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Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2.0.0

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Apr 19, 2007 06:59 AM
from the come-and-get-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Mozilla Corporation has released Thunderbird 2.0.0. Among the improvements are Message Tagging, updated UI, Advanced Folder Views, Better New Mail Notification and Full Support for Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows."
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  • How many people, aside from the slashdot crowd, actually use POP3/SMTP clients anymore (at home, not work)? Isn't some ridiculous amount like 90% using gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail/aol mail/etc?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:09AM (#18795939)
      I do
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Hey, stop posting such lies under my name!
    • by vivaoporto (1064484) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:15AM (#18795985) Homepage
      I use Thunderbird to download my POP3 email and my Webmail at home. I have multiple POP3 accounts from my ISP, and a couple of GMail ones too, and my wife have one from Hotmail, one from Yahoo and one from her job. I shared the thunderbird profile between my Linux partition and her Windows partition so, no matter what partition we booted on, our email is all there. This is a way to save time and get all email with a One Click (tm) without having to surf through several ad-infected pages to read a couple of messages. All props to thunderbird, for providing this useful piece of software for free (as in speech and as in beer).
    • by MoonFog (586818) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:15AM (#18795991)
      Most I know (that don't frequent slashdot) use the emails they get from their ISP's, which are mostly set up with POP3 or IMAP and they don't really know much or care about Gmail and the likes apart from using them as log-ins to chat applications.
    • IMAP (Score:4, Insightful)

      by duguk (589689) <(ku.oc.garf) (ta) (gud)> on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:20AM (#18796015) Homepage
      I use IMAP and Thunderbird - and so do all my customers. POP3 is just way too insecure, Outlook is sucky and Thunderbird is the perfect solution.

      Maybe think before you write such generalising statements.

      Monkeyboi
      • Re:IMAP (Score:4, Informative)

        by jimstapleton (999106) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:25AM (#18796061) Journal
        actually, he was commenting on webmail as the competing factor, not Outlook.

        Personally, on Windows, I use Outlook Express (set to not auto-preview emails), because thunderbird wasn't deleting mails from the server as it was supposed to (everything over 5 days old), and seemed to corrupt my mail local mail store every week or two (TBird 1.5). In BSD I use KMail.

      • Re:IMAP (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Gr8Apes (679165) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:58AM (#18796411)

        I use IMAP and Thunderbird - and so do all my customers. POP3 is just way too insecure, Outlook is sucky and Thunderbird is the perfect solution.
        Outlook sucks rocks yes, but Thunderbird 1.5 wasn't a shining beacon either. There's several UI decisions that just suck rocks in Thunderbird (search kinda blows, although worlds better than Outlook). Mac's Mail is better in some ways, but it's not the panacea I'm looking for either. I still feel like I'm in circa 1992 with Eudora. Mail clients have essentially stagnated since then with very little improvement from a user perspective. Maybe TB 2.0 will fix that. I'll be looking forward to trying it out.

        POP3 is perfectly secure in SSL mode. IMAP is supposed to add some features, but is not inherently more secure than POP3.

        Maybe think before you write such generalising statements.
        As should you.
    • by bWareiWare.co.uk (660144) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:21AM (#18796023) Homepage
      You don't need to be technical to recognise usability. Non-technical users are probably the core market of desktop readers.

      Also I would hope the slashdot crowd use IMAP/SMTP, POP3 is terribly limited if you want to read your mail from more then one device.
      • Not really, I have my clients leave the mail on the server for 3+ days, depending on the server and the mail I get.

        It keeps the server uncloged, and all my devices get my mail. The server is set to use encrypted transfer (including passwords), so it's secure as well.
            • by bWareiWare.co.uk (660144) on Thursday April 19 2007, @08:13AM (#18796603) Homepage
              Didn't mean to start a flame war.

              Everyone has to occasionally sort a mail by hand. With IMAP if I move a mail into a folder on one device it moves on all the other devices, with POP3 I have to move it on each device.

              With IMAP I can see which mail I have already read from any device, this sounds simple, but for most people is very useful.

              I can see that using less storage on the server could be vital. But for most people storing a mail once on the server is going be better then storing a copy on every client. I know my mail server has considerably more space then some of my clients (i.e. phone).

              If I was worried about the privacy of my mail archive I would encrypt it, wherever it was stored.
      • Non-technical users are probably the core market of desktop readers.
        Clearly, you don't know too many non-technical users.
    • I'd say about 2/3rds of the people I know who aren't /.ers

      many of them /also/ have webmail, but not all of them.
    • How many people, aside from the slashdot crowd, actually use POP3/SMTP clients anymore (at home, not work)? Isn't some ridiculous amount like 90% using gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail/aol mail/etc?

      I'd say only college kids and people who either pay for good indie ISPs (or run their own server) have the luxury of using actual non-http email services. For what it's worth, for most of the major online email providers, there's a service to scrape from the html interface - I used to use YoSucker back in the day when

    • Webmail is great, until you want to get your mail on a mobile device or a slow connection. Then it's painful.

      IMAP over SSL allows me to keep my INBOX synced between my work computer using portableapps, my HTC Wizard, and my computer at home. And because I run my own server. I still have more storage space Gmail too. :)
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      There is still a place for a mail client like Thunderbird, even if you use Gmail. What if you want to reference an e-mail message, but gmail is having problems at that time...and it is critical that you find it NOW? Also, having a client like Thunderbird allows you to only have to use your internet connection intermittently, like for folks still stuck with dial-up.

      Thunderbird also offers more filtering options than the web providers, for those who depend on filtering to keep their inbox sane.

      My wife uses
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Commercial people from my company usually use a webmail for personal mails but outlook or thunderbird for their professional mail. Why ? because they use laptops and cannot depend on web connectivity to write emails.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      I use fetchmail to get mail from several pop3 accounts, and dump them on my local server, then I use IMAP there.
      • by spamking (967666) [slashdot.org] on 2007-04-19 14:14 (#18795975 [slashdot.org])

        I'd rather let Gmail deal with filtering the SPAM first and then deal with the stuff that slips through.

        Oh... kay?
      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2007, @10:48AM (#18799051)
        1. Having 5 gmail accounts is exactly why you might want to use POP3--it's much easier than logging in then logging out then logging into another gmail account 5 times. All your mail in one place.

        2. Configuring a gmail account just got much easier in Thunderbird. Just go to Tools>Account Settings then click 'Add Account', select the account type as gmail, enter your name and gmail address and, uh, you're done. Lather, rinse and repeat for your 4 other gmail accounts.

        3. gmail's spam folder is not accessed when you use POP3. You only get what "slips through."

        Maybe one of these days I'll return to a client . . .
        Maybe today would be a good day!
  • So far so good (Score:5, Informative)

    by BuR4N (512430) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:07AM (#18795923) Homepage Journal
    Have been using it (2.0) for a day now and so far its a really nice experiance.

    The greatest thing with Thunderbird is its "simplicity" (do not confuse with "simple, bare minimum") it just very easy to get into and when you'r ready there is allot of usefull features that the advanced user appricate.

    Having used 1.5 for a long period of time its also one of the more stable programs I'v use every day, havnt so far seen a crash or something that dosnt work as intended.
    • Having used 1.5 for a long period of time its also one of the more stable programs I'v use every day, havnt so far seen a crash or something that dosnt work as intended.

      Do you know whether they've fixed the mess that is "compacting folders" for TB2?

      I got very bored of having to manually hack index files because something an end-user should never have to know about wasn't happening and TB 1.5 broke in various ways. I then discovered that you can make it auto-prompt to remind you to compact folders at l

  • Folder views? New mail notification?

    Watch your back, Eudora for Windows 3.1!

  • 64bit support? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sakdoctor (1087155) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:12AM (#18795957)
    What exactly do they mean by full 64-bit support. I didn't find an x64 bit binary anywhere.
    • by digitalderbs (718388) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:29AM (#18796097)
      You have to compile your own. I compile mine on Ubuntu Edgy 64-bit. This will get you started :
      1. Download source [mozilla.org]
      2. Run configure with the following command (this solves a compile time known bug in gcc 4)

        ac_cv_visibility_pragma=no ./configure --enable-application=mail
      3. make and sudo make install
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        meaning that Windows x64 users are left totally in the dark. If they're going to claim Windows support and x64 support in the same sentence, then they ought to be providing a 64-bit enabled binary.
  • Painful marketing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ed Avis (5917) <ed@membled.com> on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:13AM (#18795963) Homepage
    Any chance the Mozilla people could trouble to put up some real information about the new version instead of a flashy page of meaningless marketspeak?
    • by ZachPruckowski (918562) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:26AM (#18796075)
      I know! I came in with 2 questions:

      1) How's the Mail.app importing?
      2) Does it work with Spotlight

      These are crucial questions that affect whether I even consider switching, and the info pages say nothing.
      • Re:Painful marketing (Score:5, Informative)

        by anticypher (48312) <anticypher.gmail@com> on Thursday April 19 2007, @11:02AM (#18799313) Homepage
        I'm going to reply to you again, because I've had a few hours to play with the new version, and I'm not at all impressed.

        So spotlight is broken, but that's been a feature request with much finger pointing for quite a while now. The built in search function is still pretty useless. No way to search all headers, or the entire mailbox including both headers and bodies, or to search multiple or all mail boxes in the same search. With 9 separate inboxes, it takes a while to find some poorly remembered email. Granted, I can always open a terminal, navigate to the directory, and perform some unix majic with grep and find, but that's a major blow to usability for their interface. It's not like people haven't been asking for a better search function since early days, but the developers have decided that people just shouldn't be searching their email. Eudora does it correctly, so my standards are not going to come down, maybe all the good TB developers will go over to Penelope.

        There appear to still be bugs with the IPv6 implementation, both on the OSX and Linux versions. At least, there is still a config setting to disable IPv6 lookups.

        Without too much regression testing, the old LDAP incompatibilities are still there. TB is pretty much useless in corporate settings using AD or other LDAP directory services.

        The old indexing bugs haven't been addressed at all. After leaving TB running for a while, various inboxes highlight in blue to show new mail, but there isn't any. Sometimes a mailbox shows unread messages, but searching around doesn't turn up any. New messages sorted by procmail on the server aren't indexed properly if not seen first in an inbox.

        The anti-phishing feature has always highlighted quite a few auto-generated emails and some client monthly mailings as suspect. I wish they would integrate some kind of baysian or learning or white-list features on that.

        The completely separate address books, with no concept of either hierarchy or being attached to individual accounts (think friends&family, business contacts) is pretty 1993 in its thinking.

        One of my biggest problems, is the inability to choose which outgoing SMTP service at the time of sending a message. Once again, Eudora got this right. Since I work in many locations, the ability to quickly change the outgoing SMTP setting without having to go to every account setting and changing it manually would be expected of a real email application.

        The UI hasn't really improved at all over the 1.5 version. Sure, they've now hidden several spam controls in new places, and made a few other cosmetic improvements, but TB is still mostly unusable by ordinary users. There is still no way to make some commonly used functions into buttons on the main interface. That is the most asked for feature when I show people TB, how do they do their most common command with just a single button click.

        Version 1.5 was really the first usable release, it should have been called 1.0. This is a minor bug fix release, count it as version 1.1, but there is NO major overhaul of either the functionality or usability.

        the AC
  • 1. A shared calender
    2. An integrated Calendar
    3. Exchange support a la evolution (even if it just supports a few features :) )

    I have introduced Thunderbird to my work place to a limited extent. But these features would allow me to push its introduction further.
  • vcal support? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by epiphani (254981) <`epiphani' `at' `dal.net'> on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:14AM (#18795969)
    The single lacking feature stopping me from using it? Heck, even if it ties in with that other calendaring application from mozilla, at least recognizing outlook calendar requests and calling the other app.
  • by tygerstripes (832644) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:21AM (#18796031)
    Calendaring. TB is not used in the (office) workplace - even progressive workplaces that are happy to go with FF - because Outlook calendar support doesn't exist. I've no idea how good Sunbird (is that right?) is, but FF managed to get a foothold because the switch was painless. Without the ability to integrate with Outlook calendars, TB's not going to get that foothold.

    I'm not suggesting this is Mozilla's fault, I'm just stating what I understand to be the real stumbling block for TB - and TB2 hasn't fixed it. It's a real shame.

    Incidentally, TB really didn't need an overhaul, as far as I could tell. Prolly one of the most stable apps I've used in a long time, and quite powerful enough. Still, I'll have a look...

    • I use Thunderbird both at work and at home.

      This release contains probably a lot of improvment under th hood but what really misses is:

      • Support for Outlook calender on PC
      • Support for an Opensource calender server with the ability to change the calendar from within the GUI
      • A way to synchronize calendars between Thunderbird on different workstation
      • Syncronisation of calendar with Mobile devices
      • Synchronisation of contact with Mobile devices
      • SMS / MMS management from within TB

      For Mac OS X users like me, I would add:

      • Native support of Mac OS X address book
      • Enable spotlight to search within the mails
      • Native support of Mac Calendar (don't reinvent the wheel ;..)
      • Support of iSync for synchronsation with mobile devices (don't reinvent the wheel ;..)

      This would be a proper 2.0 release.

      I would also suggest also to write or improve extentions connecting TB with proeminents CRM software (Salesforce, Surgar CRM, ...).

      PS: I tried Sunbird but was not convinced.

  • by robertlagrant (1090367) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:33AM (#18796131)
    I posted this one to here a few hours ago, thought you might prefer this version of the story :)

    Mozilla's Thunderbird email software has reached version 2.0.0.0 [mozilla.com]. Includes tagging messages, quick navigation through threads, improved (and saved) searches, and (most usefully for some) support for checking .mac and gmail. Reports that Thunderbird 2 may contain a mole [thunderbirdsonline.co.uk] were quickly quashed.
  • by Alex (342) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:35AM (#18796145)
    Last week I switched from Linux to Mac OSX, purely so I could run Entourage and interface properly with Exchange.

    Thunderbird is an awesome IMAP/POP3 client super stable, really great to use - in an organization that uses Exchange a lot not being able to interface with Exchange properly was a real pain in the arse.

    I had a real nightmare trying to use Evolution, it was very unstable, I reinstalled my workstation and did all sorts of stuff but I couldn't get it to be as stable as Thunderbird.

    So I've started using a mac for email so I've got a Unix box I can use Exchange on.

    Just don't get me started on sharepoint.....

    cheers,

    Alex
  • by javacowboy (222023) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:36AM (#18796153) Homepage
    Thunderbird is by far the best mail client for Windows, and from my limited experience the best email client for Linux (though I haven't used Linux much recently). Mail.app (the Mac mail program) runs circles around Thunderbird and any other mail client I've ever used.

    Thunderbird has been moving in the general direction of parity with Mail.app, but it isn't there yet. Mail.app still wins handily for its superior preferences menu layout which includes account info and mail filters all in one place. It's also integrated with the OS X address book and spell-checking dictionary. Once Leopard comes out, Mail.app will be integrated with the system-wide calendar process (another new Leopard feature).

    And before anybody calls me a Mac fanboy, I still have a strong preference for Firefox over Safari. Safari is so light on features, especially those I take for granted with Firefox, that it's simply not usable (although Firefox should steal a feature or two from Safari to be even better).
  • by Hohlraum (135212) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:36AM (#18796155) Homepage
    They are still blindly using the Date: field for received and sent mail. The so called fix is to sort by the 'Order Received' column. That column is inaccurate when you start moving messages around between folders. I really wish the TB developers would wake up. I know of no other mail client that doesn't parse out the Received date from the headers and make it available. In fact it is the default date for most other mail clients as well. I've lost count of the number of people who have brought this up to me when I tell them to check out TB. TB (imo) is a superior email client to outlook express except for this one issue that they keep ignoring.

    This is based on a beta from a few weeks ago, feel free to correct me if they woke up between then and the release and fixed this issue.
  • by Xenomorph.NET (969401) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:41AM (#18796227) Homepage
    Thunderbird's newsreader seems the same as it was ever since it was the Netscape newsreader.

    hardly anything has changed.

    it still displays "Lines" instead of "Size". it also can't join posts like Outlook Express is able to.

    why has the newsreader been left unchanged for so long? it looks and works the same (crappy) as it always had. hardly anything has changed since the mid 1990s.
  • by sherriw (794536) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:43AM (#18796243)
    I've read lots of posts about how most people use webmail or whatever their ISP gives them. Well.... that may be true but we all know that the really cool ninjas own their own domain so they can create unlimited email addresses, spam-traps, forwards, mail lists and all kinds of other ninja-like cool stuff. Every time I see a techie person who's using his/her cogeco or hotmail address, I just laugh.

    Yes, I am a cool email ninja. :)
  • by Karpe (1147) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:52AM (#18796343) Homepage
    Bummer.
  • Tagging (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dan East (318230) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:56AM (#18796389) Homepage
    Message tagging has existed for a long, long time in Thunderbird. You could already hit numeric keys to tag emails, which would change the color of the text in the list. This version formalizes tagging, by adding a toolbar button and assigning actual (user-configurable) names to various colors. I'll continue to use the numeric keys, because as usual keyboard shortcuts are so much faster than mouse-based UI. Still, it's nice to see Thunderbird's features continue to mature.

    Dan East
  • Broken (Score:3, Informative)

    by Xerotope (777662) on Thursday April 19 2007, @08:19AM (#18796695)
    This is what happens when I try and upgrade from 1.5:

    "Error opening file for writing: \r\n\r\nmozMapi32.dll\r\n\r\nClick Retry to try again, or \r\nCancel to stop the instalation"

    Thanks guys...awesome new release.
    • Re:Broken (Score:5, Informative)

      by Control6 (247510) on Thursday April 19 2007, @08:58AM (#18797199) Homepage
      I had the same error message. Do you have a Logitech Quickcam? I found that the Quickcam software which runs in the background on start-up was keeping a lock on the mozMapi32.dll file in the Thunderbird program folder. I had to use process explorer to kill off QuickCam10.exe before I could complete the installation.
      • Re:Broken (Score:5, Informative)

        by Xerotope (777662) on Thursday April 19 2007, @09:34AM (#18797779)
        Yes, I had a Quickcam.

        Once I closed Skype (which is the only app I had running which uses the cam), it installed fine.

        So, anyone know why Logitech is using the Mozilla API library?
    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      Most corporations use the groupware in Exchange/Outlook, Thunderbird can't really compete there as it does not have a proper exchange equivalent to talk to.

      I've seen countless people use Thunderbird as a regular email client, that they use with their personal email.
      • Re:One wonders (Score:4, Informative)

        by IGnatius T Foobar (4328) on Thursday April 19 2007, @08:05AM (#18796493) Homepage Journal

        Most corporations use the groupware in Exchange/Outlook, Thunderbird can't really compete there as it does not have a proper exchange equivalent to talk to.
        Actually, that's not true. Look here:

        http://www.citadel.org [citadel.org]

        Citadel is a good candidate for an open source "Exchange killer" and it works nicely with Thunderbird. If you have the Lightning calendar extension, it works with that too, and you can also connect your address book. Those are the big three, of course, but it goes deeper than that...
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Is there a plugin or something that makes Thunderbird behave like Eudora in this regard? If there is, I would totally switch mail clients. I'm only hooked on Eudora because I prefer its UI...

      The next Eudora will be a thunderbird respin. Just stick with Eudora, and it will turn into what you want.