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September 30, 2008
Thunderbird 3.0b1 renamed to 3.0a3
After talking with a bunch of folks in the last couple of days, we (thunderbird-drivers, in concert with the folks on our weekly status call) have decided to rename our immediately forthcoming milestone from 3.0 beta 1 to 3.0 Alpha 3. A number of things have led us to this conclusion:
* we ended up not landing a bunch of stuff for this milestone that we had initially hoped to (AutoConfig, GloDa w/full-text search, STEEL)
* there is still a lot of highly user-visible feature work left to do (the above stuff, tab model overhaul, significant message view work, global Inbox, search bar stuff, calendar integration, ...).
* calling something a beta is likely to trigger a bunch of extra press attention that we're not yet in a position to deal with -- some number reviews that will be inappropriately pre-judging Tb3 based on its current state. In the best case, this would be a distraction.
While we've been pretty clear for a while that calling something a beta doesn't mean that we're feature complete, what we've got now feels like it's pretty far from being representative (from a user-experience and user-visible-change point of view) of what Thunderbird 3 is going to feel like.
The confluence of these things together makes us think that we'll do better to ship this as an alpha and not call down the extra attention that a beta will bring just yet.
Posted by dmose at September 30, 2008 9:38 AM
Comments
Sounds like a good call.
Posted by: Eric Shepherd at September 30, 2008 10:51 AM
I totally agree!
What about Lightning integration? Will a beta version be shipped without integrated calendar?
I think that's a main feature and should be included in the first beta.
Posted by: Fabi at September 30, 2008 12:40 PM
@Fabi: That's not yet clear. We're going to try and sort out our 3.0 plans a little more later this week. After that, I'll make another public posting.
Posted by: Dan Mosedale at September 30, 2008 2:48 PM
I agree for the renumbering. It'll make things easier for users, the press and developers.
In the future, though, Mozilla and friends should make sure that betas are features completes. This too would make things easier for users, the press and developers.
Posted by: Jacques at September 30, 2008 4:15 PM
A good call and the case well presented. You have my support.
Posted by: Ron K. at September 30, 2008 5:51 PM
@Jacques: I tend to agree that making our story less complex is likely to be a win. We won't be feature complete when we do go to beta for Thunderbird 3, but I hope in future releases we can move more in that direction.
Posted by: Dan Mosedale at September 30, 2008 6:02 PM
Hi
And how does it look like with minimize to try feature? Will it be available finnaly? It´s bug 208923
Posted by: unknown at October 1, 2008 12:20 AM
Looking for a word about the status of the re-work with Addressbook!? How about a3 and/or bx?
Posted by: Günter at October 1, 2008 4:18 AM
@Dan: If the beta is not going to be feature complete, then I can't see how it, in my view, is a beta.
My expectations as a user is that I should be able to use the features that are at the heart of the release. I might expect it to crash, and I might expect some UI tweaking and l10n stuff before a release candidate.
As a developer, for a beta, I'd want APIs to have stabilised, so that building plugins or derived products can be built without there being architectural changes before RC1. Some API tweaks would be tolerated.
I don't want to knock things, as I do appreciate the amazing results of the open source efforts here, but I really think that Mozilla is losing ground compared to the Eclipse Foundation when it comes to consistency.
Having a clear roadmap, that states what 'beta' means, before the beta release, would be a great start.
Posted by: Neale at October 1, 2008 4:46 AM
@unknown: we don't know yet; still needs to be triaged. If someone interested signs up to do the work, that'll make it significantly more likely.
@Günter: there's no single big addressbook overhaul. There is a roadmap page on the wiki, and tasks from that roadmap are happening piece-by-piece. 3.0a3 already has one of the big cleanups; I suspect there will be a few more before 3.0 final ships.
@Neale: it's certainly true that Mozilla has historically used the word "beta" more loosely than many projects do. As I said in my response to Jacques, I think we should try and move towards a more standard usage over time, though I don't expect to see us get there in the Tb3 timeframe.
Posted by: Dan Mosedale at October 2, 2008 10:26 AM
I'm sorry, but I must be the only one in the world who thinks Thunderbird is dying. I used the thing from pre-beta1 until version 2 but come on, how's the thing going to ever compete with *any* mail client when it can only talk to MS Exchange in a crippled way?
Posted by: unknown at October 3, 2008 6:57 AM
I have migrated from Outlook Express(now Live Mail), to Thunderbird 2.X.X and feel very happy about it for the following main reason:
Portability: as installation does not require Admin privilege, I can install(OR copy a previous installation and profiles) to USB and run it anywhere. This is excellent feature for have-nots masses who depend on cybercafe or public PCs.
While I am looking forward to Thunderbird 3.0, I hope the portability and non-admin feature will be retained.
Can Microsoft be persuaded to allow access to Live Hotmail via Thunderbird? For that, I guess the newly created DeltaSync protocol support has to be incorporated in Thunderbird. If Microsoft's Live team agrees, it will be a win-win situation for Mozilla Messaging Thunderbird, Live mail as well as for users.
Excellent work !
Many thanks to Mozilla Messaging team !
pmb_can
Posted by: pmbcan at October 3, 2008 10:41 AM
@unknown: Thunderbird is actually quite revitalized these days, which you'll see if you join us on irc.mozilla.org / #maildev sometime. As far as MS Exchange interoperability goes, we're definitely interested in improving there, however Exchange users are only one of many different market segments.
@pmb_can: I'm not aware of anything that would break existing portability features. DeltaSync support is an interesting idea; though it would be much nicer if Microsoft would expose something standards-based.
Posted by: Dan Mosedale at October 3, 2008 11:34 AM
DOES THIS MEANS "THUNDERBIRD" BE CALLED "SHREDDER"?
Posted by: STEPHEN at October 7, 2008 9:10 AM
@STEPHEN: yes, Alpha 3 will still be branded as Shredder.
Posted by: Dan Mosedale at October 7, 2008 10:48 AM
Yeah it may not be a good idea to release something tagged beta until you can at least get spell check working. I have a feeling that will not go unnoticed. :)
Posted by: ermax at October 10, 2008 11:12 AM
forget about exchange integration. Let someone
do that as a plugin.
You guys have got to *NAIL* your IMAP4 implementation for multiple, large
mailboxes and do it fast. Mozilla Thunderbird 2 is so pokey with IMAP that it is embarassing to recommend it to folks. Mail.app screams by comparison, as does pine, alpine, and other implementations. Why is IMAP so slow on TBird?
While we're at is, can you guys make it so I can run more than one instance of Thunderbird on Linux with a shared NFS home directory? Its not the 80's anymore - I have more than 1 computer I work on. :)
Any, bitching aside, thanks for all your hard work - you guys still have the one Mail prog. I can use on Mac/Win/Linux - looks the same, works the same - that is a big accomplishment all by itself.
Matt
Posted by: Matt Weatherford at November 21, 2008 10:25 PM
Cool post...
Here's my post about Thunderbird:
http://opensourcethefuture.blog.co.in/2008/11/28/mozilla-thunderbird/
Posted by: Sudipto Sarkar at February 21, 2009 1:57 PM
Has Thunderbird 2 been abandoned? Will Thunderbird 3 be supported any better? I ask because so many bugs have been open for so long. Case in point: Bug 271222, open since 2004-11-22 (OVER 4 YEARS). A bug, not an "enhancement". Still not even assigned. Serious black eye for Thunderbird in my opinion. Enough for me to remove the Thunderbird recommendation from my websites, and think seriously of moving my clients to different, better supported email software. Very disappointing.
Posted by: John Navas at March 11, 2009 8:16 AM