

Thunderbird 3 released - keyist
http://getthunderbird.com/

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ericb
I just installed it. It looks substantially better due to a less cluttered
interface, and search seems vastly improved. So far, I'm impressed.

~~~
shelfoo
There do seem to be some questionable UI pieces. I don't like the look of the
reply/reply all buttons. They're especially bad if using the 3 pane (veritical
view with message pane).

The tabs are pretty sweet though. I like having everything open in the same
window vs a bunch of separate email windows.

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RyanMcGreal
> The new attachment reminder looks for the word attachment (and other words
> like file types) in the body of your message and reminds you to add an
> attachment before hitting send.

I'm embarrassed to admit that this will help me considerably.

~~~
bvi
Gmail has had this for quite a while now.

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dhimes
So has tbird, actually.

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dpcan
I'm in heaven.

I just performed the same search I spent 10 minutes on a couple days ago to
see if the new search would have worked better under those circumstances, and
I was able to narrow it down and find the missing message in under 2 minutes.

Fantastic work Thunderbird Team!!!!

~~~
mahmud
If you're seeing a lot of email traffic, you need to move the indexing to an
actual external search engine and write your own 'search' plugin; both Lucene
and Sphinx would rape native TB search in performance. And the index can be
shared across a team as well, say, in a sales force.

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keyist
Vimperator fans will want to monitor the Muttator add-on page for updates:
<http://www.vimperator.org/muttator>

~~~
Daemmerung
vim : Muttator :: emacs : ?

Don't I wish....

~~~
WalterGR
Attention downvoters:

You are apparently not familiar with analogy syntax.

Daemmerung is simply asking if there is a similar plugin, but using emacs
syntax.

~~~
Daemmerung
Thanks, Walter.

I've tried using XKeymacs (<http://www.cam.hi-ho.ne.jp/oishi/indexen.html>) to
this end, but had problems with the previous Thunderbird. Perhaps I should try
again with 3.0.

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mahmud
Thunderbird, Firefox and Emacs. Seriously, the three pieces of software my
life would be meaningless without. Greasemonkey and Lisp are the crack cocaine
of software, that is, if crack allowed you to realize an innate higher
potential in yourself.

I have never scripted it myself, but I have paid someone else to do it and my
thunderbird add-ons account for at least 20% of my income. If you're doing a
lot of marketing and lead generation, you owe it to yourself to tame this
beast to your advantage. Specially for one-person shops, you can bypass the
whole CRM shenanigans with a well kept TB strategy. Good luck!

~~~
bvi
Could you elaborate?

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est
Looks like it tries to download every email in Gmail and index it locally.
God. My maillist subscription just made my HDD explode. Didn't IMAP provide
some sort of search function already?

~~~
fjabre
IMAP does provide a search function but it's substantially slower than
downloading and indexing your emails locally..

~~~
jgranby
I quite like the iPhone's compromise: it stores and indexes the most recent 50
or so messages, and when searching provides a "Continue search on server"
button. Thunderbird (or others) could have a larger store of recent messages,
but this would avoid downloading thousands of mailing list emails.

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Luc
This seems like a good time to mention my favourite add-on, Nostalgy (update
for 3.0): <http://alain.frisch.fr/soft_mozilla.html> . It makes keyboard
control easy. From the description: 'Save time and get back the productivity
you were used to with mutt/pine/eudora!'.

~~~
pqs
Nostalgy is a very good extension. But since I can archive mail in TB3 using
the key A, then I think that nostalgy is not that necessary, which means that
TB3 is much better than TB2 :-)

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vito
Just tried it here, I normally use Mail.app.

First impressions were "oh, this isn't so bad," but then I started using it.
It feels very janky, the interface is a bit disfunctional (going to File > New
Folder gave absolutely no visual feedback as to where it put it, and if you
have the filters window open and make a new folder you have to close and
reopen the filters window for it to notice the new folder). The one thing I
saw that I liked was the "Reply to Mailing list" button, but that just didn't
work, at all. The To: recipient was the person who wrote the email, not the
list. Also, I couldn't figure out how to open a new tab.

E for Effort I suppose, but it's seeming less and less relevant, and if major
releases are this buggy I can see why.

~~~
sounddust
I downloaded it and tried it, and unfortunately it has the same two problems
that I hate about version 2:

1) There is no option to say "reply using the same 'from' address that the
mail was sent to." This means that you either have to set up an "identity" for
every possible e-mail address you use, or you have to reveal your "main"
identity to anyone who sends you an e-mail (and possibly confuse them in the
process).

2) If you get new mail and read it on your iPhone or any other computer while
thunderbird is open, then the status icon/indicator will get permanently stuck
in "new mail" mode and you have to restart the app to get it to disappear.

On the plus side, the search is excellent.

~~~
julianz
> There is no option to say "reply using the same 'from' address that the mail
> was sent to."

Huh? I've used Thunderbird 2 (on Windows) forever and I rely on this feature
all the time, with multiple IMAP accounts and multiple email addresses for
each of the accounts. It just works perfectly.

~~~
phildawes
I suspect you might be mistaken.

Do you just mean you've configured multiple email addresses into thunderbird
and get to pick which one to use, or have you really found out how to do
"reply using the same 'from' address that the mail was sent to." in
thunderbird?

(I use a different email address for each webapp I sign up to but obviously
don't want to have to add each one to thunderbird, so this feature would be
awesome)

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billybob
Just curious - what's the appeal of non-web-based email? I'm forced to use
Outlook at work, but I can't imagine having to install something to get my
personal mail, and having to back up my personal mail. Do people do this
mostly because they're concerned about their data privacy, or because it's
easier to work when you don't have internet access, or what?

~~~
aw3c2
You having the full control over your data.

Do you really not backup your mails? Do you consider them not important or do
you glorify your provider? I highly recommend making your own backups for
anything you consider worth saving.

~~~
mikedouglas
Just because I have control, doesn't mean the data is safer.

It's the practical realization that Google is likely to have a more recent,
redundant backup of my data than me. The amount of effort to ensure that
P(losing my backup) < P(google losing a backup) isn't worth the effort except
for a few very important pieces of data.

~~~
SapphireSun
Of course your google account could always be disabled for some reason....

~~~
mikedouglas
That's true, and a much better reason than data loss.

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83457
I've been using the CuteBird theme for a couple years which mimics the Apple
mail client design. Now that I have upgraded to TB3 the theme is no longer
compatible and the default theme, even with the improvements, just looks bad.

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cmwoulfe
Ver 3 - Used for a few days, buggy, want to go back to version 2 for the time
being and upgrade later. Can't find ver 2. Any suggestions.

The Woof Man

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sgbrix
Using Firefox 3.5.5 no fixes yet 12/11 for TB & Lightning. What a doozy!
Remember satellite to mars, feet & meters? Here is one right on earth.

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moo
Lightning calendar add-on is not compatible.

~~~
teilo
The nightly for the 1.0 branch is compatible, and fairly stable. I have been
using it for months with TBird 3 pre-releases, and am using it in 3.0 right
now.

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dustingetz
if its not better than gmail, i don't think anyone cares.

~~~
elbenshira
I think there is a valid point hidden inside this flame-bait. GMail (and other
web-based email clients) are making inroads against traditional desktop email
clients. I used Thunderbird for a long time, but just found GMail's client
much more intuitive and faster. The best part is that web apps are getting
faster and faster as JS engines improve.

This isn't the case for desktop clients, at least from my experience. Bloat
always sneak up on you. Sure, this happens on web apps too (e.g. Google Wave),
but it doesn't feel as bad because we're used to web apps being "slow" (only
to get faster the next year). For desktop clients, once you're bloated then
you pretty much stay that way.

I loved Thunderbird and I was excited about Thunderbird 3, but really, I don't
see a reason why I would want to leave GMail.

Of course, I'm not using "enterprise" email for work or anything. But even
enterprise email will be web-based eventually.

~~~
sid0
Interestingly, I find Gmail's client an absolute pain to work with. It's the
best browser-based client, but that really isn't saying much.

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rbanffy
It's the orange space rocket, one that launches from under a pool, right?

~~~
chaosmachine
If you look closely at the launch page (top left), they've actually snuck in a
look-alike rocket.

~~~
rbanffy
I could't find it... Is's too good a reference to let it pass.

