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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 Released 401

Posted by timothy from the ground-up dept.
An anonymous reader submits: The Mozilla Thunderbird (stand-alone Mozilla based mail/news reader) developers have just released their first milestone: version 0.1, available for Mac Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The v0.1 release notes highlight some of the bigger features like customizable toolbars, UI extensions, contact manager sidebar, simplified UI, 3-pane mail window option, and spell checker. Also of note, Mozilla's usage share has risen from 1.2% in February to 1.6% now, a 33% improvement!"
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Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 Released More

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 Released

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  • I much prefer Wild Irish Rose to Thunderbird. Much more...immersive.


    blakespot

  • I have the pleasure to use this. (Score:5, Informative)

    by HyperColor Underware ( 628462 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:36PM (#6555918)
    Yes, it is a 0.1 release for a reason. It crashed on my Windows system only once or twice, and that was probably due to some misconfiguring on my part. It was easy to configure, unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"ocity (a problem plauging mozilla).

    Linux distribution is quite good, it won't take over from Evolution just yet.

    It's a good start. Remember, people, before you start posting whines about things not working, remember, this is a 0.1 release.
    • Well, I simply dislike Evolution. There are a few features Thunderbird has and Evolution does not (delete messages from remote mailbox when message is moved from inbox, junk mail controls, etc.), and I'm not willing to give up those features. And 'mozilla -mail' is not a good option since I prefer Galeon to Mozilla for browsing.

    • Re:I have the pleasure to use this. (Score:5, Funny)

      by mcp33p4n75 ( 684632 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:49PM (#6556012)
      unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"ocity (a problem plauging mozilla).

      Hmm... I wonder why that could be...

    • It was easy to configure, unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"ocity (a problem plauging mozilla).

      Assuming you're referring to the default theme looking like Netscape 4... you do realize you can easily change the theme, right?

      Or, if you're referring to Mozilla looking like more recent versions of Netscape (which has been killed now anyway..), well, uh, they're based on Mozilla, so... do you want Mozilla to try to avoid looking like itself?

    • > -- unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"

      The problem is it feels like Mozilla. Monolithic, megalithic, slow and hard on the resources. Of course, it looks crappy, too.

      I so wish I could support some open-source-collaborative browser, but Mozilla and its spinoffs (like Firebird) seem to be the only alternative -and I don't happen to agree at all with the direction the browser development is going. Seemingly they (and most of the /.ing folks) are content with that direction, however,
      • It doesn't seem like there's another game in town for Windows. KHTML is limited to *nix and OS X (AFAIK), and I don't know of any open source HTML rendering engines other than Gecko and KHTML.

        Of course, it looks crappy, too.

        I believe this is a moot point. The default theme is horrid, I agree, but there are a variety of themes to choose from at http://themes.mozdev.org [mozdev.org]. <personal_preference>Orbit 3+1 rules!</personal_preference>. And I don't notice Mozilla's speed problems, but I have a top-

      • I so wish I could support some open-source-collaborative browser, but Mozilla and its spinoffs (like Firebird) seem to be the only alternative -and I don't happen to agree at all with the direction the browser development is going.

        Out of curiosity, what direction would you like them to go in? You praised Opera for being small and fast. The Mozilla project is trying to make Firebird small and fast, just a browser. It seems like they are taking it in the direction you want.

      • I truly don't understand everyone's fasincation with opera. I mean, its a good browser, I would use it over IE any day, but it is not super fast and bloat free. Mozilla feels much faster to me. When I open up a page that is stored on my local hard drive, in Moz I can't even see any evidence of load time. Whereas in Opera, it will actually take a second to load. No that that is a scientific study or anything, but Moz feels faster to me.

        Also, Moz is so much more standards compliant. If you've ever tried mak

      • I'd be interested in knowing if there're any more or less mature open-sourced alternatives for me out there -heck, if need be, I can even put in some work on it :P

        Hmmm, well, there's always Dillo [dillo.org] if you're after lean, clean and fast. But Dillo doesn't yet have https support and - while probably at least 95% functional for everyday use - the rendering engine does have difficulties with complex sites. But the browser is ultra-tiny and rocket-fast - oh, and from what they say on the website, it sounds like

    • The problem is that XUL crap -- ditch the "eXtensible User Interface Language" or whatever and just code something that's quick. I want my mail client to be lightweight and fast, and able to start within 3 or 4 seconds. This is why I used Outlook Express for years before I switched to Thunderbird because of all of Outlook Express's security vulnerabilities.
      • The problem is that XUL crap -- ditch the "eXtensible User Interface Language" or whatever and just code something that's quick.

        I disagree, XUL is quite fast. Maybe not as fast as assembler, but it's always a trade-off between development time and execution speed. From what I understand of XUL, it provides a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to develop applications, while at the same time not making everything outrageously slow (like java or something).

        The reason you think it's slow is because o

      • Re:I have the pleasure to use this. (Score:5, Informative)

        by jilles ( 20976 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:21AM (#6557340) Homepage
        Thunderbird fullfills your requirements on my PC. It typically starts in about 3 to 4 seconds. This is something I don't have to do very often because I just keep it running all the time. Memory usage on windows currently is about 14 MB (It's been running all morning). I've observed that memory usage also depends on the size of the mailfolder you are currently looking at. If you open a large folder the associated index is loaded and that obviously takes some time. However, both loading and opening large folders is typically faster on my machine than similar actions in Outlook XP (which was my mail client until about 2 months ago).

        I've so far not experienced a thunderbird crash even though I've been using nightlies until I installed 0.1 this morning.

        XUL performs quite well on windows XP and it picks up system colors etc. The only annoying thing is that the Qute theme is a work in progress which means some of the icons are the ugly old netscape icons.

  • Extensions (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jedbro ( 27646 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:36PM (#6555922) Homepage Journal
    Make sure you get your favorite features from the extensions [mozdev.org] ;)

    Extensions:
    http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
    h ttp://texturizer.net/thunderbird/extensions.html

    • Re:Extensions (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 )
      This is one part where I don't agree with Thunderbird. It's my understanding that all its ever going to be by default is a basic mail/news client. Well IMO there are better mail clients and certainly MUCH better news clients out there. I think the route of adding more functionality from the start is the way to go. Simply put the world myself included needs things like Calendaring and complete palm syncing from the start. On linux Evolution is better and on Windows of course Outlook has everything you would

  • Mac Linux? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:37PM (#6555927)
    ...available for Mac Linux, Mac OSX and Windows.

    Mac Linux? That's a gnu one.

    (bad-dump-ching!)

  • Newsreader? Only one test... (Score:3, Funny)

    by maeka ( 518272 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:38PM (#6555942) Journal
    Is it any good at retrieving porn binaries?

  • Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:40PM (#6555944)
    MozillaZine Thunderbird Forums [mozillazine.org]
    FAQ and tips at Texturizer [texturizer.net]

  • Will it import my Mozilla Mail and settings? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:40PM (#6555945)
    But will I be able too painlessly move my email from Moz over? I've got two years of mail in my .mozilla folder and I don't intend to hack together some sick bastardized transfer.
    • wow. 'too' I thought I'd never make that mistake. Please beat me with a two-foot double-header for that.
    • you may not be able to, but every since my webhost got it I've been enjoying the wonders of IMAP. with 250 megs webspace, and only 1/3 of that used, i have plenty of space for mail.

    • Re:Will it import my Mozilla Mail and settings? (Score:5, Informative)

      by CyberSlugGump ( 609485 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:50PM (#6556025)
      Look at How do I migrate my Mozilla mail and settings to Thunderbird [texturizer.net]

      FWIW, I've been runing Mozilla Mail 1.3 and Thunderbird side by side (using the same profile/email stores) and no problems.

    • Then don't do that... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pac ( 9516 ) <paulo...candido@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:01PM (#6556067)
      I've got two years of mail in my .mozilla folder and I don't intend to hack together some sick bastardized transfer.

      A version 0.1 is not something you trust valuable data with. Never. If you really want to test it, backup you email and put it safely away, preferably in another non-connected physical machine where the new software can't have a chance to find it. Read again the version number: 0.1. Even running smothly this is the sort of version that eats your real mail, misfilters all the spam and trash your disk on the side.

      • Re:Then don't do that... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ed_Moyse ( 171820 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:51AM (#6557427) Homepage
        ... but of course that depends on coders to be consistent with their numbering, which they aren't: one person's 0.1 could be anothr persons 5.2! Bear in mind that this is based on established, well-tested mozilla code. By all means back up your mail, but 0.1 does NOT imply that it's going to eat your mail, trash your disk or anything like that!

    • Re:Will it import my Mozilla Mail and settings? (Score:5, Informative)

      by andyed ( 693269 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:11PM (#6556110) Homepage
      It is possible to hack your profile directories and use your Mozilla Mail data. I just recreated the accounts and pointed Mozilla Mail to the t-bird profile folders in mail prefs. That way, I can use MozMail or T-bird -- primarily using T-bird when I'm hacking Mozilla and need to restart often.

      On other imports, I successfully imported 500mb of Outlook data with no problem. Easy to share the data between t-bird and mozmail too.

      As to the .1 issue, the core code here is based upon Mozilla 1.5-ish, so the datasource functions for mail are well tested, the UI not so much.
    • But will I be able too painlessly move my email from Moz over? I've got two years of mail in my .mozilla folder and I don't intend to hack together some sick bastardized transfer.

      can we have a resounding "Hell yeah?"

      To test out Thunderbird, I moved my mail foders to a FAT32 data drive a few days ago, and told Thunderbird and Mozilla to both look at the same place. The auto-filters I use were just a bit off, but the folders themselves were all there.

      You don't need to hack anything--it's a preference in
  • I still use Microsoft Entourage in Mac OS X.

    My first real e-mail client was a little doodad written in HyperCard, and on my own machine, was Netscape 2.0 on an old Duo 270c. I used Netscape 3.0 when I had to, and then started using Outlook Express when Netscape 4.0 Standalone was introduced.

    Since I moved to Outlook Express, I have tried many e-mail clients including newer versions of Netscape, Mozilla, and even Apple's Mail.app, but the utility of OE/Entourage has yet to be beat in my eyes. It is a pret
    • Dispite using mostly X11 based desktops (SGIs, Suns, x86 Linux) I do really like the look and feel of Microsoft Entourage. It does way more than Outlook Express, but doesn't need to rely on an Exchange server.

      Microsoft has recently dropped the price for standalone Entourage to $99, and I think they have an Entourage/Word bundle for $190. (It's still probably a better deal to make use of the Office OEM bundle when buying a new Mac from a reseller).
      http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/entouragex/ e ntourag [microsoft.com]
  • Just as the stand-alone browser/mail/composer/etc components are supported even though Mozilla is still a monolithic app, will the user still have the choice of a monolithic app when Mozilla becomes just a collection of software?

    The Moz guys see splitting up as an unquestionable Good Thing, but they don't seem to realize that some people like Mozilla as it is.

  • Good but still needs work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by archen ( 447353 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:44PM (#6555971)
    Is there any news on the PGP/GPG integration? I was reading enigmail documentation the other night and there was some talk about encryption going in all the way and not just as an extension. Enigmail goes a long way in making that easier but it's still way beyond most people.

    • Re:Good but still needs work (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Phantasmo ( 586700 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:00PM (#6556363)
      PGP/GPG requires some knowledge of public-key cryptography (and computers) to be effective - that is, we don't want to saturate the userbase with newbies who don't bother to check fingerprints before signing, choose crummy passwords (instead of passphrases [diceware.com]), etc. If you understand how to properly use a system such as PGP then installing a plugin shouldn't be out of your reach.

      You get to the point where you want to worry about making smarter users rather than smarter software. It should be beyond most people.

      • Re:Good but still needs work (Score:5, Interesting)

        by realdpk ( 116490 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:13PM (#6556441) Homepage Journal
        As long as it is easy for an end-user to selectively remove trust, I don't see a problem with incorporating easy-to-use crypto for newbies.

        If every one of my personal contacts had PGP/GPG easily available on their clients, spam would no longer be an issue to me, because I could just refuse unsigned mail, and then mail not on my allowed-keys list.

  • An Introduction to Thunderbird (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:48PM (#6555997) Homepage Journal
    Nidelven IT just put up a new article called An Introduction to Thunderbird [linuxtoday.com]. Looks pretty solid.

    CB
  • Eh? What's that supposed to mean? A 33% percent improvement where? And yes, I did RTFA, but I didn't see any mention of it.

  • Also in the news (Score:5, Informative)

    by MicroBerto ( 91055 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:50PM (#6556027)
    Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 has been released [mozilla.org]

    I don't think it's an official milestone, perhaps more of a release candidate, but test it out for the team anyway!

  • SGI IRIX builds? (Score:3, Informative)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:55PM (#6556041) Homepage
    Does anyone have a pointer to a binary for Silicon Graphics IRIX?

    BTW, I see that SGI has posted an IRIX version of Mozilla 1.4 in both tarball and inst/swmgr native tardist installable format:
    ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/mozilla/downlo ad/irix/1 .4/
    • Chances are, you'll have to build it yourself. Check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/build. html for instructions, and then don't forget to make your build available for others!

      BTW, to the person who modded the parent comment down, you're a dumbass. That wasn't offtopic.

  • Thunderbird and Firebird (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cavemanf16 ( 303184 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:57PM (#6556051) Homepage Journal
    While Thunderbird does have a few quirks to work out, it is pretty sharp, and I can tell you that it really rocks as a mail client! I like it's look & feel better than the standard mozilla mail client in fact. I've set it up to work with Fastmail fairly easily, and it does a great job of syncing up to my IMAP account. Better than Mozilla Mail from what I remember.

    I'm also writing this on Mozilla Firebird which is a sleek and fast browser for Windows and Linux. I really don't use IE anymore except to access some corporate reporting type websites at work and to access all those lame webpages on the web that are designed for IE lusers instead of the entire web.

    As soon as the Mozilla team builds a better OS/UI for Linux or Windows, I'll be switching my gaming computer over completely!
    • While ThunderBird is ineed impressive it is unusable for users that have a bidirectional locale (Arabic, Hebrew, ...). There are many long and outstanding bidi bugs that have been left open since the begining of the Mozilla mail/news client.
      As a result, Mozilla cannot be used by newbies that need bidi, only by experts (such as myself!), but even some of them (for example Me!) have switched back to one of the MS clients since they have flawless bidi support.

  • Real editor support? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vanyel ( 28049 ) * on Monday July 28, 2003 @09:59PM (#6556058) Journal
    I actually like the mozilla/thunderbird mail user interface, and it would be nice to view attachments directly, but I still use mutt in a terminal window because I hate editing with a mouse. Are there any GUI mailers that support vi (or, heaven forbid ;-) emacs --- ok, I'm sure emacs *is* a gui mailer, it's everything else ;-) so never mind that...)? It looks like there is a gpg plugin for M/T, so the editor is the only thing holding me back...

  • I poked around with it on Mac OS X.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dochood ( 614876 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:00PM (#6556062)
    .... and I liked the look of it, the features (or the future features... didn't test all the buttons yet), and the spam filtering...

    The one thing I don't like about it and Mozilla Mail is that you get one "From" address for each account. In Mail.app, I separate mail addresses with commas, and I get a drop-down to choose from.

    If anyone knows how to do this in Mozilla and/or Thunderbird, please let me know. I like Mail.app, but Mozilla Mail seemed faster, and Thunderbird seemed even better.

    dochood
  • After hitting an ATM earlier today the amount of money in my pocket went from $1 to $40, a 4000% improvement! Remember the old adage, "lies, damn lies, and statistics." besides, IE currently possesses a market share of about 95% (from the register earlier today, if I am not mistaken). It isn't quite time to break out the champagne for Thunderbird's usage. I want to see IE get beaten around as much as the next guy (for totally different reasons than most slashdot readers, mind you), but this doesn't count qu

    • Re:in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:32PM (#6556236)
      After hitting an ATM earlier today the amount of money in my pocket went from $1 to $40, a 4000% improvement! I'm amazed you managed to get $39 out of an ATM.

    • "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

      That adage is totally irrelevant here, because no data is being hidden, and there is no handwaving to distract from the real numbers: they are given up front. No one is claiming they are poised to take over the market over the next year, or anything stupid like that. It's just a little pat on the back, that says "hey, word is spreading that our product is in fact getting better, and more people like it". Kudos to them.

      Save your adages and sarcasm for statments like "

  • Excellent! (Score:3, Informative)

    by mixy1plik ( 113553 ) <mhunt.ecin@net> on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:02PM (#6556068)
    I've been using Thunderbird as my primary PC mail client at home since the first nightly build. Aside from a few small issues at first, I haven't had any problems for a while. It's the nicest looking alternative that I've found. Eudora has a nasty interface, and the MS stuff is well, just that. It's nice to have a decent alternative and I highly recommend it.

  • Best IMAP support on windows bar none (Score:5, Informative)

    by batkiwi ( 137781 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:04PM (#6556079)
    This thing has the best IMAP support for windows of any mail client.

    -no "phantom" messages like OE (my previous favourite) gets
    -ssl support
    -automagic configuration of namespaces (something most imap clients don't do even though it's in the RFC)
    -conditional subfolder checking for "new" in case you have server side filtering
    -"delete", "mark deleted", and "move to trash" support, instead of the simple "mark deleted" most imap clients have
    -50% more pie

    • Re:Best IMAP support on windows bar none (Score:5, Informative)

      by hysterion ( 231229 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:54PM (#6556342) Homepage
      his thing has the best IMAP support for windows of any mail client.
      Amen, and I would guess it's due in no small part to the presence of (IMAP4 designer) jgmyers [netscape.com] among the developers. (I should know, he personally fixed a bug I filed. Thanks John. And THANKS to all the Netscape folks who -- from where I sit -- generally did a huge part of the work.)

      Howawah, IMAP still has a problem I find galling. The whole point is that you can check it from anywhere using all kinds of clients, right? The problem is with those (unspec-ed?) areas that each client finds fit to implement differently. So where Mozilla makes me a Trash folder, Mail.app makes Deleted Messages, SquirrelMail makes an INBOX.Trash, etc., ad nauseam. All on first connection before you even get a chance to configure them. And so the family complains about "all that junk in my profile".

      (BTW I could swear I once saw a pref to change that Trash name in either Mozilla or Mail.app, which I can't find anymore. Anyone remember if/where that exists?)

  • Been using Tbird since April or May (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NeoSkandranon ( 515696 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:04PM (#6556083)
    Finally the spam i get got too much for me, and i switched over to Tbird due to its filtering system. Love it. Never went back to Outlook, 'cept to export my mail and address book.

    Only ONE complaint about Tbird, aside from some minor cosmetic work--at this point in time it requires a third party app to check any sort of webmail--yahoo, netscape, Hotmail/MSN, etc. This IMHO is a BIG setback, as programs like hotmailpopper et. al. don't cut the mustard (seemingly incapable even of marking messages read once TB gets them, deleting msg's as they're deleted from TB's inbox, etc)
    Make Thunderbird work with hotmail and it will look alot more appealing to alot of people
    • Hotmail uses a proprietary (extended, corrupted, whatever) IMAP protocol. Outlook Express is able to access Hotmail because it is privy to the extensions. To my knowledge, no other email client can do so. I'm guessing MS is either not willing to license the protocol, or is charging too much for it. Netscape, btw, uses a similar method to access AOL.

      IMO, email clients have no business parsing web pages, even webmail sites. Email clients rely on stable, published standards in order to operate reliably. Websi

  • 33% usage increase: Mozilla just turned some heads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Burz ( 138833 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:08PM (#6556095) Homepage Journal
    Now they need to figure out why...

    My guess is that people are using Mozilla to get a handle on pop-ups.
    • It's probably just people finaly upgrading from Netscape Communicator....

    • Saying that there's a 33% increase from 1.2% to 1.6% is not sound. Maybe the numbers 1.2% and 1.6% are the results of rounding 1.2499% and 1.5500%, respectively. Whoops, now it's only a 24% increase.

      A more correct statement would have been that the increase is between 24% and 43% - that's really everything which can be derived from the given numbers. Remember, numbers without error/uncertainty estimates are almost always useless.

  • Pretty solid already (Score:5, Informative)

    by s0meguy ( 265470 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:09PM (#6556102)
    I've been using Thunderbird on Windows now for about 3 weeks and I haven't had a single problem. I much prefer it to Eudora, my previous email client.

    By the way, something useful for non-US English users that took me a while to figure out: Thunderbird uses MySpell dictionaries which can be downloaded here [openoffice.org].

    And lots more tips for Thunderbird here [texturizer.net].

  • Does it have "safe preview"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:10PM (#6556107) Homepage
    One of my favorite features in Evolution is the safe preview: when you look at an email message, it renders the message in all ways that do not involve hitting a server. So an HTML message with bold, italics, colors, pictures, etc. will display correctly... except for anything that would touch a server.

    Why is this important? Because spammers make special URLs that encode your email address, and their servers use the special URLs to track you. If you even preview the message in Outlook, or in Mozilla Mail, their server gets a hit and they know your email address is a good one.

    There is a command on a menu, "Load Images", that will go ahead and put hits on servers and render the message completely. You can use this for email from sources you trust. (It ought to be a toolbar button, but it isn't yet in Evolution.)

    If Thunderbird doesn't already have this, I ought to file a bug.

    steveha

    • Yes it does. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jedbro ( 27646 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:45PM (#6556303) Homepage Journal
      "In addition to automatically detecting junk mail using the same method as Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird also sanitizes HTML in mail marked as junk in order to better protect your privacy and give peace of mind when viewing a message identified as junk.".

      In other words YES, it does. As long as the message is marked as JUNK MAIL, it will stripp it of anything that could be dangerous for viewing, if it is not dangerous, just mark as "not junk" ;)

      • Not enough. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dog and Pony ( 521538 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:02PM (#6556376)
        Although the junk filter is pretty good, it still misses one or two junk mails a day, mainly because the spammers are getting really inventive and varied. And although in most cases you can just look at the subject/sender and mark it as junk anyways (and be right), it is not always the case.

        And for the more normal non-geek user, it should really help them more with this.

        I'm well aware of the odds (slim) that any non-geek uses Phoenix or Mozilla Mail for that matter at this point, but no harm in looking forward is there? :)

        I think it should sanitize *all* mails not explicitly marked as safe - just make a little blurb (like the "Mozilla thinks this mail is junk" notification) that "This message tries to talk to a server. Do you want to allow that?" with a link to an explanation in the help files or something like that.

        One thing that really could go a long way would simply to disallow all automatic loading of any url containing parameters. Of course, that could be bypassed by using parameters in the PATH instead, but it would probably weed out lots of these cases. What legitimate email would need to send parameters in an image url?

    • Opera's M2 Does It Too (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Opera's M2 Email Client http://www.opera.com/products/user/m2/ [opera.com] Also has a filtering agent that does not contact outside servers so your privacy remains intact. It should also be mentioned that M2 is not an ordinary email client, it uses access-points instead of folders. Takes some getting used to but it is really useful and cool once you know how to use it.
  • Flame me if you want, but the Thunderbird team (who are doing a great job IMHO) should take a look at the outlook 2003 beta. There are two killer additions to the client:

    1. Three vertical panes. 1 thin pane for folders. 1 pane for folder contents and 1 pane for displaying the selected mail. It is a MUCH more efficient use of space.

    2. Follow up flags. Flag an email and file it away to reduce your inbox clutter. You can keep track of flagged mails in the "Flagged mail" folder (durr!). Use different coloured

    • Re:Check out Outlook 2003 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1. Three vertical panes. 1 thin pane for folders. 1 pane for folder contents and 1 pane for displaying the selected mail. It is a MUCH more efficient use of space.

      Thunderbird already has it. Even mentioned in the summary. I don't like it myself, but whatever...

    • Re:Check out Outlook 2003 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fruey ( 563914 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @02:28AM (#6557181) Homepage Journal
      It's really sad, when Outlook users talk of simple features that real mail clients have had for years as "killer additions"

      I'm not really flaming you, it's just a despairing situation. I use mutt, and I find it very difficult to use anything else. mutt is text only, but of course it can launch external viewers for graphics. It's super fast, and keyboard controlled. If you're handling large amounts of mail you can't use Outlook, because you're too reliant on the mouse. The rules are fine in Outlook but they're just not configurable enough to power sort email. Flagging has been available since Outlook Express 4, and you could easily sort by flag, shift-click to select, and move the messages. Now, this can be done automatically with some "flagged mail" folder. How is this killer?

      I could do T (tag pattern) then write a regexp based on from, to, subject, body, etc, then have all matching messages tagged in a flash. Or I can tag some messages manually. Then ; to action the tagged messages, and in a flash copy them to another folder, forward them all to someone, reply to them all as one neatly formatted message, and so on. This is power email, and it's not in a GUI, and it doesn't take up massive resources. It is compatible with several mailbox formats, IMAP and POP. It can even write to several mailbox formats, it doesn't have an import/export hell.

      Most corporate email I see is a complete mess thanks to Outlook. Notwithstanding all those stupid disclaimer signatures that aren't even line-wrapped properly and all that. OH, and don't even get me started on MS-TNEF and winmail.dat attachments which I still get from the occasional new client. Why should I run Outlook in order to receive mail from them, or why should I have to call them to change their settings, when MIME encapsulation, uuencode and base64 have been perfectly adequate for years before that client gained ground?

      Outlook has a lot to do with this chaos, because it's such a prevailing piece of software... but I wouldn't call it a prevailing standard. The standard was set by PC-Pine (at least in my experience) on Unix/Linux around about the time of (maybe before) Win 3.11. Outlook is STILL playing catchup, some 10 years later. That's just plain crazy.

  • Hopefully one day it'll have the capability to export/backup your old email. I'm tired of finding the files manually and copying them, then reinserting them when I upgrade. Not having that capability is pretty amateurish.

  • Lies, damn lies and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JTunny ( 653851 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:28PM (#6556209) Homepage
    Also of note, Mozilla's usage share has risen from 1.2% in February to 1.6% now, a 33% improvement!
    Those stats are lacking/misleading.

    In the same period Netscape has lost more users than Mozilla has gained.

    It states IE6 adoption is increasing (my gran could've told you that) but fails to state the movement of MS's overall market share.

  • Assessing reported browser, but calling it usage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by afflatus_com ( 121694 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:34PM (#6556247) Homepage
    1. Microsoft IE 6.0 66.3%
    ...
    7. Opera 6.0 0.6%

    Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent for browser Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com's services by using browser Y.

    Just as an example of why these types of numbers need to be taken with more than a single grain of salt. In the example above, Opera 7.0 (and I think 6.0) defaults to reporting itself as MSIE. So unless the user cracks open the prefs and digs deep into one of the many preferences panes and flicks a switch, those visits will be taken away from the Opera totals and heaped onto the MSIE totals.

    They are most likely assessing the reported user agent string to their network of websites which may or may not be the actual browser being used.

    • Even when you tell Opera to report itself as MSIE, it includes "Opera" in the user-agent string. There is no way to specify a custom user agent string.

      This is how MSN identified Opera users to serve them a different style sheet. This is how my bank prevents me from using their online banking application.

      Mozilla, OmniWeb, and many other alternative browsers let you override the user agent string to whatever you want. Opera does not allow you this flexibility. I know this because I'm a registered Opera
  • I've tried Thunderbird (and mad dog 40/40 har har) 0.1 combined with firebird 0.6 and the first problem that I came across was enough of a show-stopper to make me switch back to the traditonal suite.

    That being the inability to right-click on a web page and have the "send page" menu option.

    I have a low-end system, but I'll make a point of finding resources to get this kind of functionality.

    Splitting the two programs up seems like a step backwards, in my opinion.

    • Re:I'd rather use the suite, thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:34PM (#6556574) Homepage
      First, if you like integration, wait a bit. The plan, according to the Mozilla roadmap, is to make things like Thunderbird functional as both a standalone as well as browser-integrated component in the form of an extension. However, it should be noted that intercommunication between standalone components *should* be doable, due to the existance of XPCOM (just expose certain Tbird functionality which Firebird can then call remotely). As such, I'd expect to see that feature eventually.

      As for the resource issue, again, just wait a bit. Once the GRE is implemented and in common use, all these components will be able to share the same runtime. As a result, the various mozilla libraries will only get loaded into memory once and then shared by all the components just like any other shared libary.

      So, no, splitting up the programs was definitely *not* a step backwards. The issues you list will be dealt with, and the result will be a far more flexible, customizable, and maintainable system. At least, IMHO. ;)

  • only 1.6%??? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doppler00 ( 534739 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @10:53PM (#6556338) Homepage Journal
    It's amazing that people would rather PAY money to purchase pop-up blocker software for IE than to use a better web browser.

    I'm trying to get my friends to switch to Mozilla but it's very difficult to convince people to try a different web browser.

  • MozWinManager? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by POds ( 241854 )
    I cant wait till theres a window manager written for Mozilla and a desktop. Mozilla has a some nice apps for it like IM clients and IRC clients, games etc.

    I know OEone (or whatver its called) exists but its mainly for redhat right? And it seems as if its mainly for the beginer. Its application focus with kidna doesnt sit well with me.

    I think once a Moz Desktop is developed we'll be set. Wont have to bugger round with other GUI's and mozilla apps will load a lot faster :).

    When thunderbird and firebird are

  • Opera's M2 (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by FsG ( 648587 )
    Before you guys get too excited, check out what Opera's Revolutionary M2 [opera.com] has to offer. While the rest of the email clients were busy copying each other, Opera has been innovating a great deal. The result? A mail client that's unlike any other, with features like a threaded view for replies (useful for mailing lists!) and automatically created views for each of your contacts (which are also added automatically by analyzing your email), each of your mailing lists, etc.

    The built-in spamfilter rocks, too, and

    • Re:Opera's M2 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nosferatu-man ( 13652 )
      It might be very nice, but it's hardly innovative (unless you're comparing it to the miserable Mozilla mailer) -- all of those features have been available for years in Gnus [gnus.org], a mail client good enough to learn Emacs for.

      'jfb

    • Re:Opera's M2 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @01:07AM (#6556954) Journal
      Having run Mozilla 1.4 for some time, I notice a few things that it offers for free:

      Threaded replies

      Highly functional spam filtering

      Automagic contact-gathering

      Automatically-created "views" for each contact? Just click "Sender," and things sort based on who sent it. Else, just enter some text into the "Subject or Sender contains" bar for some fast, arbitrary filtering. More complicated "views"? Use the "View" dropdown.

      Why would in the world would I want to pay money for this stuff?

  • So... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Monday July 28, 2003 @11:15PM (#6556464)
    ..when's mozilla.slashdot.org going up?

  • Netscape Mail is a huge pain in the ass to support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @02:54AM (#6557240)
    This only served to remind me of a call I had from a little old lady today that was using Netscape 7.1 for her e-mail.

    She'd been using the internet since the Old Days, back when Netscape was being used by the masses. The problem is that the mail client for Netscape 7 likes to use the sidebar buttons entirely too much.

    How too much? Twice, to be exact. Only twice, you ask?

    Well, twice is way too many. Because once you hide your mailbox list on the left side, and the message index pane at the top, all you see is the one message you had selected.

    Or, when you start the application, you see the web page that you put in as the start page for mail (god knows why you'd want one). So all our Little Old Lady from Silicon Valley could see was our home page. Which happened to also have a link to our webmail. Imagine her confusion when she found that she had no mail when she logged on that way. Not to mention the confusion of the level 1 techs below me, who couldn't quite decipher what the hell was going on.

    This is where the story gets interesting, and more importantly, points out some very important interface design flaws in Netscape and Mozilla.

    Those buttons to hide and unhide the left and top panes are strictly for the sort that reads Slashdot. Their purpose is not obvious. Their very existence is not obvious. And if one were to click them accidentally, it's not obvious what happened. More importantly though, is that they are fucking impossible to describe over the phone. They don't look like buttons. Hell, the border that they reside on isn't something you can describe either, especially when the border that exists around the web page being displayed is much more obvious. Personally, I'm certain that there is no real reason to use them in an e-mail program, because quite honestly, the folders list should always be visible, and the index list should likewise always be visible. If they should ever disappear, the user will invariably wonder where they went and complain to someone like me. Outlook Express at least, has menu choices to bring them back. Netscape does not.

    Netscape will never again be ready for primetime. There are two reasons for this: IE and Outlook Express comes with every computer on the planet, (or near enough to make no odds) and Netscape's/Mozilla's interface was designed by geeks, for geeks. While this makes it superior because of better features, it makes it very hard to do technical support for it over the phone. As such, people like me will continue to recommend it to customers, and will continue to get people started with it in the first place. It simply makes our jobs easier.
    • Netscape will never again be ready for primetime. There are two reasons for this: IE and Outlook Express comes with every computer on the planet, (or near enough to make no odds) and Netscape's/Mozilla's interface was designed by geeks, for geeks.

      Funny... I have switched EVERYONE at my office... both on their desks and at home to mozilla for one tiny little feature....

      Popup blocking.

      and it's spreading like wildfire... at least 10 users have came back to me for another CD copy of the installer as they

    • Re:Netscape Mail is a huge pain in the ass to supp (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GarfBond ( 565331 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @08:29AM (#6558363)
      Oh get off your high horse. As if Microsoft never came up with stupid UI/program decisions. The second I start up OE6, MSN messenger decides that it's needed, for no reason, despite it being turned off in the options dialog. How is any reasonable person supposed to know that the "contacts" bar in OE opens up MSN messenger? Certainly isn't immediately obvious (my mail program should not be opening up my IM, particularly not one I don't ever use) to the end user. This took a question to the MSN newsgroups to solve.

      And maybe in between your ranting you would've realized that Thunderbird is NOT Mozilla Mail 1.4. This program is geared for the masses, much like Firebird is supposed to be the common man's Mozilla. Maybe you would've even realized that Thunderbird fixes the very problem you're bitching about. No "my sidebar", no grippy to accidentally close the folder list with.

      There ARE tangible benefits to moving over to Thunderbird, spam filtering among them. Intangible benefits include not being reliant on Microsoft for everything.

  • spellING checker! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lazy Jones ( 8403 ) * on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @05:48AM (#6557671) Homepage Journal
    There is a difference [turoks.net], you know...

  • "Offline" Syncronization (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeage ( 119105 ) <slashdot@NOspam.mikeage.net> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @07:10AM (#6557882) Homepage
    Quick question--
    I've been using thunderbird for about two months now, and I have one feature that I sorely miss from OE. In OE, I had the machine "syncronize" each folder, so it didn't have to hit the server for each message. How can I make T-bird do the same?

  • Mozilla Usage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lysium ( 644252 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:55AM (#6559126)
    I would have to agree with the idea that Mozilla is slowly spreading. In my workplace, I now see power users installing Mozilla -- totally on their own, without any hints or encouragement from the IT geeks. It's a good sign.

    ------------

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:43AM (#6560630) Homepage
    ...a Mozilla geek got laid. This means the sex rate has increased from 0% in the last year to 1% now, an infinite improvement!

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