Mozilla Lightning 0.1 Released

Mini-Geek writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Lightning 0.1 is released. Lightning is a new Mozilla-made calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird that will eventually (once it becomes more mature and stable) be built into Thunderbird. From the article: 'The Lightning Project is a redesign of the Calendar component. Its goal is to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Mozilla Thunderbird.'"

Mail + Calendar?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must calendar apps be merged with mail apps? Seriously?

Pocket PC Compatability

[alphax45]

Too bad my pocket PC will only properly sync with Outlook. Althoug to be honest Outlook 2003 is not that bad. I would still like to try an open source based e-mail client, but until it will sync with my PDA correctly I can't make the switch.

Finally!

[Tezkah]

Anyone remember this from like a year ago? I've switched from Windows to Linux, and I use Evolution just for its calendar feature (I've been using Gmail for my email with Firefox for at least a year now). It's great how it integrates with GNOME's calendar and shows appointments and the like.

Lightning? Hopefully it is useful to get people to switch away from Outlook, but its the lack of Exchange support that matters to most people, Hopefully that gets added soon!

good work mozilla lightning team!

Re:Pocket PC Compatability

[hhghghghh]

Too bad my pocket PC will only properly sync with Outlook. Althoug to be honest Outlook 2003 is not that bad. I would still like to try an open source based e-mail client, but until it will sync with my PDA correctly I can't make the switch. Blame either the makers of PockerPC or the makers of Outlook for that. You'd almost think they're conspiring to prevent people from being able to switch..

Sunbird?

[Moby Cock]

What ever happened to Mozilla Sunbird? That was a calendar project too.

Re:Mail + Calendar?!

[From A Far Away Land]

The Outlook reason is that you can notify others by email when you'll be booking a room or away for a meeting.

I don't understand hy the integration is taking so long. Sunbird has been around for a year or more and it's slow as molassas in February. I try to use it but it's such a hog that it pains me to leave it running. It should be 500Kb big, and open in 2 seconds on a P4. This is 2006, we should be demanding applications that open in blazing speeds, not more features.

Why should mail and calendar be integrated?

[Per Abrahamsen]

At work we use GroupWise, and I find the integration most annoying. There is no connection between when I want to check my calendar, and when I want to send or read mail. Not to mention that I hate the GroupWise mail client, and use another when possible. I also hate the GroupWise calendar client, but I don't know if there are alternatives (I obviously need access to the information entered by our secretary, and she need to se the meetings I have entered).

I understand that the calendars for the people in the workgroup need to be synchronized, but is email really the best protocol for that? And if so, does it need to be integrated in the same client?

I just hope

[norton_I]

I just hope they don't make thunderbird suck in the process. All I really want is a program that does mail that doesn't suck, and thunderbird is currently the closest I can find.

Re:Finally!

[archen]

I think you're kind of missing the big picture here, and that is cross platform capability. I use Kontact myself so I could care less about this but lets consider a company that is tired of MS Windows. Or better yet is stuck on legacy desktops that the newest version of MS Office won't support - that will be many of us soon. Well we could say, everyone stop - now we use Linux! Yay! But that shit doesn't happen because you're goiong to end up with a migration period, and that COULD be years!

By having something that lets people talk on OSX, Windows, BSD, Linux or whatever you, give a corperation an agnostic solution that lets them transition at their own pace. Personally I'm not convinced with the whole stuffing email/callandaring together, but some swear by it... which is why we have this in the first place.

Re:Mail + Calendar?!

[kamochan]

In a corporate environment, scheduling and email go hand in hand, which is why I'm glad to see the MozCal project finally take steps forward.

I still agree with parent. Mac OSX has separate email and calendar (and address book) apps, which do their own things, but still integrate nicely together. Speedwise beat the Mozilla apps as well. Worthy of learning from, IMHO.

Agreed

[thrill12]

I personally do not need a calendar, and I would stall any thunderbird upgrade if it ever contains one.
 
Sleek, fast and trustworthy are a few keywords I put on the current thunderbird, and which is why I use it.
If they have to do it, make it optional as a plugin or extension, as with every other major non-mail related feature.

Calendar Necessary to Uproot Outlook

[geoffrobinson]

I've seen it mentioned in this thread already, but I want to add my own emphasis.

At least for corporations, people are tied to the clock/calendar. You can't disrupt the old tool until you can work with the old tool. Or, at the very least, be able to send meeting requests and import old calendar information into your new tool.

It is the small things like the Calendar and PowerPoint and file formats which let expensive software cling to a corporation like a bad fungus.

Re:Mail + Calendar?!

[Anonymous Coward]

So code up or shut up

Wow. Thanks for convincing me Sunbird is a waste of time. Wow.

Re:Will it sync with Outlook Calender?

[wed128]

Agreed. The only reason i'm using Outlook Webaccess on my slackware box at home as opposed to Thunderbird is those god damned calender requests i keep getting from co-workers.

Re:other calendaring solutions

[jacksonj04]

Sadly not. .Mac is one of the main reasons I'm thinking of moving to Macs entirely, new desktop and laptop. If they released a PDA, I would switch without a second thought.

Don't Build It In

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

> Thunderbird that will eventually (once it becomes more mature and stable) be built into Thunderbird.

God I hope not. The whole point of splitting out Thunderbird and Firefox from the Uber Mozilla Suite was to keep each part simple, non bloated, and good at what they do on their own. Thunderbird is an email client, not a scheduling client. If people want to download an extension for scheduling, fine. But don't lather up Thunderbird with something that it probably doesn't need for most poeple.

Along the same lines, Firefox doesn't need to be a scheduling client either.

Re:other calendaring solutions

[man_of_mr_e]

The biggest problem with this solution is that it's all client side. Outlook is a combination of client side and server side functionality. For example, if I accept a meeting request, put it on my calendar, and then go home. I can access my calendar from anywhere and see what my schedule is without having to connect to my desktop machine.

Now, sure, there are various workarounds. You could use a VPN and store all your calendar information on an smb share or nfs drive, but that's pretty slow, not to mention that it requires a great deal of configuration to set up.

Outlook/Exchange work very well for what they do, even if they suck in many other ways. The end user experience is largely "it just works" for every condition they might want.

Too little

[thsths]

too late. I mean really, the calender in Mozilla sucked since it came out with Netscape Communicator 3.0 or so. There are other programs that fill the niche (Kalendar, evolution), but they are not perfect.

Having a good calendar application in Mozilla would certainly be nice. But at this glacial speed of development, I don't see it going mainstream any time soon.

rephrase

[gentimjs]

rephrase, "MS Made-it-popular/got-people-used-to-it at levels-other-than-big-business"

Re:Mail + Calendar?!

[danheretic]

The very simple answer to that is because users want it. It doesn't matter if it's a smart idea, or efficient, or flies in the face of the project's original philosophies. At some point you have to decide if you are creating software for your benefit or for the users'. The users want/demand an integrated email/calendar app. If Mozilla doesn't supply it, someone else will. (And does.) If Mozilla does supply it, it will likely be better than other similar products. Either way, the users who want an integrated email/calendar app will use one -- whether or not Mozilla makes one. You are not going to change their (collective) minds about it. Personally, I would rather see Thunerbird become a bit more bloated (or have an offshoot) and still be able to convert Joe User away from Outscum.

Re:Mail + Calendar?!

[rosciol]

While I agree with a lot of the separation of function items that people brought to light, I think that the reason, besides the fact that Microsoft did it first, is because a calendar application that's not interfaced in a convenient manner to a communications mechanism is not nearly so useful as one that is. Outlook Calendar wouldn't be used at all if it weren't true that I could send out a meeting invite to a hundred people, whose calendars I just checked, and receive responses. Unless you're going to integrate an e-mail backbone to a calendaring application, which puts you in the same problem in reverse, having tight integration of a calendaring application with its natural mate, a communications application for coordination, is actually a pretty reasonable approach. Offline calendars are always going to suffer from this problem, because every person you want to coordinate with will need specialized software and will need to be using your calendaring application (yes, I understand that is the case for basically every calendar+mail out there). To me, the easiest way to get away from the whole mess is to move to online calendar systems. Hyperlinks are already fully integrated into standard e-mail functionality, so online calendar systems have an existing usable integration mechanism, no proprietary anything required. And online calendars make sense for a whole slew of other reasons as well. When's Google's calendaring application going to be done anyway?