[pedroperez80]

Hello,

I've heard a lot of complains about mail 2.0 app, I recently got a Powerbook, and I handle a lot of mail. What are your opinions regrading this two apps? , wich one is better?.


Thank you,

Pedro Martín Pérez

[glyph]

Originally Posted by pedroperez80

Hello,

I've heard a lot of complains about mail 2.0 app, I recently got a Powerbook, and I handle a lot of mail. What are your opinions regrading this two apps? , wich one is better?.


Thank you,

Pedro Martín Pérez

I downloaded Thunderbird today - it worked without any problems here - and it seemed to be a little snappier than previous versions. Worth the upgrade for sure.

[JMII]

One oversight I've found is Thunderbird and Spotlight don't get along very well. Since Thunderbird keeps all it's mail in one big file anything Spotlight finds in your mail can't be opened as an individual message in Thunderbird, instead it opens a HUGE text file. The file is so big sometimes Text Edit takes several mintues to open it.

Also I can't get the junk mail filters to work, after setting them up the "OK" button does nothing, the only way to close that window is to click the close button and then settings are not applied. I've reinstalled Thunderbird twice now and the junk mail has never worked for me.

Other then those issues it works fine for me, I like the interface and it coverted my old Netscape mail over without much fuss.

[cgc]

Thunderbird is good, just like all the Mozilla products. The problem I see is that the interface is so un-Mac like. Have you tried Gyazmail, powermail, or any other alternatives?

[Chuckit]

Thunderbird's lack of Macosity is a big turn-off for me. Mail works for me. Obviously, other people's experiences are different.

[glyph]

Originally Posted by JMII

...Also I can't get the junk mail filters to work, after setting them up the "OK" button does nothing, the only way to close that window is to click the close button and then settings are not applied. I've reinstalled Thunderbird twice now and the junk mail has never worked for me...

Hmmmm.....It don't work for me either. It works only when in the 'Message filters...' dialog and when you press the 'Run now' button. That sucks.

[JMII]

Originally Posted by glyph

Hmmmm.....It don't work for me either. It works only when in the 'Message filters...' dialog and when you press the 'Run now' button. That sucks.

Good to know it's not just me... I guess

I might ditch Thunderbird and switch over Apple's Mail. The new slideshow and Spotlight features make it worth trying now I think. Before it's interface was pretty sloppy (IHMO) now it's a bit cleaner.

Does Mail include an import script/plug-in for Mozilla?

[cgc]

Originally Posted by JMII

Good to know it's not just me... I guess

I might ditch Thunderbird and switch over Apple's Mail. The new slideshow and Spotlight features make it worth trying now I think. Before it's interface was pretty sloppy (IHMO) now it's a bit cleaner.

Does Mail include an import script/plug-in for Mozilla?

Have you tried dragging-and-dropping between mail and thunderbird? Might work, but I never tried.

[peterthorn]

To quote from the apple.com discussions:

I managed to import mails from thunderbird. It's pretty straight forward really.
What you do is:

1. Choose File>Import Mailboxes
2. Choose Other, then continue
3. Locate your thunderbird profile, it should be under Libaray/Thunderbird/Profiles. (now that we got spotlight, just search for thunderbird )
4. locate the Mail folder
5. You can only import the mails from one account at a time, so just choose one of them and then import
6. Choose which folders you want to import
7. Wait
8. Smile
9. Import another account if necessary

Good Luck!

[banditcosmo]

I use Thunderbird over Mail. The junk mail filter works great for me. I also really like the custom e-mail views. Thunderbird's spell checker could use some improvement though. The biggest advantage that Thunderbird has for me is the newsreader. If it wasn't for that I might use Mail. I don't get why Apple doesn't make a news-reader.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by banditcosmo

I don't get why Apple doesn't make a news-reader.

Safari RSS.

I prefer Mail.app. Junk filter always works and the seamless integration with Safari and Spotlight are unbeatable, imo. I also like being able to sync my Mail across different computers.

[banditcosmo]

Originally Posted by Randman

Safari RSS.

Can Safari RSS read newsgroups ? That's the type of newsreader I'm talking about.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by banditcosmo

I don't get why Apple doesn't make a news-reader.

Apple will make a mail client or a Web browser because these are kind of general needs. A newsreader is not something your grandma wants. The fact that it wouldn't work with America's biggest ISP and Apple is not itself an ISP cements the problem — it isn't something most people could use, and there's no "wow factor" to it so that Steve can show it off at WWDC.

[JMII]

Thanks peterthorn

The power of Spotlight to search mail is a great idea - 'cause people send me links to articles all the time, but if I don't bookmark them right away they get lost in a sea of other messages/replies.

[delete]

Originally Posted by cgc

Thunderbird is good, just like all the Mozilla products. The problem I see is that the interface is so un-Mac like. Have you tried Gyazmail, powermail, or any other alternatives?

If you're willing to spend some time (and it can take time depending on what you want) you can customize Thunderbird with .css to look even more Mac like. There are forums and FAQs that I used to make it look a lot better (IMO) than the default. The funny thing now is that with Apple sort of playing with the UI so much (Tiger Mail) the idea of "Mac Like" seems to be getting more ambiguous!

[cgc]

Originally Posted by delete

If you're willing to spend some time (and it can take time depending on what you want) you can customize Thunderbird with .css to look even more Mac like. There are forums and FAQs that I used to make it look a lot better (IMO) than the default. The funny thing now is that with Apple sort of playing with the UI so much (Tiger Mail) the idea of "Mac Like" seems to be getting more ambiguous!

Good point, but I think the feeling of the Mozilla products is that the underlying software is outstanding, the interface doesn't feel right. It just doesn't feel like its part of the saftware, hard to explain, but the UI feels added on at the last minute to me.

[Gregory]

Both work, both have their uses.

Mail 2 lacks a lot of the features I like in Thunderbird.
both can search messages and have working junk filters.
Both can "sanitize" email.

Show only unread, today, and other criteria that are mailbox specific in Thunderbird makes it preferable. Looks are only skin deep

I've used Thunderbird for years as my "backup" email client.

[JMII]

Originally Posted by Gregory

Show only unread, today, and other criteria that are mailbox specific in Thunderbird makes it preferable.

But aren't all those available thru Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app now with Tiger? I love the "Last 5 Days" setting for viewing mail in Thunderbird, so having that in Mail.app would give me another reason to switch.

[AndrewP]

I've been using Thunderbird on Windows since the 0.3 version and really like it on that platform. On the Mac, as others have mentioned, the interface leaves a little to be desired. In my case I hate the fact that if you have nested subfolders and you want to drag a message from your inbox to a folder that is buried in your tree you have to expand everything out before dragging the message. On the windows side (and in Mail.app) you can simply drag the message over the collapsed folder and it will be expanded for you. I'm not sure why this feature is missing on the mac.

I also wish that it interfaced with the OSX Address Book. I've got several hundred contacts in there that are sync'd to multiple machines with .mac and I hate having to move vCards into Thunderbird every time I update a contact.

[Graymalkin]

I follow a whole bunch of mailing lists as well as my own mail accounts. I've not yet found Mail to be sub-par, in fact I really enjoy using it as a mail client. The Tiger version simply added more really nice features to what I already liked. The Spotlight integration is awesome since I can pull up mails from particular people using Spotlight without even having Mail open. This is very handy when I'm working on a project and need to find an e-mail about it from someone. Mail's Smart Folders are also quite the handy feature. I've got all sorts of SFs set up now, recent messages, messages from particular people, even messages about certain things. While filter rules could do some of the things SFs do, SFs are much more flexible and don't require that you move messages out of other mailboxes to display them together.

The lack of features like a newreader doesn't make much of a difference to me since I use Unison for that. Way back when Netscape Communicator has mail and news separated into two different components (Messenger and Collabra) but Thunderbird has seen fit to combine the two à la Outlook. On Windows or Linux TB might be really good at both of those, on the Mac however I have a hard time seeing past its un-Macness when really nice apps like Unison and Mail are readily available.

P.S. Yay, I'm finally addicted! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of the people I've ever responded to as well as all of the people I've ever insulted. I couldn't have done it without you!

[Randman]

Congrats on going green.

[Twister]

There is a theme out there to make thunderbird look like mail.app (pre tiger) http://www.radar.250x.com/tb.html

Also, I'm thinking of switching to thunderbird from mail.app for smart folders. (I'm pre Tiger and don't see an upgrade soon) Anyone switch from Mail to Thunderbird? Was it easy? If I were to get Tiger, then I'd switch back probably. However smart folders are NEEDED.

[Millennium]

I've thought about trying to set up my own little IMAP server on my machine, using qmail's maildir format. That way I'd have proper Spotlight support, plus I could switch between mail clients at will since they could all just access this one server instead of their own local mail stores.

That said, I have two things holding me back. One, I have a lot of folders and mail rules, and I'm not sure how to best simulate these. Two, I'm not sure that you could open e-mails individually in a mail client even with this setup. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing, and preferably links to some kind of guide to getting it all working?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Millennium

I've thought about trying to set up my own little IMAP server on my machine, using qmail's maildir format. That way I'd have proper Spotlight support, plus I could switch between mail clients at will since they could all just access this one server instead of their own local mail stores.

That said, I have two things holding me back. One, I have a lot of folders and mail rules, and I'm not sure how to best simulate these. Two, I'm not sure that you could open e-mails individually in a mail client even with this setup. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing, and preferably links to some kind of guide to getting it all working?

I use mail rules with IMAP all the time. The clients themselves run the rules, though -- meaning stuff won't get moved from the Inbox until a mail client does it. IMAP handles folders just fine on the server side, though -- I have 30-40 folders on 2 different IMAP servers (work and .Mac), and it's all peachy.

The only mail servers I've worked with are the one in OS X Server (which is cyrus/postfix) and Communigate. If you're just setting up an IMAP "holding bin" without SMTP it should be pretty simple.