A look at Thunderbird 2.0 Beta

lisah writes "Linux.com has reviewed Mozilla's first beta release of the Thunderbird 2.0 email client and says that, while it 'won't knock your socks off,' there are plenty of reasons to try it out or upgrade from previous versions. The new Thunderbird does away with the limitations of labels and instead allows users to tag emails to their heart's content, in the same vein as Google's GMail. Developers also tossed in a bunch of other useful features like customizable pop-up notification of new email, better search capabilities, and a neat way to navigate through the history of recently read emails. Mozilla developers didn't get everything right, however, since the account setup continues to be something of a headache."

IMAP

[devilspgd]

At least it's a painless upgrade, but as a hardcore IMAP user I'm not seeing a ton of usefulness.

As far as I can tell labels don't work at all if you use IMAP, multiple machines, multiple clients, and have more then one folder.

Re:automatic grouping

[Vaevictis666]

Opera's M2 mail client (a part of their browser) was doing that years ago - every contact in your address book was given a saved search folder.

Re:IMAP

[duguk]

Yep you can already - theres a drop down from list already in the program, and its automatic depending on the account you're reading from.

Re:IMAP

[i.of.the.storm]

Thunderbird can easily check mail from multiple accounts. I'm sure it can send mail from multiple accounts too, but I haven't tried.

Re:IMAP

[Bob54321]

It is reasonably easy to set up receiving from multiple email accounts. I currently have 1.5 set up to receive from five. Multiple SMTP support requires manual addition beyond the first. I find the SmtpSelect extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2234/ [mozilla.org]) useful for switch between SMTP servers based on where I am sending email from.

Re:automatic grouping

[warrior_s]

"You could then also do some standard groupings that a user could select, like 'Yesterday, this week, this month, last month', common strings in the subject lines, etc."

Go into the inbox (or any other folder you have) window and press "g"

Re:automatic grouping

[warrior_s]

Now what key to I press to get grouping by my address book? ;)
View->"Sort By"-> "Grouped by Sort"

There are lot of options by which you can sort and then group.

Re:Poor SMTP = Not Viable

[barneyzang]

Try using the SmtpSelect extension. I had some of the same frustration you experienced until I found it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2234/ [mozilla.org]

Re:IMAP

[The MAZZTer]

Yes. I haven't checked 2.0b1 out much yet, but in 1.5 and 2.0a1 you can associate a SMTP account with a POP3/IMAP account. Then when you click compose, you can select any SMTP account from the dropdown, but by default it will select the appropriate account for the IMAP/POP3 account you're browsing at the moment.

Unfortunately even with this I have accidentally sent e-mail from the wrong account (well, an unexpected one at least) several times. Hehe, oops... guess it's a good thing I have the same name attached to each from address, as opposed to my IRC/IM nickname...

Re:Poor SMTP = Not Viable

[bahwi]

Huh? It's easy, it's just a drop down to change the SMTP server. I do it all the time to test qmail setups on different servers.
There's even a few add ons you can use, like this one [mozilla.org] and this one [mozilla.org]. I guess maybe it works different than you expect, but it works well for me.

Re:IMAP

[skiflyer]

If by labels you mean tags, then you're doing something wrong.

I use multiple machines over IMAP, I use webmail/Thunderbird/Outlook and I have many folders (both IMAP and local) as well as multiple accounts.

My tags translate fine between them all... granted my Thunderbird tags aren't available in Webmail (and I'm not sure about Outlook I don't use it often)

1 hour

[Swimport]

I've had it one hour and it crashed already. Not that outlook is any better.

Re:Meta-Inbox

[salesgeek]

If you use POP3 this can easily be accomplished by simply setting delivery to Inbox in local folders. Not sure if this can be done for IMAP.

2.0 is nice

[salesgeek]

Thunderbird has a couple of very nice new features:

1. Threaded messages with your replies included in the thread! This alone is going to may 2.0 better
2. New filter rules: forward and reply with template!
3. A little better speed...

Now all we need to make thunderbird closer to perfect:

1. A way to view conversation by recipient.
2. Better template managemetn
3. something that can identify non-spam commercial email and newsletters and get them out of the inbox.

Re:IMAP

[omeomi]

I'm sure it can send mail from multiple accounts too, but I haven't tried. Yep, works like a charm. I do that all the time.

Re:edit incomming mail

[Anonymous Coward]

There is TB Header Tools Extension 0.6.6 ...
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =1906&hl=header [extensionsmirror.nl]

But we want to change the *body* of the message

Re:Import...

[arkhan_jg]

I agree it's annoying, and they should fix that. One workaround I use (apart from IMAP servers where possible) is to copy the profile to another partition with my other data that stays between reinstalls, and then modify the thunderbird shortcut to run

"c:\program files\mozilla thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -profile d:\mythunderbirdprofile

Beats risking forgetting to back it up!

I modify the my documents folder location also (right click on it on the start menu) - saves a hell of a lot of effort on reinstalls.

Re:Hotmail/Google Client

[Kelson]

1. have Thunderbird able to work as a client for GMail.

Not sure if it's quite what you want, but Gmail does offer POP access and SMTP. They have directions for setting up Thunderbird [google.com] to use it.

Re:edit incomming mail

[bustersnyvel]

This is exactly one of the reasons why I keep using Mutt (http://www.mutt.org/). I can edit any message, and I often use that feature.

My voicemail system leaves a message in my email box with the subject "Voicemail from <telephone number>". I always edit that subject to reflect the contents of the voicemail message. Since 90% of my voicemail messages are coming from 2 telephone numbers, this is really a requirement if I want to find a specific message ever again.

Another feature I miss in many email clients (probably Thunderbird 2.0 too, haven't checked that one yet) is the ability to freely edit email threading. Sometimes I want to break a thread into two parts, or I want to link two emails into a thread, for instance emails discussing the same subject but different subject headers. This is also something Mutt does very well.

The third reason I keep using Mutt is that it displays mails originating from myself in a different way. All mails from someone else show the "From" header in the index. All mails from myself show "To <recipient>" and are displayed in a different colour. This allows me to store both incoming and outgoing messages in the same folder, allowing for gmail-ish mailboxes that contain the entire discussion.

As long as there isn't a GUI mail client that can do all this, I'm not moving away from Mutt.

Re:Compact folders

[AaronLawrence]

This and several other difficulties and restrictions (like being unable to edit mail) are because Mozilla is based on an ancient but well established format for email folders - basically all the emails live in one enormous text file, and there is a separate index for finding it fast and caching headers.
But of course if it's just one undifferentiated text file, there IS no efficient way to edit or delete mails out of the middle.
Realistically, Mozilla should probably update to a decent database format but that is a huge change.

Re:The one feature I can't live without

[TheRaven64]

No, it doesn't. However, a few days ago this unofficial build with Address Book integration [tuaw.com] floated past on a Mac users' mailing list to which I subscribe. It doesn't, however, support the system dictionary (and so my Thunderbird and FireFox installs (which I use for NNTP and Tribal Wars respectively) both think I am American.

It's a shame that the Mozilla people didn't implement things like this the correct way; create a well-defined interface for address books, spell checking, etc, and then supply a default implementation for platforms that don't support them. Even Windows has a system address book, and yet Mozilla insists on using its own.

Re:Poor SMTP = Not Viable

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Even without the extensions, it never even occurred to me that this was a problem or difficult to use until I read the article and comments here. I routinely send mail from two different ISPs for personal use, and from several official addresses at domains belonging to groups I help to run. In all, I probably have eight or nine accounts set up, and several different incoming and outgoing servers to deal with. It might have taken me a minute or two to find the SMTP server options when I first started using Thunderbird and needed a second account, but making out like it's some fatal flaw is just silly.

Re:edit incomming mail

[Anthracks]

For what it's worth, there's an open feature request for this in Bugzilla, if you would like to track its progress. But for the love of God, don't go spamming it with more "me too" messages. It already has more than enough. There's also mention of an extension that helps with this. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25473 9 [mozilla.org]