Bug #224795 [ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224795 ] prevents me from being able to leave thunderbird open for extended periods of time, which in turn makes it nearly useless for me as my main email client. Sadly this bug doesn't seem to have a lot of attention, and while I do know how to program in several languages, I've looked into the code several times and don't even know where to begin figuring out how to fix it myself. The complexity of the Mozilla Apps is well beyond my abilities.

inertia, I used to see that a lot. I don't see it any more. I'm not sure if it was a Thunderbird fix or my changing IMAP providers.

--Asa

It definitely has not been fixed in version 0.9 (20041103) for me. I think it is only with certain IMAP servers (one bug commenter mentions courier-imaps connection limit, but lowering my values here did not fix the problem).

Yes. I see this too. It's the last bug i see before i can say Thunderbird is stable and ready to serve

Is there a way to try the "Software Update" feature? I would like to see how this works. Since we are getting so close to a 1.0 release, this feature should be working fairly reliably.

Kipp, Thunderbird 1.0 isn't going to have software update. It's not a planned 1.0 feature.

--Asa

it's sad but imo you won't be able to get over outlook until you push the offline mode / interaction with thunderbird ...

I don't know if it's because we are all programmers/web developers with constant Internet connection and we don't see it as a problem but since I moved in Cambodia, I can see thunderbird is _far_ from being a good replacement for outlook express.

I liked thunderbird when I was on a cable connection but now, just think that here, one hour on Internet costs more than 5$ ... I had to switch to outlook express because I can push on one button, it'll connect to the Internet, sent my written mail, fetch new mail, ... and ... disconnect after (also consider the fact that the average connection here is 2k / sec so I don't want to sit in front of my computer and wait 30min to be able to disconnect my expensive and slow connection)

I'm writing this in the hope some developers of thunderbird might see it and get the point I'm trying to raise behind those badly written paragraphs ;).

- Unfortunately, Thunderbird is not ready for south east Asian countries (lets say at least for Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and most of Thailand) and I guess it's not the fault of anybody because it's hard to draw the picture when you're not living there.

... and that's why we need http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=223381 fixed! (I know this is hardly a stability release, but it's a pretty annoying setback for people used to Outlook, on a modem connection.) Maybe for 1.1 at least?

Is there a change that bug #271551 could be checked in before release (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271551) or is it much much too late with that kind of checkins now?
Bug #271551 is "Add TDC root CA certs to NSS", and is the root CA of the "official danish digital signature". It would be great PR for Mozilla in Denmark if Thunderbird are the first email-klient with builtin support of this. Forthcomming releases of Outlook will include it too.

I totally agree with Stig here - I had hoped it would have been part of Firefox 1.0, but it sadly didn't make it. I hope Thunderbird 1.0 will ship with it.

I get bug #224795 sometimes too btw.

Bug 268245 is also a must-fix IMO. Makes Junk Mail filtering totally useless.

I am seeing a strange bug.

When I want to display message filter for a newsgroup, filter dialog send me to my first mailbox :(

Seems to be a week old or so.

Known bug ?

Used build 2004112 on XP and am sure to have lost an email that I composed. It was not sent, and not stored in my IMAP Sent folder, but I am sure I pressed the Send button. Of course this is not reproducible.

The poor online/offline experience for modem users is genuinely the only thing stopping me from moving my Grandfather over to Thunderbird.

An 'outlook killer'???

I don't think so! Outlook2003 is miles ahead in look and feel.

W.

Further to my comment about online/offline, there appears to be a patch in Bugzilla that would fix this (on Windows at least) that's been languishing there for over 18 months.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76111

Two major issues with Thunderbird:

* As others mentioned, offline support is far from great. I use TB on both my desktop and laptop, and find offline mode rather clunky. Can we have a "Select All" button? Having to select 200-odd folders individually is a massive pain...

* TB crashes when I close it after being open for a while on my desktop (using latest nightly). But not on laptop... I'm guessing it might have something to do with IMAP and SMP (Desktop is P4 w/ HT enabled), as I saw a checkin a while ago designed to prevent a crash something along these lines (race condition to do with IMAP and SMP or similar?). I've been submitting talkback reports as it occurs..

Having just stepped over from Eudora, i must say the wizard is purely amazing, i've never seen such a brilliant thing copying most of my mailboxes and personae and stuff (i only missed the filtering rules i made. oh and i stepped over because Eudora lost some maps and I hoped I could make Thunderbird pick them up but as it is all automated i could not).

Before you jump to 1.0, i would suggest to make a few steps inbetween, and do some usability tests too. As a newby i may be irritating as you have heard it before a zillion times, then just skip this message, but I really miss these features, which could be implemented i think before 1.0:

* ordering the maps by dragging,
* highlighting/marking maps I have not opened since new mail came in (very different from not having read all mail!), which marking disappears as soon as i open the map
* labeling mail in a color i want, in stead of your pre-made groups work/etc
* have a much easier search, in which i can select in what maps i want to look by selecting or de-selecting them, peek in Eudora to see what that looks like. Also add easier shortcut than ctrl+shift+f please. I also want to be able to search in ALL headers AND the subject AND the attachment name at once ('all'.

I totally agree with Mathieu Pellerin. Its really pain on the ass, when you stick to modem connection. If you want a Outlook-killer app, better add killer-offline features (and get rid of this stupid shortcuts to save massege to outbox). Use standard alt+s or ctrl+enter to send messege to outbox. And add one option "Send messages immediately/Save to outbox and send later"

Second thing I don't like in TB is it mailbox configuration options. It just insane! Why user is forced to jump throught million windows to conf several accounts? Why user is forced in GlobalInbox mode to use ONE smtp server? Ofcourse, in million and one window he can add another smtp server, but why it's that complicated?

And third thing - migration tool. I tried to migrate from Outlook 2003. TB imported all messages very well, but WITHOUT attachments. I had to migrate through Outlook Espress :D

I think, that 1.0 release of TB is very premature. It's not just stability and kickass features that make application great, but also usability and easy-going interface (and i dont think just about cool-looking icons).

i totally agree about the accounts window.
i think both it and the options window need some serious re-organisation before thunderbird goes to 1.0... if you're going to release a "finished" product to the world, then the end user should be able to navigate it, but at the minute it just feels like a bit of a mess.

it nees to be re-ordered, and probably simplified a lot more... if you want to get the non-web-guru's of this world using thunderbird.
no doubt this will not happen though!

>>There's no doubt in my mind that this is an Outlook-killer and we just need to get those magic numbers, "1 dot 0" attached to it

Thunderbird has a long way to go before it can even reach firefox acceptance.

Thunderbird is clumsy and under-appreciated :(

Download last branch nightly thundersetup.exe on WINXP SP2 and I have got an error of installation. No way run Thunderbird then with xpicleaning.exe running in may occurences (I think it's because I tried many times to run Thunderbird). I think the pb is bound to extensions. My previous version was 041104 ninghtly.
I have to use an old version ( april version 0.6b (20040426)) installed from .zip to read my mail. Yes I have try to uninstall and re-install : no way.
I need to try .zip version now....

Is it just me or is there no way to save account passwords? There is no option anywhere I can find to save the passwords. This is so frustrating, I'm ready to go back to Ximian Evolution.

Ditto the comments made about. I really feel Thunderbird is being rushed to a 1.0 release, while lagging far behind where it should be for a 1.0 release. The Accounts dialog is horrendously overly complicated, and is enough to make even an experienced user cringe. Outlook (2003 and Express) do a far better job of this.

The menu items could do with some cleanup -- particularly the View menu, which seems excessively cluttered.

I'll echo a comment I made previously about how extensions would be far better if a self-contained window could open pointing to update.mozilla.org, and allow you to install Extensions direct from there into TB. The browse, save, manually open is never going to see the same take-up of extensions for TB that FX has seen...

The new toolbar icons and spacing is vastly superior to what went out in 0.9 -- I previously had hacks in userChrome.css to make the button spacing look right!

Please don't rush Thunderbird out the door earlier in a bid to try and make it to "1.0". The first impression to users is what is going to count, and at the moment I still think it has a way to go in the "ease of user for novice users" department!

OK, I gave up and edited prefs.js directly and changed signon.rememberSignons from false to true. Now I get the checkbox on the password window. I don't know why it would be false, especially when I set a master password and told it to encrypt passwords with it.

I did find an interesting bug. If you press Esc at the prompt for the master password, it will continue to prompt multiple times if you keep pressing Esc.

Here is the header from my first Tbird post:
From - Fri May 16 21:59:23 2003
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 21:59:12 -0400
From: JoeS
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030515 Thunderbird/0.1a
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: Netscape.test.multimedia
Subject: Playing with Thunderbird..Don't know if the HTML stuck
Content-Type: multipart/related;
It was an exciting newsgroup post,Thunderbird now offered a lot of additional fonts
From the prospective of a user looking for additional HTML/CSS capability,
Thunderbird has been extremely stable, or should I say 'stagnent'
Not that there have not been added features, "copy/past" was nice.
But if you look at my original subject line above, the subject still applies.
You never quite know what you're gonna get with HTML compose.
A short list: Previously applied body styles persist until you re-boot,
CSS attributes disappear after you modify them,Image links are lost in the edit
HTML function, Cursor missing in edit window, now because of a Linux crash bug,
plugin support has been removed from branch builds.
The average HTML user could not possibly cope with the problems created by
the mail/news composer.
Here is a tracker bug I filed a while back https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240183
An OE killer, no I think not, but a very nice plain text mail reader.
If that's the developement path, then fine, but please delete the reference to
'HTML mail support' on the Thunderbird home page.
JoeS

The only thing I really miss in TB as opposed to Outlook is the possibility to save send messages in the same folder as where the message is that you reply to/forward.

I organise my mails by project, and now I always have to move the mails from the sent folder to the appropriate project folder, quite a pain.

There are some other things that I miss. I agree with some of the above posters, don't rush to the 1.0. This TB isn't 1.0 worthy yet. Complicated configuration and a lot of features missing.

At this point I'm going to switch back to Outlook (I'll keep a close eye on TB), can anyone point me in the right direction to get the mails from TB back in Outlook ?

The nightlies are looking great but I've had to file bug 271717. Double-clicking searched messages (ctrl-shift-f), opens a blank window (expect for the tool bar) and produces an error in the javascript console. Doesn't seem as anyone else is affected? Am I really the only one?

I'm somewhat confused by the whole Firefox | Thunderbird | Mozilla thing. Where is the development taking place? From what I've read so far all 3 are being developed simultaneously!

What is happening in the future? Will the integrated Mozilla Mail & browser suite simply be an install of the Firefox & Thunderbird components, both relying on the Gecko engine?

What is the impact of installing Firefox and Thunderbird (and then being able to upgrade them separately), instead on the Mozilla suite? Could there be version conflicts this way? Which type install would yield the best performance?

Maybe these are really basic questions, but I haven't found them answered anywhere!

i yesterda installed the latest 1.0, and nearly immediately returned back to the .9 version, as i did not see any improvement.
there is still no possibilty to select the quoting signs, i also miss the possibilty to change the date category from the issued date to the sent date in the incoming file.
as previously said, there must be some improvement to comply with outlook. did anybody find a solution to export the messages back to outlook?
werner

Man you people expect a lot out of FREE software. Just remember Outlook (lookout!) is a $35 program and Thunderbird is a $0 program. And to the people complaining about offline/connection issues - sorry, but get a faster connection! - it is not Thunderbird's fault that you are still using ancient dial-up connection. And oh yeah, good luck trying to import your settings, mail etc from Thunderbird into Outlook - Outlook has sh*t for importing.

WhirlyDude,
Wow, take a deep breath please.
There still are people with a dialup connection, not all of them can a. afford a broadband connection, b. have access to such a connection.
You'd be surprised how many people still use dialup.

And as for Outlook, I didn't ask if Outlook has shitty importing capabilities, I asked if there's a way to convert TB mails back to Outlook. If you don't know it, then please just don't respond.

IMHO the #1 problem with Thunderbird (at least up to v0.9) is it's inabilty to format plain text messages correctly. It would be *much* better if Thunderbird would just leave the message alone instead of pretending to be smart... :-(

RobbyT-
[takes deep breath]
I understand broadband is not avialable everywhere, and am not surprised that in areas it is available some people still choose to use dialup *cough* tightwads *cough*. These people shouldn't complain - I mean after all that's why I am paying more for my connection - faster speed! All I am saying is that TB is not lowest common denominator technology - it is not designed with those people in mind as the primary users. Hell, half of open source coding is showing off new capabilites taking advantage of technology. If you want to keep moving forward you need to limit "backwards compatibility" (hint, hint - Microsoft). So yes I realize not everyone is using broadband, but if applications aren't designed to push broadband providers and customers towards the technology, people will be making excuses for using slower connections forever and the "standard" will not be raised.

I believe by you asking how to IMPORT messages back into Outlook from TB defintely opens up discussion on Outlook's import ability.

WhirlyDude -

You have a completely warped view of what open source software is all about. You say that people on dial-up are tightwads because you're too ego-americano-centric to realise that a large proportion of the world doesn't have broadband yet. You seem to think that 'free' software should be developed for the rich techocrats of the world, instead of being useful to everyone. Yes - we should try and stretch the software where possible, but ultimately Thunderbird just isnt at the level of Firefox yet. Anyone can download Firefox and it works great, but to get Thunderbird working, they still need to smooth out the rough. Developers need to make the basic program work cleanly and simply; only then should they start to think about a version 2.0 - one step at a time!

Outlook is the industry standard - it has the power to be arrogant about what it imports and exports. Being able to say that you can change back to outlook easily if you don't like TB is a *very* powerful selling point to anyone starting up on the program. People fear being trapped in a new program, especially a new program that doesn't feel as easy to use...

now, as i have installed the 1.0 thunderbird, i still miss the comfort of outlook. just an example, when i answer a mail, and i like to include the sent i cant format the formerly sent mail with quotes as in outlook. all i see are bars and i can't change to a " another crook is that on the incoming mail the date is the issued, or sent date, i don't know, and not the delivery date. no way to change. import export function is still inadequate. anyhow, it's a great program for 0 cents.
but i hope the next generation is underway.
werner