Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Dave" <Dave_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:e0f8j0$15d9$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> D
>>
>> <g>
> 
> Well how about that!  :) 
> 
> 

D - Convenient and flexible.

In article <e0emae$mfq$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says... [...]
>The bad:
>
>1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.

You simply zip and copy your profile folder. I'm doing this at every computer move from Netscape 6, and it works.

>2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.

I think it can read the "Received:" tag instead of the "Date:" tag, or some other "more reliable" tag.

>3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.

I'm not an expert, but I've fount what I needed with the search too as is today.

Maybe you'll find something better as an extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=thunderbird

Moreover, you can write your extension yourself, see "How to Write an Extension"
here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/specs/extensions.html

Ciao

---
http://www.mariottini.net/roberto/

Walter Bright wrote:
> So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
<snip>
> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.

Good idea.  Are you going to start spellchecking your web pages as well?

> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.

Interesting.  I've been using Mozilla (or SeaMonkey as it's now called) for a few years, and found that it doesn't always get the unread message count right either, though at least it does some sensible things like (usually) auto-marking messages on ignored threads as read.

I'm surprised you stopped there in listing OE's bugs.  Here are just some of the annoying bugs I found:

http://www.epinions.com/content_67328904836

> The bad:
> 
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
<snip>

I'm surprised.  SeaMonkey stores all profile data in a folder by itself.  Copying this folder certainly strikes me as a simple way.

Stewart.

-- 
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M d- s:-@ C++@ a->--- UB@ P+ L E@ W++@ N+++ o K-@ w++@ O? M V? PS- PE- Y? PGP- t- 5? X? R b DI? D G e++>++++ h-- r-- !y
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

My e-mail is valid but not my primary mailbox.  Please keep replies on the 'group where everyone may benefit.

Roberto Mariottini wrote:
> In article <e0emae$mfq$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
> [...]
>> The bad:
>>
>> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 
> You simply zip and copy your profile folder. I'm doing this at every computer
> move from Netscape 6, and it works.

Ok, I wrote a .bat file to do that now. But it still should be on the menu, as in Quicken. Being about to schedule backups to happen automatically would be even better. Microsoft Fax has a nice feature, you can have it automatically save an extra copy of incoming faxes to a separate directory. It's a very thoughtful and convenient feature, too bad it's the only program I've ever seen that did something like that.


>> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.
> 
> I think it can read the "Received:" tag instead of the "Date:" tag, or some
> other "more reliable" tag.

It happened to about 12 messages out of 6000, not a big deal since I only need to do the import once.


>> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> 
> I'm not an expert, but I've fount what I needed with the search too as is today.

I already have X1, and fortunately it specifically supports Tbird. When you've got 6000 messages, you start needing a better search engine. I don't like the toolbar search freebies as they seem to be sending back search info to the toolbar vendor company. Sorry, I'll have none of that, I'd rather pay a few bucks for X1.

> Maybe you'll find something better as an extension:
> https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=thunderbird
> 
> Moreover, you can write your extension yourself, see "How to Write an Extension"
> here:
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/specs/extensions.html

I've got my hands full writing extensions to D <g>. But it's nice to know I can if I need to.

So far, Tbird seems good enough, and I won't be going back to O.E. Tbird    also seems to handle html and attachments better, but it lacks in the "crispness" of response department. The latter is often a fault of not having a good multithreaded design. It's a minor nit, though.

Walter Bright wrote:
> So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
> 
> The good:
> 
> 1) It's free.
> 2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
> 3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for it? Poof!
> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
> 
> The bad:
> 
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.
> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> 
> So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.
What exactly is wrong with TB search? Seems fine to be. The only caveat, which you might not have noticed yet, is that in "Search Messages", when in online mode you only have the "subject" and "from" source field options. It is only in offline mode that one has access to other fields, like "body", "date", etc.  :/
Was that the problem or something else, like better boolean expressions?

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
> Good idea.  Are you going to start spellchecking your web pages as well?

LOL. I don't have a standalone spellchecker.

>> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
> 
> Interesting.  I've been using Mozilla (or SeaMonkey as it's now called) for a few years, and found that it doesn't always get the unread message count right either, though at least it does some sensible things like (usually) auto-marking messages on ignored threads as read.
> 
> I'm surprised you stopped there in listing OE's bugs.  Here are just some of the annoying bugs I found:
> 
> http://www.epinions.com/content_67328904836

I don't read news like the author does, so these problems never affected me.

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> What exactly is wrong with TB search? Seems fine to be. The only caveat, which you might not have noticed yet, is that in "Search Messages", when in online mode you only have the "subject" and "from" source field options. It is only in offline mode that one has access to other fields, like "body", "date", etc.  :/
> Was that the problem or something else, like better boolean expressions?

The best thing I can say is "try X1 and you'll see". But I'll give it a try:

Tbird:
1) Tbird search is buried 3 menu levels down.
2) Lots of clicking to poke through messages looking for the right one if you've got a lot of matches.
3) Looks like O.E.'s klunky search user interface was used as a model.

X1:
1) Although I can restrict the search to specific fields, by default it searches every field.
2) Uses a two pane system, the left is the list of matching messages, the right is the message body of the highlighted matching message.
3) The term searched for is highlighted in the message view pane.

When you've got a lot of hits, like 20 to 100 or more, X1's features make it much, much faster to sort through them for the one you need.

Walter Bright wrote:
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.

A long time ago, I remember reading something about this, either on bugzilla or on IRC. The rationale is that this is not something that should be handled by Mozilla (now Thunderbird), but instead, by your operating system. It doesn't make sense if you use 20 different programs to backup your data from every one separatelly.

Like pointed out, just copy your whole profile directory and you are set. No need to worry with registry keys.

> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.

Since OE mailbox is a closed format, I think that there is little that can be done.

> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.

The embedded search box and search folders are pretty much useful enough to me.

Walter Bright wrote:
> 1) Tbird search is buried 3 menu levels down.

I always used Shift-F to get on it. I think that there should have been a toolbar button, though.

> 2) Lots of clicking to poke through messages looking for the right one if you've got a lot of matches.

Did you know that you can create search folders based on your search query and navigate on them using the default interface like any other folder? This is a killer feature for me.

Miles wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>>1) Tbird search is buried 3 menu levels down.
> 
> 
> I always used Shift-F to get on it. I think that there should have been
> a toolbar button, though.
> 
> 
>>2) Lots of clicking to poke through messages looking for the right one
>>if you've got a lot of matches.
> 
> 
> Did you know that you can create search folders based on your search
> query and navigate on them using the default interface like any other
> folder? This is a killer feature for me.


Just tried that ... darned nice feature :)

BTW; right-clicking on a folder exposes the Search command also.