Mozilla squirts out Thunderbird 3

Mozilla Messaging finally splashed Thunderbird 3 onto the interwebs yesterday. The outfit’s free alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook was made available as a download for Windows, Mac and Linux users on Tuesday. It comes less than a week after Mozilla pushed out a second release candidate version of the email client, in a move …

[Anonymous Coward]

do the forward and back buttons work yet?

Never been able to find the right combination of new messages or not so my forward and back have been grey for 2 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forward and back

Hey. Me too.

I'm sure there must be a way to set it up to simple move through the inbox, but I've never found it. Not looked that hard though.

Anon - 'cos it might be really simple to do.

[mrmr]

Re: Forward and back

The buttons move you through your 'reading history' just like the firefox buttons would do. Not forwards or backwards through the internet.

And yes, as a result they're almost completely pointless.

[Steve X]

to and fro

Download the "Buttons!" add-on, and replace the standard Prev and Next buttons with Previous! and Next!. They step through messages one by one, read or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird still one of the best

The thing I loved about Thunderbird was the flexibility across platforms. I initially had it running on Linux, when I need to drag my email around on a Windows laptop, I simply zipped up the Thunderbird mailstore ( basically a glorified set of text files, like the old Unix mail prog ), unzipped on the Windows kit and started Thunderbird up on Windows, worked perfect!

When I moved from WIndows to OSX, I downloaded OSX Thunderbird, zipped up my mail again ( now 3GB in size ), unzipped on the Mac, started TB, worked perfect once again!

I finally stopped faffing about then I moved to Mac Mail, but once again due to the open nature of TB, I converted all my mail ( now 4.5GB in size ) in 15 mins to Mac Mail.

I still highly recommend TB over anything MS, with their nasty locked up mail formats, have to offer.

[Forget It]

International Rescue

I think I'll wait for Thunderbird 7

[GregC]

Not bad, but...

What happened to the plan to integrate calendaring into the main application? Not been following development that closely so can anyone clarify whether it's been dropped or just delayed.

The Lightning extension is fine (although a word of warning - it's not updated for TB3 yet, so you'll need to install a nightly build of the extension to get it working), but on my dual boot machine which uses a shared profile between XP and Ubuntu, it just won't work in Ubuntu. I was hoping that having the calendar integrated would solve that problem.

Oh well - other than that, first impressions are good. I like the interface changes, tabs are long overdue and most welcome, and the search seems much quicker.

[Gary 23]

FAB!

FAB

That is all.

[Moogal]

@AC 13:04

It's especially useful on a system booting multiple OSes - you can keep the mail store on a separate partition accessible by each OS, then have a copy of Thunderbird for each OS pointing at it.

[Winkypop]

Thunderbirds are Go

Yay, it's a beaut.

[Jon Green]

And it's ... not good!

I've been using T3rc2 for a while. Install the final version and...it doesn't want to show me my mail. It sticks on "Determining which messages to index". This happened on RC2 too, at first, but there was a progress indicator. This time, there's nothing at all, and no evidence from disk or net activity that anything's happening at all.

Joy.

[Anonymous Coward]

re do the forward and back buttons work yet?

I thought it was just me. Hold on AC - it is just me

[Dazed and Confused]

Webmail?

Why would I want a web based email system?

I can then only read my email while I'm connected to the internet.

In lots of parts of the world it is not easy to remain connect to the internet while moving about (I'm think Berkshire here not Outer Mongolia)

Yet I might well need to be able to recall a message I was sent 6 weeks ago.

I look forward to trying the new version. Does that qualify me as a Fanboi yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Yes webmail. I'm totally uninterested in email unless I'm connected to the internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you were wondering..

Google Image Search shows that Thunderbird 3 was the red rocket-shaped one....

[Miles Leadlem]

Disappointing

Installed RC1, found I had to fight it to do what I need it to do, uninstalled it, reinstalled 2.0. Happy as a clam.

[Alex Walsh]

great on attachements

If it spots the word attachment in a mail but you've forgotten to attach a file, it prompts you. Now that is useful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Irritating

Sounds irritating to me, you may want to use the word attachment without actually attaching a file. Like for example "you forgot the attachment you numbskull".

In all seriousness this is the sort of "helpful" feature that MS Office users curse. Mozilla are getting more like Microshaft every day. It's not helpful to assume that all your users are morons.

[blackworx]

Dunno

No doubt perfect users such as yourself will be able to switch the feature off if it annoys you, but me I'm thick as shit in a bottle and constantly having to send stuff twice because I forgot the attachment/s, so the benefit far outweighs the nuisance.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC - Irritating...

"t's not helpful to assume that all your users are morons."

If they've been using MS Outlook, they are and you need to start them along the road to elightenment via T-bird.

Go T-bird!

[Anonymous Coward]

T-bird

Shame the prog isn't as good as the bike. Anyway, most Outbreak users use it at work, where they tend to have no realistc choice in the matter. While Thunderbird is like Linux - omissions and stupid errors that anyone who cares about quality more than ego (or Microshaft) wouldn't let rtm without fixing first and that the fanbois conveniently ignore because being identified as one of the discerning elite by championing this stuff is what it is really all about. The morons.

[PaulStuffins]

Perhaps

you should inform them that Thunderbird has this nifty feature that alerts you if you have forgotten an attachment.

Then you don't need to inform them again that they have forgotten an attachment, and so you wont get alerted to a "forgotten attachment"!

[Stuart 22]

Nearly ... but not quite yet

Had to install Sunbird/Google Calendering to replace Lightening (plus the horrid sunbird button). Google Contacts not yet available - the best of the three add-on in the previous version.

This is on my - try anything new PC. My working PCs will stay at T2 until this is resolved.

You can't brag about close integration with Gmail and forget about the rest. I was happy with T2 for email and wanted better more closely integrated contacts & calendering. Hopefully compatible with Google. Only that combination can be an Outlook buster.

[Fred Flintstone]

Gmail integration?

I can't see the point of Gmail integration - surely that's just a matter of a decent IMAP setup?

Not that I use Gmail or any other G-apps so I couldn't care less, but such marketing irritates me.

As for calendaring, I found a different solution. I use an iPhone which syncs to a secured Zimbra setup, so my calendar lives on both the iPhone and on a web page and handles invites from others just fine, which works for me.

So I don't need extra plug ins. However, it is a fact that Outlook has been having the edge over just about every Open Source app just because it integrates everything. That's about the only reason I see it being used, because I personally find that it sucks as software goes - that's why I use Thunderbird.

Let's see how v3 works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird 3

The best email client, nevermind Microcrap outlook,.

[Piloti]

Desk top or Cloud.

Desk top, everytime.

I think most users have no idea what the cloud is until they have no access to a web connection, then the questions start 'where is my mail, why is not 'on my computer'...

Cloud is ok as a back up perhaps, but there really is no substuture for actually having your email on your machine....

P.

[Klaus]

What did they do to the headers???

Just installed TB 3, and I have to say: "What the hell have they done to the headers????" They're huge, and you can't minimize them at all. Somebody sure made a stupid design decision

[Jaffa Cakes]

Better than TB2, but

I'll stick with Alpine.

[Alan 43]

Lost emails /folders on upgrade

Just upgraded as well and there are 3 or 4 folders missing. Like yourself I had GB of emails going back perhaps 5 years over 8 email accounts and perhaps 40 folders including filters that moved some emails from one account to a folder in another account. Haven`t found the emails yet although I suspect they are still there and TB3 just isn`t picking them up!! ( Running Windows 7 )..and I`m not the only person this has affected:-

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/thunderbird_3_lost_1_5_years_of_email_randomly?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=widget_mozilla_messaging

http://www.pawprint.net/news/?action=view&nid=85

[Blubster]

Be nice

if the Linux version had Windoze based PDA synchronization built in instead of having to use Synce and other third-party add-ins.

[DanM]

Beta quality at best

This is possibly the poorest quality "release" I've seen the boys and girls at Mozilla produce. Crashes on first runs, display bugs in dialog boxes, LDAP certificate dialog boxes that go nowhere - all in the first 5 minutes of running. Certainly below the standards usually set by TB releases.

A real shame, looks like I'm stuck with Outlook for now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but no...

Installed Thunderbird 3, spent a full day struggling with it.

Just re-installed v2, with which I'll say for the time being, thank you very much.

Lots of changes in Thunderbird 3, but nothing I actually wanted or needed and too many drastic changes to want to re-enter the learning curve for a client with which I was fairly happy.

When support for v2 dries up then I'll need to look elsewhere, assuming a more usable v4 isn't available by then.

[Mike Green 1]

Not so good....

Some stupid questions....

Why don't replies or new messages open in a tab? Still popping open a new window...

Why doesn't the Address book open in a tab?

I would have though they were an obvious option for tabs... Big doh!

Also, if I double click a name in my address book, all the fields in the contact window (again, not opening in a tab) are blank, it's not picking up any of the values already in there.

Not the best release by a long way....

[Eddie Johnson]

Still Missing the Point

I've been using Thunderbird since the Mozilla suite days and there has been just about no improvement but I can give you a list of regressions. And they still won't get the damn calendar extension working decently. Just look at the comments here and on the TB article last week, its the most needed feature but they refuse to work on it. A paranoid person would think they were bought off by Google to focus on crappy gmail oriented stuff so they can help Google take over the world, not just the web.

And as someone pointed out in the last TB article, the developers are more interested in deleting bug reports out of Bugzilla than in actually fixing them - its become a huge whitewash.

[Phil Koenig]

You meant Outlook EXPRESS, right?

Yanno, I'm not exactly a MS fanboy, but I really don't know why you journalists keep acting as though Thunderbird is a "competitor" to Outlook.

First of all, Outlook costs money.

Second of all, Outlook is a full-fledged groupware client, with an integrated group-shareable calendar, shareable contact lists, and other collaboration features. NONE of that stuff comes with Tbird, even with the not-very-well-integrated Lightning add-on.

There are all sorts of free and/or open-source groupware clients (ie Zimbra, Scalix, Open Groupware, and the standalone Evolution client which is now owned by Novell) which really do compete with Outlook. Tbird doesn't.

[BikerLad]

Went back to thunderbird 2

On my OpenSuse 11.2 system, the thunderbird upgrade to 3 was fine. Different story on my Vista system. Thunderbird 3 came back with the dreaded Blank Screens Of Death: no mail folders, no content displayed at all (BTW, account dialogs which cannot be resized with buttons half-obscured is very annoying). On windoze, as on Linux, I have my mail folders set to specific locations rather than the defaults. I downgraded on Vista to the latest version 2 release to see all my email again. No excuses for piss-poor quality control and crappy screens. Was TB3 actually tested at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

runs smoothly, but...

They removed teh folder counters from the (@#)(%* thing and that may force me back to 2.0 since i depend on that for constant cleanup reminder as folders fill up...some are more important than others and i want that number of read/unread.... at least it should be an option. the add-on for it doesn't work. sad...

[Alex 3]

Makes me laugh

People say "was this software tested at all?" - and it was an open source release. Also they had a beta release to two.

Now who was going to test it? Next door neighbours cat, Fred, Bert, Wilma.... or the person saying "Who tested this?" who paid £0.00.

[BikerLad]

I don't expect customers to be testing a final release

What I find laughable is software that is released as a final version when in actual fact it is of alpha or beta quality. It's not just Thunderbird that this applies to. There have been a few questionable releases of OpenSuse over the years (broken printing or CD mounting etc.) and of KDE. All software has bugs. However, when bugs are highly visible or quite detrimental to the most basic functionality then you do have to question the quality control process. Who is going to test the software? Well, as a professional developer and architect I don't expect my customers to be testing the software for me (to any extent) unless it is an agreed alpha or beta release trial. I expect developers and the QA dept to be responsible for that. Likewise I expect the Thunderbird team to ensure that moving from alpha to beta to RCs and to the final release has ironed out the showstopper bugs. Not being able to upgrade Thunderbird on Vista is a showstopper. If they'd tested this then they'd have eliminated it. If their test cases don't encompass doing an upgrade from version 2 directly then somebody isn't doing a decent job. Of course it's difficult, nay impossible, for test cases to cover every eventuality. But I'd have thought that upgrading from Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 to version 3 via the GUI menu on 64-bit Vista with mail folders not in the default location is a completely obvious test case to try out.

Thankfully version 3 works for me on OpenSuse 11.2 64-bit.