Bird is the Word!
By David Shamah, The
This week, I continue my love affair with the Mozilla
family (don’t tell my wife!). I have made the switch to a
"substitute" e-mail program, and I don't intend to look back. Ever. Unless Microsoft somehow diabolically makes using
Windows contingent upon using Outlook/Outlook Express.
Not that there weren't alternatives for the picking,
all along. The most popular alternative choice of recent years has been Eudora
(http://www.eudora.com), which has scads of features, including Scamwatch, says it can tell whether an e-mail was sent by
the people the message claims to be from, or whether it's a "phishing" message – like one that pretends to be from
a bank or some such institution and asks you for personal details. Other
notable non-Microsoft e-mail programs include Pegasus (http://www.pmail.com),
Eureka (http://www.eureka-email.com), Foxmail (http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english2.htm),
Incredimail (http://www.incredimail.com), and even
Scientific Letter (http://www.sciletter.com), which makes sending letters in
scientific notation fun and easy.
Been there, done that. All of these programs have
their strengths and weaknesses, but they just didn't have "it;" they
were either too complicated or too iffy looking; they just didn't make the
professional grade, for whatever reason.
Meanwhile, Outlook Express remained the default
choice for most users. Most of us are used to it, and it does an acceptable job
of getting and sending mail. Outlook, of course, is the application of choice
for many people who use it not only for its e-mail capabilities, but its
scheduling, calendar, and contact functions as well. And in offices where the
system servers run Microsoft Exchange, Outlook is often the only option for
communications.
If working for "the man" – Microsoft –
doesn't bother you and you feel comfortable with the Outlook family, by all
means keep on using it. Theoretically, Microsoft's programs should work
perfectly with Microsoft's operating system.
But if you have had enough of Outlook's lethargic way
of doing things; if you're tired of looking at messages like "Outlook
could not proceed because of an error. ODEZ5XXXX;" if you think giving the
"little guy" a chance is important, if only to keep the "big
guy" on his toes; and if you want a fast, efficient, easy to use and –
perhaps most important – expandable e-mail program, you should try Mozilla's Thunderbird, the message companion to the Firefox browser.
Thunderbird, like Mozilla, has its roots in Netscape,
and at first glance Thunderbird will remind you of Netscape's mail function,
which was always a little more "mellow" than the Outlook family. But
Thunderbird goes far beyond anywhere Netscape ever dared venture.
Where Outlook aims to mold the way you work in the
interests of making you more "efficient," Thunderbird gives you the
freedom to work any way you want. From the way mail is organized to the wide
array of extensions available to expand its usefulness.
Many of us receive dozens of messages a day. Not all
of them are spam, and even some spam is interesting. You may be more efficient
than me, but I usually glance at my e-mail and make a mental note to go back to
it later – which I of course never have a chance to do. But these undigested
messages don't go away, and after four or five days, you have a formidable pile
to wade through – which makes picking through the important ones a time
consuming, difficult task. Thunderbrd has the cure
for this ill, though; when I take that first cursory glance, I can label
e-mails any way I want – whether as "business," "personal,"
"from people I know," or any other criteria I want. All I have to do
is mark the message with its label, and I can view only those messages that
interest me at a given time. You can create views with any criteria you want
(like "personal messages over 7 days old") and view only those
messages from the View drop down menu. Compare this labeling power to Outlook's
far more limited system of flags and "mark as read/unread" (both of
which are also features of Thunderbird). Also note that this is separate from
Thunderbird's full fledged filter system, which uses any or all of these
criteria to direct messages to specific folders.
Spam, of course, is the bane of e-mail, choking not
only your inbox, but wasting your time as you try to slog through annoying,
useless messages. If we're already mentioning filters and labels, it seems
clear that the most useful filter an e-mail program can provide is one against
junk mail – and Thunderbird does the job admirably, letting you classify annoying
messages as e-mail that can be automatically deleted or segregated. The
program's filter is designed to "learn" what messages you consider
trash, and will fine tune its settings to ensure it gets everything. And, if
you want to be sure that a sender's messages doesn't get caught up in the
general housecleaning, simply put that contact on T-Bird's "white
list," which will ensure that those messages are always protected.
Certain e-mail programs which shall remain nameless
are always among top suspects of introducing and spreading viruses on a system
– simply because they run scripts in messages by default. Not Thunderbird,
though; unlike with Outlook, scripts do not run by default, and the program
will alert you when one is present in a message. Thunderbird also does not
display remote images in a message unless you give it permission to.
Thunderbird supports all POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, as well as AOL Mail and
HTML mail, as well as Hotmail (with a plug-in available at the Thunderbird
site). Add to this a built in newsreader, RSS support, changeable interfaces
("themes"), and a built in spell checker for your messages, and
Thunderbird becomes a real contender to replace the Outlooks.
But like with Firefox, it's
the wide range of extensions that further widen Thunderbird's range of services
that put the program over the top – way, way over, as far as I'm concerned. On
my system, I installed ConQuery, which lets you
highlight a word and open up a browser window to search for information at
sites like the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, Google
advanced search, or Alexa, which gives you page rank
as well as sites related to the term you are searching; Address Context, which
lets you add user addresses to your contact book as an e-card or create a
mailing list automatically; and Launchy, which gives
you a great deal of control over how links within messages are handled when
clicked on.
Some of the extensions that work with Firefox that we mentioned last week work, like Foxytunes, which gives you control over your computer's
music from within applications, work with Thunderbird as well. A comprehensive
list of extensions is available at http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/extensions
(note that, unlike with Firefox where extensions can
be installed on line, Thunderbird extensions must be downloaded and then installe).
Thunderbird even has a full fledged
scheduler/calendar extension, called Mozilla Calendar, which lets you plan
events with alarms and recurring events, as well as letting you e-mail alarms
to users. You can also publish calendars and download calendars in the Apple
iCal format; you can download hundreds of calendars at http://icalshare.com.
Mozilla Calendar does everything Outlook does, except hook up with Microsoft
servers and Palm Pilots (they're working on the Palm Pilot thing). There is
also s stand-alone version of the calendar called Sunbird (both available at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar).
Complaints? After a set of features like these, who
could possibly complain? Actually, there is one slight drawback to Thunderbird,
and that is its sparse documentation. Actually, T-Bird is pretty intuitive, but
if you like seeing things in black and white, the official documentation can be
seen at http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/documentation.html. Equivalent
keyboard shortcuts for
Thunderbird and Outlook Express are listed at http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/keyboard.html.
And there are plenty of user forums and help sites, including http://www.moztips.com,
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Main_Page, and http://mozilla.gunnars.net.
The help system is not as organized as Microsofts' products are because Thunderbird (and Firefox) are open source programs, which means they are
owned by no (wo)man. They
are free spirits, helped along by the contributions of users around the world.
But this is precisely their strength! New functionality is being added all the
time in the form of extensions, and the program gets more, not less, secure
daily, as users innovate and improve in order to better protect your mail and
make your life easier – unlike the "other guys." Get out of the
"Redmond Rut" – start using Thunderbird instead of Outlook/Outlook
Express and become a true cyber-citizen of the world!
Download Thunderbird from http://texturizer.net/thunderbird;
free, for all computers and platforms (Windows 98 and better, Mac OSX 10.1,
Linux kernel 2.2.14 minimum). Hebrew language version of
Thunderbird for Linux and Windows available at http://www.mozilla.org.il/thunderbird; Hebrew Firefox for Linux, Mac and Windows
at http://www.mozilla.org.il/firefox.
ds@newzgeek.com