, Interesting)
I know many people who would switch over to full mozilla if they weren't so tied down to their outlook calender...
How about some useful additions? (Score:1, Interesting)
- Which account it's checking
- How big the message download is
- (optional)How long it will take to finish downloading it?
I use Thunderbird for mail, and I can't stand the "Receiving message: 1 of 125" at the bottom not knowing what account is being checked, and whether it's going to be there a looong time.Re:OH BOY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tabbing in the Window Manager (Score:4, Interesting)
I.e. a window containing multiple tabs is logically multiple windows only one of which is visible at a time, and that are stacked on top of each other like a "deck".
Re:What is so great about tabbed browsers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OH BOY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OH BOY! (Score:3, Interesting)
- Skinnable themes: +1
- Replication: +1
- Forms: +1
- F5 = refresh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H LOG OUT: -1,000,000
----------------Total: -999,997
Nope, sorry, still sucks.
Re:OH BOY! (Score:1, Interesting)
I worked at IBM when they bought Lotus Notes. When IBM buys a company, they actually intened to use and sell its products. We were forced to use Notes. Prior to that everyone was using email throup VMS and email to another user appeared nearly instantly. As soon as someone in the company clicks send, you'd be able to see it. They dropped Notes on us and told us that we should all start using it; 4 hours before emails got through. Everyone switched back to using VMS. A month later, and several server additions later, email was nearly usable with a 2-4 minute delay and many people were still using and cc'ing their VMS email, just to be safe.
I guess the servers 8 years later should be fast enough to handle the Lotus Notes Bloat now.