New Mozilla-based Mail Client: Minotaur 294
Ant writes "Minotaur is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Phoenix rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."
Feature request (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Feature request (Score:4, Informative)
As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive? Never tried it, but it should be possible...
Re:Feature request (Score:3, Informative)
As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive?
I had something like this working for a while with Netscape 4, when I was dual-booting between Red Hat 6 and Windows 98. As long as the mail program doesn't want to do any operations that aren't supported on FAT32 (I doubt it would), everything should be fine.
One thing that may trip you up is that the mail program creates index files for each of your mail fol
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
OTOH, if it's a multiuser computer, you're not likely to dual boot Windows and Linux anyway.
Re:Feature request (Score:5, Informative)
I forgotten the command to specify directory, is there a Mozilla guru reading?
Re:Feature request (Score:2, Informative)
> reading?
I'm not a guru, but it is straightforward:
Edit -> Mail & News Account Settings -> account_name -> Server Settings -> Local directory.
I have put in a shared FAT32. Works fantastic. Once in a while I defragment the drive.
Re:Feature request (Score:3, Informative)
I've been doing exactly that for about a year now with Mozilla's current mail.
Just move the mail folders (sometimes takes a little digging to find them) over to the shared drive and change the Account settings to point to the new location. (Hint: if you can't find this setting it's at the bottom of the server settings screen) It works pretty well except for occasionally being a little slow to index folders.
Now I just wish I could figure out how to do the same thing with prefs and bookmarks.
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
Re:Feature request (Score:3, Informative)
Related Mozilla bugs include 58647 and 66259. Get a Bugzilla account and vote for these bugs, or contribute if you can.
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
You have been able to do that since netscape 4.7 or even earlier.
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
In my case, I need to keep mails for up to at least a year, which probably would fill up my IMAP account on the server pretty quickly.
The obvious solution would be using IMAP and saving important mails as text files or similar. This would otoh probably be very tedious in the long run.
My current setup is to leave mail on pop server for 14 days.
Re:Feature request (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Feature request (Score:2)
Quick and easy, and relatively small footprint and low-cpu usage...
Pisses me off (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pisses me off (Score:5, Interesting)
HTH
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Not installing mail isn't a good option for me (Score:2)
Even though I use Mozilla mail, I still would like to be able to have mailto: links open in something else.
put this in your user.js file... (Score:4, Informative)
(of course take out the space between 'mailt' and
'o' because Slashdot's lameness filter is designed to prevent information sharing among technical folks)
The user.js file in in your Mozilla profile - it there isn't one, just make a new one. user.js doesn't get whacked by upgrades.
Re:put this in your user.js file... (Score:2)
What's worse, is that after I did that, I lost my ctrl+l to get to the address line and my ctrl+f for find on page. And when Mozilla initially started up, I had to click in the address line to start typing. When I took the line out and deleted user.j
Re:put this in your user.js file... (Score:2)
Yep, knew that and Mozilla was closed when I made the changes. This is Windows XP, Notepad, and Mozilla 1.3.
Like the other poster, the change didn't show up in my about:config listing.
It's not that big a deal to me, but it would be nice. And considering how easy it is to change the default programs to handle html editing, mailto links, newsgroup links, internet calls, etc., in IE, I'm surprised it isn't easier in Mozilla. You'd think it would b
Re:put this in your user.js file... (Score:2)
There's also a general info page [mozilla.org] on customizing Mozilla.
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Have you used Phoenix? If Minotaur is half as good as that stripped-down browser is, it will soon be regarded as the best email client out there.
I just installed (yesterday, in fact) the latest Moz build specifically for the k3wl email spam filters, but am so much happier with the performance of Phoenix. Looks like I get to go back to my favorite Gecko browswer...
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
What is it? Is everyone susceptible to the power of suggestion that they think it's faster just because the webpage says so?
Re:Pisses me off (Score:3, Informative)
I've heard this complaint before and almost always it is because someone didn't read the FAQ. You must nuke your old Mozilla preferences (~/.mozilla in unix) before starting Phoenix; alternatively, you can create a new profile for Phoenix (-ProfileWizard or -ProfileManager). Phoenix will be very slow if you use a profile created by 'regular' Mozilla.
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
I don't suppose anyone has any benchmarks to prove what they are saying?
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
Re:Pisses me off (Score:2)
IMAP proxy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Allow for an IMAP/POP3 proxy to allow access to webmail accounts from inside a firewall without using ssh tunneling stuff.
Re:IMAP proxy? (Score:2)
excellent!! (Score:2, Insightful)
In fact I think it's a great idea to get away from the "kitchen sink" type of software packages and move on to more specialized programs that focus on one task and do it right!
Re:excellent!! (Score:2)
Apple Plug (Score:3, Insightful)
Wanna make a movie? iMovie
Read your mail? Mail
Chat? iChat
I like this approach a lot better than a bloated program that has 50 features I never use. When I just want to read email and look at my calendar I just open up Mail and iCal. Done simply and effectively.
Re:Apple Plug (Score:2)
Re:excellent!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:excellent!! (Score:2)
This philosophy works in some situations, but not all. A few months ago I helped my wife convert a shell script she was trying to use into Perl, and as a result it ran orders of magnitude faster. The original shell script was repeatedly reading a 1.5 GB file but my Perl program was able to read it only once.
The Mozilla/Phoenix/Minotaur
Re:excellent!! (Score:3, Funny)
gcc -O2 -Wall -Read_Email foo.cpp
yet?
Rich
Re:excellent!! (Score:3, Funny)
Emacs? You know, if people used to say "Emacs is a nice OS, but I prefer UNIX", there is a reason. :-)
GNU Emacs / XEmacs is to text editors what Mozilla is to web browsers (well, to "mere HTML renderers with some buttons attached" would be more appropriate). I'd go further and say that Mozilla is definitively the 21st century Emacs (a proof? Komodo [activestate.com]).
It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't need? Is it the developer who decide what the end-users needs are?
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:2)
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:2)
In the case of many open source projects, yes. Read esr's account of how fetchmail was created [catb.org] in catb [catb.org], and you'll see that in most open source projects, the intended target end-users are the developers.
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't about removing features. They are talking about removing those parts of the mozilla code from minotaur that it doesn't make use of at all. End users won't notice anything (except the smaller size of course). Minotaur is just a mail client. So obviously it won't need the navigator/irc etc. parts of mozilla. Besides there would be some libraries that are not used by the mailnews component. So those can go too. Get it? BTW, You can learn more about how mozilla is organized here [mozilla.org].
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:2)
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:2)
developer == end-user
Re:It's made for the users, isn't it? (Score:2)
Another wheel to re-invent? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's it?
Wouldn't it be easier to add an option to specify preferred browser into Mozilla Mail preferences? I am not ranting - everyone is free to do whatever they want - but right now, when Mozilla Mail is finally stable and packed with some really good features, and at the same time many FS/OSS projects starve from lack of developers, what is the point of writing yet another MUA?
Re:Another wheel to re-invent? (Score:2)
Legitimate question (Score:2)
From other ./ articles (Score:2)
Let me try... Perhaps E17?
Re:Another wheel to re-invent? (Score:2)
Minotaur is Mozilla Mail, just without the rest of Mozilla. And as I curently use Mozilla Mail for its spam filters, but have to use IE for work reasons, this will be something I will use.
Re:Another wheel to re-invent? (Score:2)
Because they've got an itch that they want to scratch. It's there itch. They can scratch it however they like. As soon as you put them on your payroll then you can complain about misappropriated effort. As it is, they don't work for you. Until they do, it's really rather intrusive of you to complain about what they do with their own time.
$.02
Re:Another wheel to re-invent? (Score:2)
I am not complaining, nor do I ask them to work for me, as I explicitly mentioned. I was just wondering on rationale of the fork, may I?
All we need now is some sort of news client. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, after several thousand man-hours of work, we'll finally have the feature set of mozilla available to us.... BUT IN THREE SEPARATE BINARIES.
Sweet!!!
Re:All we need now is some sort of news client. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you try out Phoenix/Galeon/etc. you'll notice they all have many features that Mozilla doesn't, and have all chosen to specialise in oe particular area. GNOME users will love Galeon, users of slow machines will love Phoenix, and so on.
That there is now a fork in the mail project is a testament to the great success of Mozilla. It will have really suceeded when we have several different mail clients, web browsers, chat clients and web designers all branched from Mozilla, all filling a different niche, all compatable with one another, and all sharing excellent new features and ideas.
Re:All we need now is some sort of news client. (Score:2)
No, not just slow machines... aside from being lightweight, Phoenix has features that Moz just don't have, such as user-customizable toolbars, the ability to open a whole folder of bookmarks in separate tabs in one click, a cleaner user interface, and pop-ups disabled by default
Re:All we need now is some sort of news client. (Score:2)
Perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying, but Mozilla does, in fact, have this feature. I use it every day to open all of the web comics I want to read.
One thing I don't like about Mozilla's tabbed browsing is that there is only one close widget. I prefer Galeon's take, where I can have a close widget on each tab.
With pop-up blocking, Mozilla 1.3 grants finer control, with th
Re:All we need now is some sort of news client. (Score:2)
The last Moz build I used that wasn't phoenix was 1.2a... so I may be a bit behind here...
One thing I don't like about Mozilla's tabbed browsing is that there is only one close widget. I prefer Galeon's take, where I can have a close widget on each tab.
I both agree and disagree...I like having individual close widgets on each tab because it's conv
Stability (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stability (Score:2)
Especially when you launch the lean browser (Phoenix) *and* the lean e-mail client (Minotaur) the savings in RAM and startup time compared to the great big beast Mozilla won't be that big. (I haven't verified my claims so far).
Bye egghat.
I don't know (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I did just switch to Phoenix from Mozilla because I like its interface slightly better. It may load a little faster too, but with my main client machines all being 1.1ghz or better and the same browser instance being open most of the day I don't really notice.
I don't use Mozilla's mail client, so I suppose there could be features missing or a stand-aloneness that some people want. In that case, go for it.
I just hope this doesn't take someone's time who would be working on GNOME, KDE, OO.org, or a decent replacement for Macromedia Freehand/Adobe Illustrator
Re:I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
"I just hope this doesn't take someone's time who would be working on GNOME, KDE, OO.org, or a decent replacement for Macromedia Freehand/Adobe Illustrator
Remember that's not the way open source works and is actually a huge stereotype. People work on what interests them and just because they work on project doesn't mean they'd be interested in working on another project even if it were similar. Open Source developers are not just one big pool of resources that
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
Good point, unless you want to pay me. If you want to pay me, I'd be happy to hack on OO or a Freehand/Illustrator clone for you. I k
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
Wish I could say that.
if you don't like Mozilla's bundled client
What if you just don't want to use Mozilla, but would like to use the mail part? Oh... you can't...
Windows users have The Bat!, Eudora, and Mulberry
All of which are commercial and/or ad-ware, or (in the case of Eudora) repeatedly associated with allegations of malware.
I considered using The Bat! at one point... even downloaded it to try. And then my computer's
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
None of which are free, with the exception of Outlook Express. (If you want Eudora's free version, you have the choice of limited features or banner ads.)
As someone who switched to Phoenix because I couldn't stand Mozilla's bloat, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Minotaur has to offer.
It would be nice to have The Bat! under Linux (Score:2)
Phillip.
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
Let me guess... you use... Mulberry?
Why? Oh Why? WHY?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!
I used to work for Netscape and I know what I am talking about. Mozilla was designed as a modular app. That's what XPCOM in there is for. So the right thing to do when you start bloating is refactor: take a big component, break it into nice modules and then let the USER decide which modules to install on his machine.
This way, it's like the user composes the app out of modules, so he can install there a Mozilla, a Phoenix or a Minotaur.
I use Mozilla Mail and I know COUNTLESS bugs and problems that need to be fixed and addressed. The only reason they are not is that there are not enough engineers to do that work.
So why is engineering effort spent on these spin-offs instead of spending it on the mail product and providing the needed requirements THERE?
Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?
That was always the problem at Netscape/Mozilla: EGO. Look at JWZ, RickG, KippH, Adreesen. Big mouths, big plans, but falling short on delivery.
I don't even KNOW who works in the IE dept. at MS and they kicked Netscape's ass all the way to AOL.
Shame on you!
Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.
Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?! (Score:2)
I think you've just destroyed all your own arguments. Phoenix rocks.
Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?
wtf? You can't *make* someone work on Mozilla if they don't want to. And if he thinks he has a good idea, and actually has the time and energy to
Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?! (Score:4, Informative)
Not affiliated with this project at all, but I thought I might comment on this. I compiled mozilla 1.3 on a fairly well spec-ed, 2-way SPARC/Solaris box a few weeks ago. Once the source was unpacked and about 4 hours later the source had almost finished building - it ran out of disk space. I was surprised.
At that point 'du' reported ~/mozilla (containing source and object files) as 1.6GB. Now that's bloated.
Personally, I don't like having the mail client integrated with the browser. I don't want HTML mail support (reading or composition). I certainly don't want any scripting support. I don't want a newsreader built in (I use pan/nget for that). I want smarter filtering capabilities, or no filtering capabilities and lastly I don't want any of the offline reading support. I'm not even sure I want the address book.
I'm all for splitting the applications. I seldom use the composer (but it's nice to have there, when I need it). The IRC client is installed but has never been used, it's just wasting space. I usually run the mail client on one machine and the browser on another so that they're on different screens.
Mozilla mail is the certainly the nicest IMAP client that I've come across, but I want the smallest possible RSS (especially on SunRay servers). A fresh start is often a good way of clearing out the cruft in a application. It's now at the point where it's almost unusable on a 5 year old machine.
Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?! (Score:2)
Except that currently it is not possible to install Mozilla without including the web browser component. This is theoretically supposed to be possible, so inability to do so is considered a bug, but not a high priority one. Hopefully Minotaur will contribute their fixes back to the Mozilla tree, and will result in the main Mozilla project offering the same capability a
what about webdav (Score:2)
Re:what about webdav (Score:2)
2nd rule of software (Score:4, Funny)
I guess we need a second rule: "Once software reads email, it must be split into pieces."
I'm waiting for a third rule: "Each piece must then evolve until it can read email again."
It's the circle of life.
Re:2nd rule of software (Score:2)
Great! (Score:2)
I've been wanting a standalone Mozilla-based mail client for a while. Kudos to the Minotaur team! I'm looking forward to trying it out. =)
Mozilla isn't that bad! (Score:2)
The tabbed browsing is excellent. The fact that from Mozilla Mail I can control-click on a link and it shows up in a new tab without messing up my previously viewed pages is worth the (low) price of admission.
The email spam filters are working well, at least till I get around to a better server-based solution.
I just started looking at the Mozilla calendar.
Huh? (Score:2)
What next Elfix as an OS?
The developers sound more like D&D players every new release.
name change (Score:2)
So it looks as if they're changing the name. Sort of.
Speaking of which, Phoenix still has no new name.
Perhaps then... (Score:2)
So this client is "Thunderbird"? (Score:2)
March 18th
Renamed the executable to thunderbird instead of minotaur. We may switch this back though.
Is this yet another trademark problem, as with Phoenix?
Argh... links! (Score:2, Interesting)
This has been my major gripe with much of the KDE tools (and pretty much any integrated system which simply assumes you must be running all of their tools because you happen to like one). I run phoenix, and getting knewsticker or kmerlin (msn client) to open links in phoenix is pretty much impossible (yes yes.. I know.. use the source luke and all that, but thats time I dont have at the moment - too busy p
Hopefully non-sucking IMAP support (Score:3, Informative)
Here's something to read for IMAP client authors: IMAP Client Coding HOWTO [procontrol.fi].
Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur? (Score:2)
The XUL cross-platform effort is part of that development and Mozilla makes for excellent proof that it works. But that is not saying the same thing at all.
Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur? (Score:2)
Bullshit.. But a really creative reintrepetation.
This comparison is flawed because Phoenix or Minotaur aren't successors to Mozilla or Mozilla Mail.
Re:Chrome (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact what I would like to see is a mailer split into a CLI backend and a GUI frontend. The CLI backend should do the actual sending and retrieval of messages as well as managing folders. The GUI should be just that, it shouldn't store any data on its own, and all communication it should ever do would be with the backend and the Xserver. Configuration should to as large an extent as possible be stored by the backend, but a few options need to be s
Re:Chrome (Score:2)
I can think of a couple sort-of-good reasons for a mail client to take your approach, but for me a
Re:Chrome (Score:2)
Isn't that exactly what IMAP is for?
Re:Chrome (Score:2)
Re:Togetherness. (Score:2)
I think they're suggesting that even if you have, say, Phoenix and Minotaur running at the same time, it would still outperform Mozilla.
Re:Status? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Skins (Score:2)
Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL (Score:2)
IMO far better than Outlook (Express), Netscape and Evolution put together
But not very graphical I guess
Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL (Score:2)
Can't you?
Re:What's the big deal with IMAP (Score:4, Informative)
As others have stated already... IMAP is a much better cross platform solution, and with procmail and fetchmail, it gets even better.
Not to be redundant but I'll give you more advantages.
You can use ANY IMAP capable client on any platform with out having to import, export, or convert any messages. Pine, Evolution, Mahogany, Outlook Express, Pegasus, Opera 7.x, Mozilla, Web based like IMP, SquirrelMail and many others.
The mail, all folders, and all attachments are easy to backup and restore by tar.gz'ing your mail directory.
You can access all of your mail from ANY internet computer (depending on your home network setup) with any IMAP client. This can be secured via SSH or SSL.
Works seemlessly with procmail to direct your mail into specific folders and for spam filtering. These filters are not client specific so there is no need to create rules for every mail client that you plan on using.
Fetchmail to get your mail from other IMAP and POP (and others) servers (can use SSH and SSL also).
Anyone that has a cross platform need, does not want to constantly import and convert mail formats, and only wants to deal with filters one time should be using this trio.
Search Google for any of these for mounds of configuration and installation tips.