Thunderbird 0.9 Released

Simon (S2) writes "Thunderbird 0.9 is now available for download! New features include Saved Search Folders (aka Virtual Folders) which allow you to display messages based on previously set search criteria across multiple folders. Message Grouping allows you to organize e-mail in a folder by grouping them based on various attributes like Date, Sender, Label, etc. Thunderbird 0.9 also includes numerous bug fixes and other improvements. For more information, see the release notes. Builds can be found on the mozilla.org FTP server or in the release notes above."

Fantastic job!

[daveschroeder (516195)]

The Mozilla Foundation has been really doing a fantastic job with thinks like Mozilla, Firefox (and Camino!), Thunderbird, and the new multiplatform Sunbird calendaring client.

Kudos to the team both at the Foundation and in the open source community for turning out this first rate software!

Re:Fantastic job!

[gordgekko (574109)]

Does it integrate with Thunderbird?

I can't speak for others but I have never gotten Thunderbird to work properly with Sunbird. I have tried with the past few versions and the avialable extensions and it never goes. Pity.

Tiger Features?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

A lot of the new features sound like they are implementations of those described in the version of Apple's Mail.app that is due to ship with Tiger. I wonder if this kind of thing will dissuade companies like Apple from announcing new features so far before they are ready for release.

Re:Tiger Features?

[simcop2387 (703011)]

This has existed already in Evolution, and i wouldn't be surprised if in other mail clients also.

Re:Tiger Features?

[samael (12612)]

They're also available in other products. The Bat! has had Saved Searches for a while.

Re:Tiger Features?

[Mr Guy (547690)]

No no you silly person. If Apple has it, Apple was first. It's just the way it is, and the sooner we can all accept that, the happier we all will be. It's like Microsoft being evil, Linux being secure, and the government trying to exploit the masses. Other possible explanations are really just a waste of time once you acknowledge the truth.

Re:Tiger Features?

[the quick brown fox (681969)]

Microsoft Outlook 2003 offers them as well.

also Lotus Notes

[dominux (731134)]

the way Notes stores mail is a little different in concept to most other things, folders don't "contain" messages, messages exist in their own right in the database irrespective of what folders they might be in. It is perfectly valid for a message to exist without any folders including the message. Folders in Notes can have documents dragged into them which stores that association and you can get to the message through the folder. A saved search is what would be called a view in Notes, that is a folder which is based on a selection formula rather than manual fileing. It is perfectly valid also for one message to be shown in many many folders and views, but delete it from one it is deleted from all. Deleting a message is very different from removing it from a folder. Views and folders can also be categorised, this is basically the same thing as the group by feature. Notes views are indexed rather than calculated on the fly so I suspect they would be quicker for large mail files.

Notes of course isn't open source and you can only do limited view customisation without the design client, I do like the user interface for creating these saved searches, it is better than creating a private view in Notes.

Credit where credit is due

[jrumney (197329)]

The inspiration for this feature came from Usenet legend Kibo, who in the early 90's was grepping the Usenet spool so he could find and reply to every post that ever mentioned his name. Gnus (the Emacs newsreader) got this feature in 1995 under the name "nnkiboze" (other backends being nntp, nnmail, nnrss, nnslashdot etc).

Why is it...

[jeif1k (809151)]

Guys, this is the Mozilla section. I already deleted the Apple section from my frontpage because I'm tired of the ceaseless Apple marketing and rewriting of history by Apple fans. Making incorrect claims that open source projects are copying features from Apple, when the opposite is the case, are insulting and just make Apple look bad.

So, have the devs been listening?

[Dragoon412 (648209)]

One of the most requested features I see is the ability to minimize to the system tray. Have the devs even mentioned this being a consideration?

I use Thunderbird, and I like it, but it drives me nuts having one more thing cluttering my taskbar when all I want it open for is to let me know when mail arrives.

Here you go

[Nevenmrgan (826707)]

There is, of course, an extension that adds this functionality: http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org] Happy extending.

Re:Here you go

[gad_zuki! (70830)]

I use an app called Thundertray. Its pretty much a tray launcher and minimizer for tbird. The tray extension on the mozdev site never worked for me for some reason.

Re:Minimize to tray

[ning (763275)]

I use PowerMenu [veridicus.com]. It adds a few items to every window's title bar menu - minimize to tray, set transparency, set task priority and 'always on top'. I find it incredibly useful. hth ning

Re:So, have the devs been listening?

[Capt. Zapp (644143)]

Agreed! In the mean-time, I've been using Thundertray to launch and minimize Thunderbird from the Windows system tray. http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1063659252/1 [betanews.com]

PopTray

[tabdelgawad (590061)]

This is a great open source mail notifier [poptray.org] that will monitor as many Pop accounts as you like, at any interval you like, with preview and delete functionality while the email is still on the server. One button click will launch your favorite email client, so it's almost indistinguishable from having Thunderbird minimized to tray, and it uses less memory.

Torrents?

[Gentoo Fan (643403)]

I'd hate to assist in the clobbering of an FTP server -- I'm suprised such a popular software project (particularly one with not-so-small files) isn't using Bittorrent yet.

Don't worry

[daveschroeder (516195)]

I think Mozilla's servers can handle it just fine (they always have).

Re:Don't worry

[Rakshasa Taisab (244699)]

Bugzilla requests requires alot more processing than simple ftp. Doing db queries and generating a webpage compared to pushing a memory mapped file through the network card.

Re:Don't worry

[Kingpin (40003)]

Because Bugzilla is a clunky piece of Perl turd and the FTP/HTTP servers are not? :-)

Saved Searches sounds good but...

[samael (12612)]

I'd like to be able to tag messages with meta-data (like "To Do" or "Mum's Birthday" or "Project 257") and then be able to produce searches based on that.

Re:Saved Searches sounds good but...

[Red Alastor (742410)]

You already can, they call that labels.

Re:Saved Searches sounds good but...

[shawb (16347)]

I think what the graandparent wants is the ability to put multiple tags on an individual email. Oftentimes emails can cross over to many different topics.

What about performance and memory usage?

[kbahey (102895)]

This is not to disparage Thunderbird or anything. Thunderbird is one of two mail user agents (MUA) I use regularly, the other being plain old mutt when I am connected to the home server using ssh.

The issue with Thunderbird is not functionality, but rather bloat. It takes up a lot of memory and is slow. Compared to for example, FireFox, on the same machine.

Re:What about performance and memory usage?

[the quick brown fox (681969)]

I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare Thunderbird to a web browser. TB has a lot more data to juggle than Firefox, in general. FF just has to deal with a couple of webpages at a time, while TB has to keep giant lists of messages at the ready. Also, just in terms of raw amounts of data, your average mbox has a lot more data than your average HTML page.

I've found TB to compare favorably, performance-wise, to other clients I've tried, such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Evolution. (Although it's been a long time since I've tried Evolution.)

Bayesian Folders

[by Anonymous Coward]

I want a folder that can learn what sort of thing I want in it. Like the spam filtering, but not just junk. So I could drag credit card notices to my Bills folder a couple times and then have it just happen. When somebody smarter than me implements this, then I'll be a Thunderbird supporter.

Re:Bayesian Folders

[Man of E (531031)]

Popfile [sourceforge.net] does this, I believe. Haven't used it myself (because it only works with POP3), but some people swear by it.

Re:Bayesian Folders

[mikeboone (163222)]

Yeah, this is what's keeping me off Thunderbird. I am still using Outlook, but with the cool extension Outclass [vargonsoft.com] which is an Outlook front-end for POPFile [sourceforge.net]. It works really well. I know I could use POPFile's web interface, but it's so much nicer when it's integrated into the mail app. If Thunderbird can use Bayes for spam, open it up for other uses!

buggy?

[jstave (734089)]

I'm always a little uneasy about software that is in the pre-1.0 state. Can anyone speak to its reliablility?

Re:buggy?

[mkoenecke (249261)]

No worries; I've been using it for a couple of years now (I'm an attorney who uses it for both business and personal e-mail). I have not had even one problem with reliability or stability.

Remember, it's a fork off of the Mozilla project, which has been past 1.0 for quite some time.

I wonder.

[Moby Cock (771358)]

Does anybody know of any 'big-scale' implementation of T-Bird? I use it at home sparingly since I find I use more and more web based email and a real decent email client is just not needed. I know Outlook (and others) has countless corporate implementations, and I am wondering if T-Bird has been used similarly. If so, how does it hold up? Anybody?

Re:I wonder.

[Aliencow (653119)]

We use it on approximately 100 PCs (that's not big-scale but still)

Right now, the network is a mess (started working here about 6months ago) - but I'm currently working on making MSIs for Thunderbird so I can keep it up to date easily. Someone did the same thing with Firefox and it's great!

Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[holden caufield (111364)]

This is not a troll.

I use Outlook for my personal email, and I'm strongly considering changing my mail client. Other than the security benefits of not automatically running scripts when viewing messages, can anyone who has switched to Thunderbird tell me what other features make this client a preferred choice to Outlook?

I'll politely add that open-source isn't enough to compel me to change, nor is bayesian filtering (I already use SpamBayes).

Thanks for your help, and really, I'm not trying to fan any flames!

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[gclef (96311)]

There are a few reasons I use it for my home email:

1) Mouse gestures. I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and being able to specify common actions as a gesture (right-click & drag right to select the next unread message, for example) saves me a lot of time digging through lists like Full-Disclosure.

2) Message threading. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot to be able to group messages by thread (I think new versions of Outlook can do this, but my 2000 version can not).

3) The Baysean filtering is nice, but as you've mentioned, you already have that.

4) Themes. Yeah, it's trivial, but still...they're fun.

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[Nevenmrgan (826707)]

- It's faster than Outlook (though slower than Firefox). In the latest Outlook, message rendering can take up to a few seconds - the UI is just not very responsive.

- Leaner UI overall. I like Outlook's corporate functions, but I just don't use them that often at work, and never at home. Also, Outlook suffers from having 15 different ways to get to your folders - they keep adding new panels and icons. I don't consider this a good thing at all, since it rarely - if ever - increases my productivity or improves my user experience. It just makes me click around idly.

- Significantly faster (and better) quicksearch (there are even rumors of search-as-you-type in the future!)

- As with any other Mozilla product, they listen to the users' comments. If a reasonable, much-requested feature doesn't make it to the release, I'll bet my hat there's an extension that does it.

- Shockingly, it's a better client for Ma and Pa User. Fewer buttons, leaner out of the box, no office environment mumbo jumbo. (I'm not even going to take seriously suggestions to use Outlook Express in that case.)

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[nvivo (739176)]

My reasons to switch:

1. Profile, preferences, rules, contacts, etc are easy to backup. You can have all your files in one place and you choose where.

2. IMAP support in Outlook really sucks... in a way i can`t even describe it. Thunderbird is perfect with IMAP, and no need to purge messages manually...

3. Saved Search folders in 0.9 are great. They are like views in databases, but for your messages.

4. RSS support to keep you up with the news.

5. Great extensions makes Thunderbird even better.

6. It looks much better than Outlook Express.

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[truthsearch (249536)]

In addition to what other posters have listed,

- Administration - One simple screen for e-mail accounts and another simple screen for other configuration options. I find the Outlook barrage of configuration windows and tabs VERY annoying. It's also difficult to see exactly how POP/IMAP e-mail accounts are configured in Outlook. If you see the options in Thunderbird you'll see what I mean.

- These new Virtual Folders (mail's not really moved into them, but it's a view over all your mail based on criteria you specify). I use Outlook 2002 (XP) at work and I don't see any way to do the same without creating rules to copy mail to folders.

- Message threads. I see no way to do this in Outlook 2002.

- Less features. Outlook has more features, but I don't have any use for most of them. So Thunderbird is less cluttered for me.

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[Ark42 (522144)]

I have trouble getting many people to switch to TB even though they quickly took up FF. The things keeping back these people I know that are now using FF + Outlook are:

1) Buttons work differently, such as the delete button doesn't also close the message if you opened the message in a new Window (These type of problems are solvable with the Buttons! extension)

2) The context menu for Copy To and Move To is very annoying for them to use since they typically have 100s of folders nested across their accounts, and they can't seem to find the folder they want fast enough, where as Outlook will just pop up a little window with a folder tree for Copy/Move operations.

3) The address book contacts editor has most of the useful information on the first tab, but the Company Title and Notes section are on the 2nd and 3rd tab, and users find it annoying to have to use these extra tabs for such common pieces of information, when all the other stuff on the 2nd and 3rd tab is unused. Somehow, they wan't those two fields duplicated onto the main tab for the contacts editor.

4) Having to open the address book in a new window, and the contacts sidebar tab really doesn't help anybody I suggested it to here. Users really seem to wait a contacts folder in their folder list to see the list of contacts.

5) The contacts list is not easily sortable like Outlook and blank fields seem to sort above A forcing them to sort Z-A and scroll down to find the stuff in the middle. I guess they just want A-Z sorting to put blanks after Z.

I want a "Export to mysql" option

[LoboRojo (758260)]

For all of use archiving our email for years, wouldn't it be nice to be able to file messages in a real database? YES!!!!

Label threads

[elykyllek (543092)]

I'd like to be able to label threads, and for it to automatically label any messages added to the thread. That way I can view my unread and be able to tell if I previously labelled the thread as important.

Any idea if this is possible or planned?

0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes

[elysian1 (533581)]

People have been reporting [mozillazine.org] problems with upgrading from 0.8 to 0.9. It seems like there may be a compatibility problem with older profiles that causes 0.9 to freeze. I think I may wait a while before upgrading since 0.8 works fine for me.

Link to homepage.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42 (521389)]

Here's the obvious, but missing link to the Thunderbird homepage [mozilla.org].

Forward Wrap

[jeffehobbs (419930)]

One of the major annoyances my company is finding during our internal Thunderbird testing is this freakish behavior:

1) user gets email.

2) user replies to email, text wraps correctly.

3) user forwards email and the text does not wrap at all, but instead runs off the screen horizontally causing annoying readability issues.

Does anyone know why this is? It still appears to be in Thunderbird 0.9. I'm confused as to if it is a bug or by design [ietf.org]. If it's a bug, it's kind of a big one. If it's by design, it's kind of a poor design and there should be an option or preference to have "reply" and "forward" act consistently.

Otherwise, Thunderbird ROCKS -- nice work Thunderbird developers. It's fast, free and just getting better and better with each release.

~jeff

p.s. Inline spell check would be nice

Love TB and FF, but I will not upgrade

[beforewisdom (729725)]

I love TB ( and FF ) but I will not upgrade until features are added that I absolutely must have.

It used to be that upgrading either of these wouldn't effect my plugins, but these days I have to redo all of my plugins after each install.

A major pain,... I will wait until a "must have" new feature comes out.

Steve

can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna?

[Locutus (9039)]

The last time I checked, Thunderbird did not allow me to use a different outgoing SMTP server based on the personna(reply-to) used.

This is a big problem these days because SPAM filters at the ISP block email where the reply-to address is not within the same domain as the sending SMTP server.

It's a must-have feature me to move to it.

LoB

Needs faster searching

[DJ-Dodger (169589)]

I'd really like to switch to Thunderbird...but I just can't give up the instantaneous searching capabilities that the LookOut add-in gives Outlook. I've gotten so used to being able to search my entire Gigabyte-sized Outlook archive in less than a second that I just can't bring myself to give it up, despite the cool features I'm seeing added to Thunderbird.

Anyone know of speedier search capabilities coming to Thunderbird anytime soon?

Re:MSI package...

[advocate_one (662832)]

Not to be too curmudgeonly towards your kind offer, but I would much rather that the Thunderbird team themselves provided an "official" MSI package for download from their site along with md5 sums and a signature to check it against.

Re:GREAT!

[afidel (530433)]

Uh, they served over 1 million copies of the Firefox preview in under 100 hours, I don't think Slashdot is really that big of a worry for them.

Re:Lean and mean?

[DarkSarin (651985)]

just checked, thunderbird is taking 41,192K and firefox is taking 58,936K.

Of course I do have 5 inboxes, one of which has 413 messages and the other 327 (the other three all have less than 100 (72, 15, 0)). I have two separate windows open, and two tabs in one and 3 in the other.

What can I say, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. Note that explorer.exe is taking 16,368, and IEXPLORE.EXE with just slashdot takes 17,800 alone.

Is firefox lean? Maybe not as much as it could be, but it is pretty good. THe fact that it opens as fast or faster than IE without the same OS hooks? Bloody ingenious if you ask me.

Re:Outlook Address Books

[dara (119068)]

Unfortunately, the address book in Thunderbird is still very primitive compared to Outlook, Evolution, or Kmail. You can't use pictures, Geo locations, there is no place for Birthday, Children, etc. - only the four custom fields and Notes. There are only two email addresses that can be stored. How in the world could it import information from Outlook without losing it?

In response to another poster, I'm sorry, but .csv is not good enough for an address book anymore. There are too many fields (many of which won't be used for all entries) so viewing your book as a spreadsheet becomes tedious. Plus, there is no way to store picture information in a .csv file.

I'd prefer to use Thunderbird (or Mozilla) over Evolution or Kmail since I use both Windows and Linux, but I wish the three would get together and hammer at a way to have a really powerful address book standard, leaving no vCard info behind and storing any other info not included in vCard (e.g. Last Sort View State). And of course leaving no useful Outlook info behind either.

Dara