Simon Willison’s Weblog

That's pretty much my experience. I had postponed my adoption of Thunderbird until it had reached a supposedly more stable release. After being forced to upgrade because of problems with Outlook Express, I have to say that I'm very impressed with this new Mozilla product.

Ronaldo - 5th September 2003 22:02 - #

I've been putting on installing it for the same reasons. Considering its an offshoot of Moz 1.4/1.5b and not a new product the version number shouldn't be so low. They do seem to be moving from just concentrating on the non-visible code to making it look good, which is a great thing!

KO - 5th September 2003 23:50 - #

I've heard the same sort of thing in regards to Mozilla Firebird. I guess the version number reflects the stability of the UI, since its core is Mozilla, which is at 1.5 beta right now (which would be considerably more stable than something at a 0.6 release).

Andy - 6th September 2003 00:21 - #

Unfortunately 0.2 has given me trouble setting up multiple accounts (a single user on my server under two domains). I'm going to have to put up with Outlook a little while longer. It's a shame, the interface to thunderbird is just so much nicer.

Patrick Lioi - 6th September 2003 00:41 - #

Yes, I put off Thunderbird for the same reason too. The email client I was using before didn't support IMAP, though, so I gave Thunderbird a whirl. Works very well.

caiuschen - 6th September 2003 02:30 - #

As I understand it, Daniel Glazman is currently working on Composer++, which will eventually be spun off as a standalone application.

Minh Nguyen - 6th September 2003 04:13 - #

Thunderbird 2.0a is nice, and small, and fast. But, it still lacks too many features. I'd rather not use OE, but too is fast, and it has a lot of features. I find the same weaknesses in Firebird. I switch to Firebird/Thunderbird, but ended up switching to IE/OE within a few days. I'll continue to watch the scene for new realeases, and encourage others to give them a try.

Clint Laskowski - 6th September 2003 05:27 - #

"I find the same weaknesses in Firebird. I switch to Firebird/Thunderbird, but ended up switching to IE/OE within a few days." Ok I can sort of see what you mean with regards to Thunderbird (I personally have yet to wean myself off of OE), but what exactly is Firebird missing that would have you switching back to IE? Are you visiting a lot of active-X websites or something? I find it extremely difficult switching back to IE (banking sometimes requires this) and being assaulted by pop-ups and trying to middle-click links forgetting that they aren't going to open-up in new tabs.

MikeyC - 6th September 2003 06:40 - #

I've tried Thunderbird on both Windows and OS X. I have found it a little unreliable on OS X (using IMAP). It has worked OK for me on Windows (I'm using it with POP3 there) but no way is it as fast, as feature-rich, or as configurable as Pegasus Mail.

Of course, like OE, it is a newsreader, too, which Pegasus is not; but there's plenty of those.

Michael - 6th September 2003 09:40 - #

"...what exactly is Firebird missing that would have you switching back to IE?"

I've finally, permanently switched to Firebird, but there are lots of little things I miss:

(1) Despite hype to the contrary, IE has always rendered pages faster than any Mozilla-based product on my machines. The time from blank page-to-readable content always seems shorter.

(2) IE's instance load times are much, much snappier.

(3) Autocomplete is more robust... I can just highlight an entry and hit the "del" key to get it off the list.

(4) IE's bookmark management is more straightforward and efficient, IMO.

Almost every other conceivable comparison goes in Firebird's favor, but if I were fixated on any of those four to the exclusion of tabs, native pop-up blocking, and so on, I would have switched back already. As it is, I figure all but the bookmark management issue will go away as the product matures, and I can live with one long-term deficiency.

Roger Benningfield - 6th September 2003 12:31 - #

I'm the opposite, I found 0.1 very stable and reliable, and recommended it to people. The 0.2 release is even more so. They are taking a great approach, being conservative with the version numbers. I attribute this partly to open source. I think a commercial software company would be in a hurry to declare a 1.0 release that could be sold. Mozilla seems more interested in getting dedicated users to become advocates of Thunderbird. As for using the Mac OS X version and IMAP, I've had no problems doing this...

pete - 6th September 2003 13:54 - #

You forgot one more feature in IE that isn't in Firebird, Roger.

Firebird doesn't yet have the ability to completely crash the windows file explorer and all disk browsing operations when it crashes or a mapped drive server goes missing. :-)

Chris - 6th September 2003 15:18 - #

(1) Despite hype to the contrary, IE has always rendered pages faster than any Mozilla-based product on my machines. The time from blank page-to-readable content always seems shorter.

You can speed up initial rendering speed considerably by changing the value of the nglayout.initialpaint.delay option to zero via the about:config page. The default value is 250 milliseconds.

insin - 6th September 2003 16:00 - #

If you have the time, look around the mozillazine newsgroups. There are a couple of Pentium4 optimized builds that give Firebird and Thunderbird that extra punch.

edmz - 7th September 2003 07:36 - #

Roger, IE loads faster than mozilla by default partly because many things are already loaded by windows at startup (even when some are not needed).

Arnaud - 8th September 2003 09:34 - #

IE's bookmark management is more straightforward and efficient, IMO.

One of the (many) reasons I prefer Firebird is the bookmark management. Being asked the folder where I'd like to save my bookmark and being able to rename it before I save it saves me from near-screen-width bookmark menus.

Wilson - 8th September 2003 18:31 - #

I confirm, there will be a Standalone Composer.

Daniel Glazman - 9th September 2003 16:55 - #