Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 Final

By INet-Master
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nookadum

Posted
Posted

There's no "Journal" plugin that I see there. And the QuickNote extension sucks bad. Also, I'd like those to be built into the program instead of using a plugin/extension.

I'm guessing Thunderbird was built as a contender against Outlook EXPRESS, but not Outlook 2003. Now if someone would create perfect journal and note extensions, well I'd switch completely. :)

Grand Master

OPaul

Posted
Posted
Just curious... what does TB have that Outlook 2003 doesn't in terms of functionality. I'd love to start using TB when it matures, but right now it's not a very good mail client, imho

How is it not a good mail client? What else is a mail client supposed to do? What aspects of it need to mature?

Experienced

carpediem

Posted
Posted
How is it not a good mail client? What else is a mail client supposed to do? What aspects of it need to mature?

* Doesn't allow me to login before sending a mail (some mail-servers require that you login with your pop-account before sending)

* Doesn't give me the opportunity to just have 1 inbox (have to work with rules to move them into another inbox)

* Can't retrieve all messages at once, without using the rather bad extension.

* Can't check a specific account without first highlightning it, then pressing get messages

* Can't select many mails with the mouse (click, and drag to mark)

* Can't minimize to tray

* Can't assign more than 2 email addresses to a contact

There's probably more things, but i've only used thunderbird for a few days.

What functionality does TB have that O2k3 hasn't? The only thing speaking for Thunderbird at the moment is that it's free, but to say it's better in terms of functionality is something I can't agree with.

Grand Master

OPaul

Posted
Posted
* Doesn't allow me to login before sending a mail (some mail-servers require that you login with your pop-account before sending)
Enter a user name/password for the SMTP server and it will login.
* Can't retrieve all messages at once, without using the rather bad extension.

The extension works perfectly, what's wrong with it?

* Can't check a specific account without first highlightning it, then pressing get messages
It's quicker then having to select an account via a pull down menu.
* Can't minimize to tray

Thundertray 0.7.7

* Can't assign more than 2 email addresses to a contact

Sure you can, either assign it under "Additional Email" or create a "List".

Experienced

carpediem

Posted
Posted

The extension works perfectly, what's wrong with it?

Ugly and not very intuitive... (not out of the box either)

It's quicker then having to select an account via a pull down menu.

No it's not...

Thundertray 0.7.7

So getting features requres an extension hunt... Powerusers looks for extensions, most people want to run it as it comes out of the box

Sure you can, either assign it under "Additional Email" or create a "List".

You can assign two from what I can see. A list was nowhere to be found

What about all the other points i raised? Additionally, the IMAP-support is not very good. It doesn't handle replies to html-messages with background colors very well either. On mails i got the background color and font color appear in the same color all of a sudden and the tables were impossible to delete.

What about my other question? What makes TB better than Outlook2K3 in terms of functionality? Seems like you're avoiding that question ;)

Grand Master

OPaul

Posted
Posted
Ugly and not very intuitive... (not out of the box either)
I guess if the visual appearance of your email client is that important to you, personally I don't care what it looks like, it works.
You can assign two from what I can see. A list was nowhere to be found

Look harder, it's there.

What about all the other points i raised?
The other points you raised were valid and there was no need to respond to them.
What about my other question? What makes TB better than Outlook2K3 in terms of functionality? Seems like you're avoiding that question ;)

I wasn't avoiding the question I was simply responding to your points, nothing makes it better then O2K3 because you can't compare the two. Like others have said TB is an email client while Outlook is email/calender/notes/journal/etc... Personally I don't use any of those features, when I want to check my email I want something that opens quickly and goes straight to my email. Outlook is slow and bloated for what I do. Thunderbird is a simple mail/news client, that is all. Any other features are implemented through extensions, that way if you don't want something you don't have to have it. You can't remove the calender function in Outlook.

Proficient

Garrett C

Posted
Posted
I wasn't avoiding the question I was simply responding to your points, nothing makes it better then O2K3 because you can't compare the two. Like others have said TB is an email client while Outlook is email/calender/notes/journal/etc... Personally I don't use any of those features, when I want to check my email I want something that opens quickly and goes straight to my email. Outlook is slow and bloated for what I do. Thunderbird is a simple mail/news client, that is all. Any other features are implemented through extensions, that way if you don't want something you don't have to have it. You can't remove the calender function in Outlook.

Great point. ;) Couldn't have said it better myself.

Rookie

Shovel

Posted
Posted
There's no "Journal" plugin that I see there. And the QuickNote extension sucks bad. Also, I'd like those to be built into the program instead of using a plugin/extension.

I'm not a Thunderbird user, I got kitted out with Outlook 2003 last week and I'm loving it, however it's probably worth clarifying this:

One of the principals of the Firebird/Thunderbird project is to provide the bare bones with the intention of pushing exensions to provide advanced functions for those who want it. The big criticism of Mozilla 1.0+ was that there's a huge number of features that average users simply don't want, and Mozilla is not intended to be a suite just for techies.

I personally am I a big fan of the "Extensions" way, I like the way that my browser (Firebird) does exactly what I want, and that there's no features going to waste. Applying the same to Thunderbird works the same, there will come a point when some truely excellent PIM features will be developed for TB, and those who want them will lap them up. But in turn, those who just want an alternative to Outlook Express can have exactly what they want too. So long as access to the extensions is implemented as well as can be, it's a very, very good way of building software.

On that note, one of the big issues facing Firebird/Thunderbird as they develop concerns the organisation of extensions - the texturiser pages are now catagorised, but in the long term having what is essentially a "big list" of extensions simple wont fulfill the needs of users, but something too complex could hide away extensions never to be found. It's an interesting challenge in user interface design and one that will probably need to be mirrored within the applications themselves (Firebird just has a big list of extensions at the mo, the bigger it gets, the harder it is to find the settings for a specific extension). Intersting challenge that one - I wish I didn't have so much Uni work cause I'd be interested in involving myself in something like that, ah well.

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