Mozilla's Lightning to strike Outlook?

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Thunderbird just needs polishing

"Whether Thunderbird, released this month, can have a similar impact on the Outlook juggernaut depends in large part on how quickly Mozilla can match some of the calendar features Outlook ties into the e-mail application."

I disagree, one of the attractions of Thunderbird was its *lack* of fluff like calender and meeting scheduling and all the other stuff that Outlook is loaded down with (e.g. the funny folder bar that is a legacy item from the original).

I think the only thing holding back Thunderbird is bugs and some lack of polish.

1. It has an annoying flicker on the preview pane (it overlaps the status bar, then the status bar is redrawn) and this flickers hundreds of times when it starts up as though its drawing it once per message in my inbox.

2. In a slow internet connection, if I click on some spam columns before it has finished automatically marking items as spam, it will fail to move the spam to the Junk folder. My manual clicks seem to interfere with the automated spam processing.

3. When I switch folders if I switch back to another folder *before* the contents of the first one have been retrieved, on the *new* folder it gives me a blank, as though the switch interferes with the pull of the previous folder contents and it doesn't fix it up correctly.

4. The save search folders are excellent, but from a workflow perspective perhaps they could be better.
I read an email from 'fred@fred.com', I vaguely recall the person or subject and want to see the context. At the moment, I have to click on a folder the message is likely saved in, manually copy his email address and then search for it.
Wouldn't it be better if I could select 'more from fred' or 'more on this subject' or 'emails on this date' and it automatically makes a search folder to pull all his related messages into a search folder, and switch me to it.

5. I have 8 accounts, why do I have to search each separately? Can't I have top level search folders that contain the results across all the accounts and the local folders aswell?

6. The icons Axelssen did for Thunderbird are also not up to his excellent Qute standard, trying to put too much detail in, e.g. the clip on the small version of the 'drafts' pen looks like a smudge or a drop shadow or something.

Note, I accept some of these are personal opinions.

Just polish it up, clean up the usability and it'll easily dust Outlook Express. Outlook is used by corporates and they won't switch if you add a calender.

Posted by: Nigel Johnstone   Posted on: 12/23/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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