Mozilla looks beyond Thunderbird - Digital Lifestyle - Macworld UK

Claiming that 'email is broken,' [David Ascher, CEO of the just-named Mozilla Messaging] said that Thunderbird 3.0 would build on the already-available Version 2.0 but add features such as calendaring, better and faster search, and a wide range of user-interface and usability improvements.


Goodness, yes, email is broken. I wish I'd get off of my duff and finish writing a client. Here's a hint: What's not broken is a calendar. It's all about usability. Tell me what percentage of my emails came from a particular sender when I view. Tell me the last time they emailed. The last thread I've had with them. The longest thread. Other people they've CC'd or emailed a mail I've gotten. The time I've spent reading from and editing emails to them. The number of links they've sent, etc.

There's crudloads of information, of varying usefulness to varying users, that's simply ignored right now. It's painful. Mail handlers need to use that information intelligently as well. Let me know when I've overlooked an email in my inbox for a week (2 weeks, a month) from, say, a top ten correspondent by number of replies I've sent, for instance.

Here's the key: Make much of the information display, unobtrusively, by default. Don't overload, but give

Oh yeah, Thunderbird? How about fixing the d****d edit window? There are all sorts of linebreaks I didn't add and wacky formatting issues when I edit (usually to truncate) quotes. Editing plain text in a window should be pretty old hat by now; there's no reason it shouldn't properly in my mail handler.

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