I'll start off with a few simple questions:

What is Mike's overall role within the foundation and what other projects has he been a large contributor to?

Who are some other notable Lightning contributors?

Can you give us a progress report on Lightning and a rough estimate of when we can see some test builds?

Do you forsee Lightning being integrated into Thunderbird by default or remain an extension?

When will we start seeing nightly releases so it's easy to get involved in the process (testing, etc)?

maker of fine omelettes

This begs the question... from one omelette lover to another what is your idea of the perfect omelette? What are you putting in?

I'm sorry but I have to correct this misuse where ever I see it.

Begging the Question:

The phrase 'begging the question' describes a type of logical fallacy (also called 'petitio principii') in which the evidence given for a proposition is as much in need of proof as the proposition itself.

That is, Begging the question does not mean "blank raises the quesion" which is how it was used above, but rather is a translation from latin of a logical falacy used in debate.

(personal pet peave)

Anders

I switched from MS Outlook to Thunderbird due to a virus that crashed my personal system despite my best efforts. But ever since I have missed having the built in task list, calendaring options, etc. I have tried to use Sunbird to fufil this obligation but the biggest problem is that i have to sync things to my Palm as I move around. What is the committment to linking to other formats such as PalmOS or to internet calendaring sites? How is this being implemented? How is this going?

How is Lightning envisioned? Is it mainly Thunderbird with extensions? Will it be a new UI similar to Outlook's that puts it all together?

How far off is the initial testing release? How far off is the initial stable release? How far off is the need for testers?

How can the average person help in these early stages? Ideas? Testing? Hype?

What has been the biggest challenge in creating the vision and then implementing this product?

How does this interact with the rest of the Mozilla products? If Lightning takes off is that going to hurt the sustainability and support of Thunderbird?

Is this currently a community product with some support of the Foundation? Or is this being actively supported by the Foundation? I.e. is this like the new Seamonkey project or more like the current Firefox project.

Did you have a good Easter? :)

Thanks for doing this, hopefully answering questions will not take too much of your time that would hurt development possibilities.

I'm sorry but Anders has brought up a pet peeve of mine: people insisting that "begging the question" can only apply to that specific logical fallicy. An understanding of the meanings of the words "beg" and "question" combined with a competence in the use or understanding of the English language will lead anyone to interpret the phrase "beg the question" to mean "cause someone to ask the question". The phrase makes complete sense in that context.

What's more, the phrase fails to make sense in its meaning related to logic. To "beg the question", based only on an understanding of the individual words, can not mean petitio principii. That makes it use in that context even less defensible than in the context usually perceived as incorrect.

I agree there would be no harm in using the phrase "raise the question" to avoid ambiguity.

In terms of user interface, do you admire/use Seamonkey or Firefox more? Do you predict that this preference will be strongly or weakly reflected in the UI of Lightning?

Mike,

Can you elaborate on CalDav support for Lightning? Recently Novell introduced Hula, which will support CalDav, and together with a client like Lightning, could be a nice open source competitor to Exchange.

Also, can you talk about GroupDav and some of the other, older open source groupware efforts? Does Lightning plan on supporting one, or the other, or both? What do you think will be the preferred "backend" for Lightning for integrated groupware?

Before asking questions, there's a Q&A to be read here: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Lightning .

Now on to my questions:
* Since this is an integration project, what will the UI look like?
How will you manage to stuff a calendar view, a thread view, and a mail view in one? (plus, a sources/boxes/folders view, a task list, a contact list, ...)
Will you do it like evo - screenshots here http://www.novell.com/products/evolution/ - by switching between views?
Or maybe gmail-wise, mixing messages and threads in a flat view, which gives context and should gain space?

* Also on the integration line, what do you think is to gain by combining messages with calendars?
One idea is to link messages with tasks - for example, saying «I shoud reply to this before this day»; or to attach e-mails or threads to events, when the e-mail is giving info about the event. Are there more combo powers to be expected?

* Do you have any general ideas to help coping with really large quantities of mail?
Like, tagging messages, collapsing threads, using search... (for reference, did you have a look at remail http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/ or chandler http://www.osafoundation.org/Chandler_Compelling_Vision.htm - I know it looks like vaporware)
Update: chandler and remail are mentioned in the Q&A, so you must have some ideas!

* Actually, things like tags could be done in Thunderbird, but they would benefit the calendar too.
When there are new features, where do you draw the line between what is for you and what is for the parent projects?

* Mozilla is a big mix of languages. C++, javascript, XUL, XPCOM... In this project, do you focus on the XUL+js (the web-like part), or do you use the whole mix?

Hello, I have some ideas/requests for Lightning features that I would like your feedback on.

(1) I often like to keep good records of what I've been working on or doing, so it would be nice if Lightning had a display where it showed, for any given day, items such as: tasks I completed or worked on, emails I received, emails I sent, and (assuming Firefox is installed) what webpages I browsed (the history). It could even keep a copy of any forum/form posts I made each day. We could also make extensions to link to other day-related data, such as your IM logs. (These kind of records can really come in handy when you forget something important.)

(2) There are a good deal of tasks we have to do over and over again, like do our exercises, go to the bank on Fridays, pay bills before the end of the month, etc. It would help to be able to make tasks periodic, so that when we finish such a task, TB would automatically create a corresponding task with a customizable later deadline.

(3) I love the idea mentioned on the wiki of a task hierarchy, where tasks can be parts of other tasks or projects, which in turn could be parts of other tasks or projects. I think this would be displayed nicely as a kind of threaded/collapsable menu, like one at http://gemal.dk/util/.

(4) A priority or importance associated with each task; i.e. urgent, normal, low, no deadline, etc. There could also be an estimated and actual time for completion.

(5) It would help me a lot to be able to put my tasks into customizable time schedules/time organizers and then be able to print them out. These schedules are easy to make using basic HTML tables. A simple example is found here: http://www.d.umn.edu/student/loon/acad/strat/plan_week_sched.html.

(6) The ability to make Gnatt charts for our tasks, like the ones shown in the middle of this page: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_03.htm, would be neat.

Do you think any of these are useful or would be implemented?

What' s about Brutus or : http://www.omesc.com/modules/main_module/
Outlook Project Connector : http://www.openconnector.org/
Integration ?

and CALDAV Integration ?

Christopher

1. Will Lightning have a built-in support for Pocket PC synchro ?
2. Will Lightning have a free/busy sight and shared calendars functionnalities ?
3. When, oh when , please ?!

What areas of the code for lightning would make a [good first bug]? (Or, alternatively, where would one start if they wish to give you guys a hand?)

What things do you *want* help with?

I'm deploying the calendar xpi at work, with a webdav server. My need a calendar client for users, and on the server I'm doing some scripts to make diferents groups of calendars.
What oriented me on that direction is the standard file format : ical.
On my intranet I make an application for vacations* and I was easy to make a script to generate online ical file.

Must I stop and wait 6 month more ?
Wath is the diffrence between webdav and webcal ?
are the files standard ical files ?

There are a few problems whith calendar :
- reload remote calendar at startup doesn't works.
- alarms: it uses the mail account, and thats wrong if I edit someone else's calendar.
- alarms: I'm using s/mime: calendar ask's me my password to send me alarm.
- it's not possible to simply receive a mail with a unique event (invitation), and to merge it with my calendar.

Why not working on the calendar projet to improve those things, rather than making a new project ?

* In France we work legally 35h/week, but in real it's 40h +lots of day in compensation. So there are always people here/not-here

Will it be possible to synchronize with Palm OS/Jpilot and are there connections with the JPilot project (http://jpilot.org/) ?
Merci et bon courage ! Muriel