Desktop or Web Mail?

On Monday Mitchell posted the article Thunderbird — Differences in response to comments on her Email Call to Action post from last week about the Thunderbird’s Future. Mitchell points out that there seems to be a trend of folks moving away from desktop based e-mail clients (Outlook, Evolution, Thunderbird, etc):

• Web mail usage grows. Younger generations in particular use other techniques.
• There are many parts of the world where email is less common than in the US, Western Europe or Japan. For example, in parts of the world where Internet cafes are a major way of accessing the Internet desktop email is not the norm.

I have a couple problems with these above statements, mainly the first one. With GoDaddy.com you get a free e-mail account(s) with your domain and/or hosting. Anytime I sell a new domain, hosting package or even an additional e-mail accounts (if they want more than one e-mail box for their domain) I am almost always asked, “How do I set this up in Outlook or MacMail or Apple Mail?” (sadly I have yet to have anyone ask about Thunderbird). Further, when people are having trouble with Outlook and we suggest they access via the free web mail they almost always rather use their desktop e-mail client. However, I can see where Mitchel is coming from with the second point. Those customers who are wanting to use Outlook are in the US. Those in other parts of the world such as India and Australia never ask about setting up in a desktop e-mail client.

One more thing, if the trend for e-mail is shifting from desktop e-mail clients to web based (web mail) then why is Netscape developing Mercury to accommodate the Netscape 9 Navigator browser? Mercury is going to be a desktop e-mail client based off of Thunderbird.

Fx 2.0.0.6 Coming Tonight

Due to the recent discovery of bug 389580 (some schemes with %00 launch unexpected handlers on windows), Mozilla has opted to do an early release of Firefox 2.0.0.6 for tonight. Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 is set to be released later this week. Look for automatic update notification (does not apply to Linux builds) within the next 24-36 hours.

Weekly Update 2007-07-30

Here are the details of today’s Weekly Update meeting:

• Fx/TBird 2.0.0.6 – Due to bug 389580, Fx 2.0.0.6 will be released tonight. TBird 2.0.0.6 in a few days.
• TBird 3 – Be sure to check out Thunderbird’s Future as well as Mitchell Speaks Out about finding a new home to TBird.
• Fx3:

• New protocol handling dialog landed; critical regressions cleaned up. One alpha/m 7 blocker remains; it has a patch and is in the review cycle.
• Places: Working on final M7 bug. UI focus for M8 is ongoing

Gecko 1.9:

• M7 Release still pending.
• Tree will remained closed until M7 crashes resolved (four on platform). Bugs flagged as blocking 1.9+ with a Target Milestone of mozilla1.9 M7 must be resolved before tree will reopen.

Complete meeting notes.

Page Zoom in Fx 3

Presently with Firefox, the only ‘zoom’ (CTRL + +) increases the text-size only.  The original Mozilla Suite (now The SeaMonkey Project) and Opera have a page zoom, that is where the entire page (text, objects and pictures) are zoomed.  This was filed as bug 4821 back on April 8, 1999 and on July 25th, 2007 it was finally marked as RESOLVED FIXED.

Now before you get all excited, it is not quite done yet.  The backend functionality is done which is why the bug status has been changed to  RESOLVED FIXED.  However, there is currently not a way to call that backend code.  The user interface (UI) still needs to be developed and there is likely to be bugs resulting from that as well. Bottom line is,  by the time Firefox 3 is released around the end of this year that functionality should be implemented. Highly doubtful we will see it with the M7 release at the end of this month. Chances are it will be in the M8 release scheduled for mid-September.

News Source:  Mozilla Links

Mitchell Speaks Out

See: Thunderbird’s Future for background info. Currently, Mitchell (Baker) has made some additional posts in Mitchell’s Blog in response to the comments left on her Email Call to Action from July 25th. Some of the ‘themes’ she is has/going to respond to include:

1. Google is involved somehow
2. Thunderbird and the Mozilla mission
3. Feature thoughts about Thunderbird
4. Why can’t Thunderbird and Firefox both prosper inside the Mozilla Corporation?
5. Is Mozilla exclusively focused on Firefox?
6. Revenue is the determining factor.

I will update this post when she posts on ‘themes’ 5 and 6, plus any additional she may add.

Thunderbird’s Future

Granted I don’t talk as much about Thunderbird in here as I do Firefox. Part of that is because their isn’t as much news or anything to talk about with Thunderbird. On Wednesday Mozilla’s, Chief Lizard Wrangler (CEO) Mitchell Baker posted in her blog that Mozilla has come to a point where they to decided what they want to do with Thunderbird.

“We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.”

Mozilla has come up with three possible options:

Option 1. Create a new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation – a Thunderbird foundation. If it turns out Thunderbird generates a revenue model from the product as Firefox does, then a Thunderbird foundation could follow the Mozilla Foundation model and create a subsidiary.

Option 2. Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird. This has less overhead, although it still requires a new company that serves the mission of the Mozilla Foundation. In this case the Mozilla Foundation board and personnel would remain involved in Thunderbird. Thunderbird would continue to need to be balanced and prioritized with Mozilla’s focus on delivering the web through Firefox, its ecosystem and the Open Web as the platform. The Thunderbird effort may therefore still end up with less focus and less flexibility.

Option 3. Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey, and a small independent services and consulting company is formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for Thunderbird users. Many open source projects use this model, it could be simpler and more effective than a Mozilla Foundation subsidiary. However, creating this as a non-profit would be extremely difficult. Running a services company as an independent taxable company is the simplest operational answer. We would need to figure out how such a company relates to the Thunderbird product itself. What’s the best way for such a company to release a product? How does that relate to the community project that stays within Mozilla?

At this point Mozilla is not sure what they want to do with Thunderbird, but they know they to do something to keep Thunderbird growing. Time and time again, I hear the biggest hurdle to corporate use of Thunderbird is it does not have a built-in/integrated calendar as does Outlook. They have tried to overcome this hurdle with the introduction of the Lightning Extension but even that doesn’t have the same functionality as found in Outlook. Then there is the Sunbird project which is a standalone calendar program. Sadly neither of these have been successful for me as they either don’t work (Lightning) or won’t run (Sunbird).
Percy at Mozilla Links has taken a much deeper look into this and how this fits (or doesn’t fit) within the Mozilla Manifesto. Most of the comments on Mozilla Links seem to point towards Mozilla basically abandoning Thunderbird. One comment goes as far as to say Mozilla is doing this because of their ties with Google (GMail).

While we don’t use Outlook at my current job, we don’t use Thunderbird either. We have our own propitiatory web-based e-mail client. While it is better than Outlook I don’t like it because it keeps everything on the server. There is come a point where I will need to start deleting and purging messages so that I can still accept incoming mail. I suppose the removal of the ‘Get Mail’ Button from Firefox 2 was a sign of what was to come with Thunderbird/Mozilla.

News Sources:

• Mitchell’s Blog
• Thoughts on Thunderbird
• Mozilla Links

Content Handling

The other day sim asked on the Weekly Update 2007-07-23 post “what’s content handling”.  This was in reference to the report that “content-handling is not going to make Fx3″. So what is content-handling? It is a neat feature that would let you setup Firefox on what to do when it came across certain types of content. Technically, this feature already exists if you go under Tools, Options.., Content tab and then under File Types click Manage…

However with Firefox 3, it was more of a user-interface (UI) type change. The blog article, Fx 3 User Interface (UI) Redo shows an example of what the new UI would have looked like. So Firefox 3 will still have content-handling just it will be handle by the old styled dialog boxes.

Developing a Fx Extension

If you have ever thought about building a Fx Extension, here is a comprehensive guide that can help you not just build an extension, but one that will get used.  The Developing a Firefox Extension That People Actually Use: 32 Essential Tools and Tutorials is very informative (but not overwhelming) with most of the steps containing external links.  The opening paragraph sums it up well..

Over the past few years, Mozilla Firefox has dramatically increased in popularity, largely because of its ability to incorporate extensions. The extensions developed for Firefox range from simple calculators to complete application replacement, and their popularity is causing developers everywhere to consider making their own. Despite the popularity of Firefox extensions, however, the vast majority of the add-ons that are created are rarely used. In this article, we provide you with the vital resources you need to not only create a Firefox extension, but also to help you create one that is actually used by other people.

There are a few of the tools/tutorials I wanted to discuss in more detail:

•  #14 Greasemonkey. I don’t think Greasemonkey gets the attention it deserves.  It is a very powerful tools which use JavaScript to create ‘min-extensions’ which allow on-the-fly (no Fx restart needed when installing a Greasemonkey Script/Extension) changes to specific web pages.  The first time I saw what Greasemonkey could do was over at the Go Firefox! Forum. This forum is part of  Prospero’s, Delphi Forums which has a nice WYSIWYG Editor, if you use Internet Exploiter.  The forum’s hostess came up with a solution using Greasemonkey.  She built from scratch a complete WYSIWYG Editor that Firefox users could use anywhere within the Delphi Forums community and a couple others for similar forums.  There are a few other ‘annoyances’ on Delphi that have been fixed by a Greasemonkey script.  All the end-user needs to do is install the Greasemonkey extension, restart Firefox.  After that, it just a matter of locating and installing the Greasemonkey script they need.  As soon as the script is install it is ready to go.
• #28 10 Useful Firefox Extensions That Don’t Get Glamorized.  I took a look at this list and I am using 4 of the 10 which include Download Statusbar, Colorful Tabs, PDF Download and MediaPlayerConnectivity.  Important to note this list was complied back at the end of January 2006.  There was one extension, WebmailCompose that sounded useful. which was suppose to automatically open an associated web based e-mail composer when an e-mail link is clicked.  I was going to try it out, only to discover it is the sandbox and for good reason too. The author claims on the extension page that it works with Fx 0.8 – 3.0a1.  For one thing the latest build (nightly) on Fx 3 is m7 and more importantly, the extension does not work in Fx 2.
• #29 Top Useful Firefox Extensions. Another list that has some of the same as that in #28, but also I saw IE Tab and FoxyTunes along with Yahoo!Mail Notifier (which I used when I had Yahoo!Mail).
• #32 Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons. I looked through the list and none of those extensions I am using.  Most of them look like they involve social networks/bookmarks such as StumbleUpon, delicous, etc.  Also included was the Wizz RSS News Reader which I had looked at a long time ago, but still prefer and use the one the comes with Flock 0.7.14

If I ever head down the extension building road, this will be a very handy reference article with a comprehensive list of tools and resources in one place.  I’ve also found some other things I want to check out (and my be write about) by visiting some of the links here.

Tip Source:Rich McIver via Contact Us.

Weekly Update 2007-07-23

Here are the details of today’s Weekly Update meeting:

• Fx/TBird 2.0.0.5 – Updates released last week. Fx 2.0.05 released on Tuesday, July 17th and TBird 2.0.05 released on Thursday, July 19th.
• TBird 1.5.0.13/Fx 2.0.0.6 - Meeting to be held later Monday to discuss scope and schedule
• Fx3:

• Larry, (the passport dude) should land by freeze

• new location bar display

• Protocol/content handling

  • protocol handling new dialog should make M7
  • content-handling is not going to make Fx3

• Password manager

  • Numerous regression fixes
  • non-modal save password prototype together, hopefully will land by freeze

• Places

  • Sync working with http auth/webdav
  • Heavy focus on UI work, likely to miss M7

• Download Manager

  • Mockups done, UI overhaul in progress, may make M7 (gated by protocol handling work)

• Addons

  • More work on securing updates
  • Plugin blocklisting waiting on review

• Malware protection

• TBird 3 – Working on final approval to move over to Humspell (spellcheck engine) for Fx & TBird. Checking on memory leaks, especially with teh compose window.
• Gecko 1.9 – M7 (Alpha) Gecko Feature Freeze July 25th. Major New Features:

  • • Anti-Malware
    • Finalized Offline APIs
    • Secure Wrappers

Complete meeting notes.

Facebook buys Parakey

The social networking site, Facebook has bought Parakey for an undisclosed amount. For those of you not familiar with Parakey it was the joint venture project by Firefox Founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, see The Firefox Kid for more about Parakey.

I was not too sure what to make of this at first. This has been an ongoing project for Ross & Hewitt for quite some time. But as I read further into the article this isn’t one of those ‘buy-out’ type of acquisitions where everything is sold and the original party just walks away from the project (but with a whole lot of money). Instead it almost sounds as if this would provide a guaranteed launch:

Mozilla Firefox founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt will help to develop the Facebook site.

Facebook has recently decided to let hundreds of independent developers build software within the Facebook site, turning Facebook itself into a kind of operating system for internet users.

ETA: Blake Ross has posted on his blog about the Parakey/Facebook deal. Facebook Goes Public (withnewsaboutitsrecentacquisitionofParakey,Inc.)

Come join the discussion on the Firefox Extension Guru’s Forum: Facebook Buys Parakey

New Sources:

• BBC News
• New Media & IT