Mozilla Sunbird's First Official Release

jcraveiro writes "MozillaZine announced yesterday that Sunbird, Mozilla's standalone cross-platform calendar project, has reached its first official relase: version 0.2, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X." This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software.

Waiting, eh?

This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software. Are you going to download Sunbird and put a reminder in it to "continue waiting for decent free calendaring software"? ;-D

Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

Okay, so the Lizard is split into Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird. With XUL, you can write applications that run on Mozilla. It does about everything but play games and work as an office suite. So when are we going to see Mozilla integrated in with OpenOffice and the two together turned into MOS (Mozilla OS)?

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

Mozilla games: http://games.mozdev.org/

Mozilla can't be integrated with OOo, because of licensing issues, and the enormous bloat it would create, given the two different codebases.

In any case, a web-utilities suite and an office suite aren't enough to constitute a web browser. They would be enough for a simplistic out-of-the-box experience though.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

EMACS?

Isn't that some kind of vi clone? (he said as he hid under the table, cowering in fear...)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

I would be far more interested in a Mozilla IDE, capable of handling PHP, C++, Python, and Java. Mostly PHP, in my case. HomeSite-style.

What I'd *LOVE* is for such a PHP IDE to have code-folding and a tree view that actually checks my *includes* for functions and objects that will be used. Not to mention, the potential for live-testing would be neato. :)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

Already been done!
OEone HomeBase.
Check out this screenshot:
http://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/bigbBdSgP.jpg [linux.org.ru]

Although it's hard to find info about it, the product integrated OpenOffice into a Desktop written entirely in XUL.

whine whine

This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software.

You know, there's KOrganizer and loads of other that are free and actually useable..

Re:whine whine

You know, there's KOrganizer

You assume we all run some form of Unix.

The System Tray

Like Thunderbird, Sunbird is hampered by the fact that it will not minimize to the system tray in Windows XP. I don't want to leave it on all the time because it takes up a lot of space on the task bar. And what use is a calendar program that isn't on all the time?

There are third party fixes to this, and for all I know extensions that do the same thing, but it would be really nice to have system tray minimization as default behavior.

Re:The System Tray

Maybe I'm missing your point, but I believe what you do is double click on the message in your drafts folder to open it, then click the send button that is the leftmost item on the toolbar.

Re:The System Tray

Try Suntray [dart.net.au] . It's not part of the Sunbird package but minimises it into the tray nicely and I am very happy with it.

Re:The System Tray

wow. that's not a problem with any mozilla software. that's what extensions are for. http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]

Re:The System Tray

Outlook 2003 will never minimize small enough to make me happy.

Re:The System Tray

try ALT-F4

Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

Have they/are they planning on integrating it in to thunderbird? It looks a lot like Outlook's calendar, I think integrating it with Thunderbird (and even Firefox? Maybe let you add items through Firefox?) would be their greatest 'next' step. [mozilla.org]

Re:Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

Sunbird is a stand-alone version of Mozilla Calendar (which is linked in the sidebar on the Sunbird page). Mozilla Calendar is an extension that you can install into Mozilla, Firefox, or Thunderbird. In other words: Sunbird is not going to be integrated into Thunderbird, as the project it's based on already is.

Thunderbird integration and the Lightning project

Have they/are they planning on integrating it in to thunderbird? It looks a lot like Outlook's calendar, I think integrating it with Thunderbird (and even Firefox? Maybe let you add items through Firefox?) would be their greatest 'next' step.

The Mozilla Calendar Project is actually a plugin for Firefox and Thunderbird that adds a calendar to either program. Mozilla Sunbird is the standalone version of this.

The calendar plugin doesn't really "integrate" into Thunderbird as most would like, though, which is why the Lightning project [mozilla.org] was begun (it was mentioned on Slashdot [slashdot.org] in December.) The Lightning project aims for "tight" integration with Thunderbird, so you get more of a seamless program to handle all your email, calendar, contact and task needs. Expect to see more about Lightning later this year.

I've not been waiting

I've been using this program, for months now. It's rather clunky though, and crashes sometimes in my Windows XP.

Nice

I've used Sunbird for Linux for a while now and I must say it's fairly good. There are a lot of bugs of course but it's usable and I like it. But that's also because I didn't try anything else. Because I have a Mac, Xp, and Linux I love all Mozilla stuff because it runs on all those platforms almost exactly the same.

Re:Nice

I'd really like to use it but as a linux user who isn't an expert, I can't install this software. The readme mentions two different ways to install Sunbird, of course both mention scripts which don't actually exist (mozilla-installer and mozilla). All I'm left with is a bunch of .so's and executables.

I know this isn't the place to ask for tech support so I'm not asking for any. I'm just saying they didn't make it obvious to me how to install Sunbird.

Re:Nice

I haven't tried version 0.2 yet but the earlier versions you could just unpack and then run the executable. Maybe you can try that.

Download is pretty slow...

It's coming in at around 10kbps. Is there a mirror or torrent of the download?

Doesn't solve my problem

I gave up using calendars. What I can't keep in my head or on post-its doesn't get done. It's not that I don't like the idea, caledars are great, both the page and software version, but I can't remember to add stuff to them. Result: My calendars are always blank and therefor of no use.

What I need is a calendar which will add tasks automaticly.

I tried it...

And I didn't really like it. When Linux still worked on my computer (driver issues drove me insane and eventually just didn't support my computer), I loved Evolution. I'm just going to wait until Evolution gets ported to Windows. Sunbird just seems less usable than the rest.

Does it work with Exchange?

I know this is setting me up for a'Floggin', but does it integrate with MS Exchange? The only thing keeping me in Windows on my work PC is the need for a calendar system that works with the company's Exchange system.

I've looked at the site, but can't see any mention of it.

PocketPC sync

As long as it doesn't synchronise with a PocketPC, it's pointless for me as an iPaq owner.

OK, you can blame MS on not opening the ActiveSync protocol, but it should be possible to synchronize Sunbird or Thunderbird with a small client application running on the PocketPC, similar to how IntelliSync works.

Good job

Way to be oblivious to the big picture, Slashdotters!!!

The sooner that Exchange is emulated in OSS, the sooner there will be no reason to run Microsoft products on the backend for small and medium sized offices.

* IIS? Gone with Apache.
* File/Print? Gone with Samba.
* Email? Not so fast. We like the groupware functionality of Exchange.

And of course, consultants who don't know any better see that there's no OSS to fulfil the groupware need, and therefore, there's no reason to learn/pitch Apache/Samba. Why bother with those when you can have the "nice integration" of MS products? Once Sunbird/OpenGroupware, et al reaches the ability of invitations, seeing busy/free on other user's calendars, and inviting resources, then Redmond will run real scared.

Good job, Sunbird. You're the missing link and you're looking good.

There's an even larger picture....

There's an even larger picture being missed here;

When iCalendar [ietf.org] support is built into everything, it'll be very easy for public groups to see each other's meetings, and for individuals to participate.

I easily lose track of when the Seattle XP programmers, Seattle Perl programmers, Seattle Python programmers, Seattle Robotics Society, Seattle Cosmic, Seattle Wireless, Seattle Java, Seattle C++, Seattle Wikipedia, Seattle FreeBSD Users group, Greater Seattle Linux Users Group, Seattle Bloggers, East side Bloggers, Seattle Futurists, etc., etc., etc., ...I easily lose track of what's going on when. With automatic calendaring, when we can subscribe to calendars as simply as we subscribe to RSS feeds- we're going to see a surge in awareness of what groups are meeting when, and how to meet up with them.

Right now, I can only track 1 group at a time. "Is Seattle Python meeting this weekend?" "No?" "Guess there's nobody to see this weekend."

But, as you can see from my short list above (compared to how much activity is actually going on,) there's actually a whole lot going on that I might be interested in visiting.

As Automatic Calendaring picks up, the public will recognize the power of its ability to communicate and organize.

Previously, this is something that only people who could afford secretaries could experience.

Palm?

I know that the major thing keeping my wife tied to Outlook on Windows is that her Palm won't sync with Thunderbird or Sunbird.

ScheduleWorld works far better

ScheduleWorld is free, works on Linux, Mac OS/X, Windows, Solaris. It is by far more standards compliant and interoperates really well with Exchange/Outlook and Notes. Check it out and see for yourself.

Good

I want to look after it later.Need a calender programm.

Wait for 0.3

From the above linked Sunbird page;

Tuesday, February 4th, 2005: The Sunbird team is proud to announce its first official release: Sunbird 0.2 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. You can find builds for the different platforms on our download page.

Maybe the day-of-the-week problem will be fixed in 0.3;-)

mozilla composer

Mozilla also had an html composer component. I liked it. I wonder if we'll ever see that as a standalone XUL application.

Release date....

Tuesday, February 4th, 2005:

You'd think a site for a calendar app would be able to get it's own release date correct...

otherwise, it's a neat app

Too heavy

i've found sunbird too heavy for my needs: Thunderbird is already eatin 50MB of my memory and i dont want Sunbird to do the same so I'm currently using EssentialPIM [essentialpim.com] a small (1MB) and free PIM for Windows and it's quite ok for small todos and appointments. I think that Evolution could be the right solution on Linux, but i've not tried it too much...

New GOOD Software is driving me batty

I'm loving the fact that there are so many new alternatives to IE (I mainly use Safari and Firefox), Outlook (I use OS X's Mail and am still dabbling with Thunderbird) and now calendar (I use iCal and am now testing Sunbird) apps. It's driving me batty though...I get used to using one particular app and then new, better ones come out. Not one to be stuck using the old stuff, I gotta try the new releases. The only problem...there's a small learning curve and I have to redo the way I used to do them before.

I'm an early adopter and I admit it. It's one of the things I have to deal with. My concern however is, just how many people in the everyday world are willing to stop using Outlook to learn an entirely new way of doing things. Some apps, such as browsers, don't matter as much. A browser is a browser, with a few features here and there, but the underlying concept is the same. Type in a URL and go. Other things though...aye...

Less than stable on Mac OS X

After launching Sunbird for the first time on Mac OS X (1.0.3.7), it quit (like Firefox often does on a first run) and informed me that any old extensions I had would be deleted. Fine, as I don't have any Sunbird extensions. Then it relaunched automatically (again, like Firefox) but then "unexpectedly quit". I tried relaunching it only to have the icon appear momentarily in my Dock and then disappear. Again. And again. I've tried ejecting the disk image, but it can't because it's "in use".

Repeated trips to 'ps -ax | grep Sunbird' reveals that Sunbird is caught in a nice little loop that spawns a new PID and then kills it each time it appears in my Dock. By the time I try to kill it, it's already killed itself and grabbed a new PID. Thankfully, Apple has included 'killall' and my problem is over.

Obviously this is an early beta, but I was hoping it was going to be more stable than this. I seem to remember Thunderbird being pretty stable at 0.2 At least I have faith that things will settle down in a few point releases.

P.S. I know, I know. . . submit a bug report. Don't worry.

Another impending naming debacle?

Had to chuckle when reading this on the main page:

At the moment the "Sunbird" name is a project name. It is not official and may change in the future.

At least they got that out of the way from the get-go.

If only...

It could deal with MeetingMaker 6.0.5 files and such.

Something about having to recreate an 89meg schedule for a data center by hand seems to be putting me off switching to anything even vaguely current.

Where is the changelog?

I'm having difficulty finding the changelog. My office has been running subird for about 6 months now. It works well for what we're doing. (Small office) but it would be nice to see it grow into something a little more directly in competition with outlook. That allowed multiple users to post to the same calendar but keep their records identified by their user.

I really can't wait for a sync to palm button. It will make my palm pilot so much more useful.

Potential Here

I think this project could go either way at this point. They have the momentum from the success of Ffox/Tbird and there is a market for an OS calender project. But in order to make this product worth my time would be if it would sync with my palm and share dates with other users. What bugs me about my current software is the that I have to enter in holidays manualy. I'd be nice if I could set it to insert holidays, and local events from some source on the internet like my school's portal site.

Rainlendar

I just tried out Sunbird, and it's pretty nice. It's also a bit too complex/takes up too much screen estate. Not saying it's a bad program, but just that I don't need that much functionality in a day-to-day environment.

I like to keep my to-do list on my desktop constantly along with a small calendar, and I think Rainlendar is the perfect tool for that. Takes very little memory and is Open Source. You can only run it in Windows though. Skinnable too so it looks pretty.

Here's a link to the website:
http://www.ipi.fi/~rainy/index.php?pn=pr ojects&pro ject=rainlendar

(I'm not affiliated with the author in any way...just like the product.

But...

But will it be as slow as that other Mozilla program known as thunderbird. I'm using a P II 266 as I just graduated from university and was too poor to buy a new one while I was there for 5 years. I use evolution for email, because if I install Thunderbird, typing and email causes the display to fall behind my moderate typing speed of 30 wpm. It's unbearably slow. This is on linux though. I remember it being faster on windows last time I tried. BTW, speed of firefox is fine.

Printing

Just where are the decent printing options for Sunbird? The current printing options are very poor. For example, I wanted to print out a birthday list for the year with 12 x month-views.

Does anyone else find it funny...

... that a page devoted to calendaring software would have the date Tuesday, February 4th, 2005 under its Latest News section? Today is Saturday, February 5th, 2005 by my calendar, so there seems to be a problem here.

Either the Sunbird team is not using its own creation, or it needs to go back to the drawing board...

Nice but still full of bugs

I like it's simple layout. Used some previous version before, which was an extension to Firefox or Thunderbird, but that stopped working after an upgrade.

I could import my old calendar into this new Sunbird, which is nice. (The import was not difficult, but finding the files in the insane directory jungle all these Mozilla projects create was hard. Turned out to be buried in "C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\9gltk3bn.slt\Calenda r\". Why is it so hard to tell these programs to put their data files into "E:\Cal", "D:\Mail", or such?)
The 2 bugs I encountered in the 10 first minutes are:
- in print preview, changing the layout between Landscape and Portrait kicks you out of the preview and back into the main screen
- The Alarm window doesn't close when clicking on either of the Aknowledge buttons. You have to close the window.
So far, these are just annoyances which will hopefully quickly get fixed.

The installer also has the same problem as the other Mozilla apps: on Windows, it uses a moronic "Browse for Folder" dialog which I guess is what MS recommends. The problem is that it shows you a text box in which you think you can just type your directory and click OK, but that is not the case: whatever you type is ignored. You have to click your way to the directory, and if it doesn't exist, you have to click "Make New Folder", then change it's name so it isn't "New Folder", and then click OK. I guess that is Microsoft's idea of usability. But it's sad that many OSS projects seem to use this particularly stupid dialog during the install.

Integration

It would be great to have it integrate with Firefox (or anything else for that matter).

Think of this: you're surfing the web and you see that your favorite band is having a concert next month. Just highlight the date (ie "4/1/05: New York at Rockafeller") and then right click and hit Send to Sunbird (or a hotkey like ctrl-s or something) and it would automatically pop up with a box and fill in as much information as possible (what time, what date, etc etc). It might take some tinkering with at first to make sure it fills in everything correctly but once it got working you'd be set.

Along with this; date specific alerts. For example, if on 3/25 you wanted to be reminded to buy tickets, you could schedule an alert to pop up on the 25th. This is much like Thunderbirds "New Email" alert.

If Mozilla can be creative and get stuff like this happening, they've got it made.

Is it Too Much To Ask

that a calendar program be able to figure out when Easter is? There are civil as well as religious uses for this -- e.g. in Maryland, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are school holidays.

Once upon a time I had a program which knew Easter, Yom Kippur, Ramadan, the start and end of Daylight Savings Time, the phases of the Moon, and could convert all it to the Mayan calendar. One could Easily Manipulate and Add CalendarS. Can't think of the name, though. It will come to me presently.

In the meantime, I'm using Sanjay Ghemawat's old ical program [mc.edu].

Here's an often overlooked util

http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

this is what we are currently using. I is an awesome groupware calendar. exports in vcal/ical and allows you to view other users calendars overlayed with yours.

Full administration through the web interface (JS), all you need is apache and php - all our users love it. This is the perfect small business opensource calendar. A few small things I'd like, but hey - I can hack it to do what I want too :)

All this doesn't really matter

I'm a big Linux booster out here. A year ago, I convinced the "powers that be" to convert our shop to Linux desktops. They did, and we have some 40 desktops with about 10 (and shrinking) windows clients now.

Sure, we have Firefox and Openoffice and Evolution. But here's the kicker, there is no Exchange alternative (Opengroupware ain't there yet) that can work with Evolution, or for that matter no non-browser based collab software that works with Gnome (and lets be brutally, this is where the corp Linux desktop is headed).

Now the office really needs the functionality of Exchange as we live and die by meetings and tasks. I slapped myself hard in the head yesterday when I recommended that we install Exchange as a replacement for that really sweet Qmail/Vpopmail/IMAP setup that I installed two years ago. But I had no choice!!!

So every mention of another standalone calendar client with everyone still forgetting about that missing server-side link just drives me crazy! Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort, and the calendar client looks nice, but designing a front end without thought for collabaration on the ass end is a bit short sighted.

This is the piece of the puzzle that is preventing shops like mine from completely moving from the dark side. Microsoft knows this and charges through the nose for Exchange CAL and server licenses.

I can live without another story about Yet Another Standalone Calendar.

Can I sync my Win CE handheld?

I have an HP Jornada 540 and I use it very religiously. I have tried to sync it with my Mac using PocketMac but it screws up everything when it syncs - one time it even blew up my user and I've pretty much shelved the program.

The HPC syncs everything including Access databases so I really need to keep ActiveSync running. I haven't tried Sunbird yet but it sounds like it won't replace Outlook as a sync option. I figure if I could make Sunbird sync with ActiveSync, I could just use a WebDAV server to keep my PC and Mac machines updated.

Is there any way to let Sunbird sync through ActiveSync? I'm going to try to remote in to my desk at work and see if it will work but I have my doubts that it's mature enough to do it.

More webdav info?

So, using iCal and Sunbird leads me to wanting to create my own webdav setup with apache. Besides webdav.org, anyone else have alot of experience with such?

I'm lovin' it!

I've been looking forward to this for such a long time now. I tried previous Sunbird releases with expected "pre-beta" results.

I'm so stoked that this release is actually working as I hoped it could.

The day this hit's 1.0 (or 1.1) I will punt Outlook forever.

Praise Jesus! (okay, maybe not; he probably can't code for sh*t).

Much thanks to the Sunbird team for this! I've contributed financially to the Moz project; and I'm about to contribute more (well, a donation / firefox shirt hybrid)...

Much thanks guys! Sincerely.

The bad news for you, is that you're going to be held to the same quality of Thunderbird and FF. ;)

So what?

I'm all for open-source software... I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.org religiously, but seriously, what IS the big deal with this calendar? I haven't looked too hard, but I imagine there would be tons of free calendar apps similar to this one. I'm not saying this isn't a good program -- it is. I just don't think it's tha big of a deal. If it is better, somebody please explain why, that's all I ask.

Re:Looks like iCal...

"Also, this is cribbed directly from Mac OS X. "

That is also the exact same window used in Firefox, thus, I doubt they stole it, they adopted it from Firefox. You do need SOME WAY to control the toolbar, just because two apps use the same doesn't make it 'cribbed'.

Of course, I don't want to start a fight, so I'll back out now. :-)

Re:Looks like iCal...

It is cribbed directly from Firefox [kmgerich.com] actually. And making up part of a suite, it isn't surprising.

Re:Looks like iCal...

Why the obsession with being original? If someone has a good idea what's wrong with using it? Not everyone has to 'innovate'.

Re:Looks like iCal...

Theres always a big bruhaha whenever MS comes out with a product or feature not 100% origional and unique. Why ignore it when OSS does it (and blantantly so)?

Re:Looks like iCal...

That customization interface has been in Mozilla suite, Firefox and Thunderbird for a *long* time. Who cribbed from who, troll?

And what is wrong with copying interfaces? Where did Window's, Mac OS's and X11's window manager concept come from? (Hint: it wasn't Apple, Microsoft, or X).

Actually, Microsoft's

No, it was not in the Mozilla suite (aka Seamonkey). In fact, it still isn't. It was first seen in Internet Explorer on Macintosh, then (with a lot of refinement) in Mac OS X 10.0, then copied almost pixel by pixel (with an improvement in behaviour) to Firefox.

Is it a big deal? No. But at least don't refute its history.

Internet Explorer for Mac Release Dates [wikipedia.org] (IE 5 was March 2000)
Mac OS X 10.0 Review, Page 10 [arstechnica.com] "The real fun starts when you select "Customize Toolbar..." from the "View" menu (or shift-click the toolbar widget in the window title bar). The contents of the window are replaced by a palette of toolbar widgets shamelessly reminiscent of Internet Explorer's toolbar customization feature."
Independent Mac OS X 10.1 Release Date [arstechnica.com] Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001, with a suggested retail price of $129 and a version number of 10.0.
First Customize Toolbar In Any Mozilla Product [mozilla.org] A few of the features new to this release include: Customizable toolbar.
Phoenix 0.1 Release Date [mozillazine.org] (September 23rd, 2002; over a year later)

Re:Looks like iCal...

You seem to be a big proponent of recreating the wheel. see iCal is pretty sweet for calendaring and _individuals_ plans. it isn't great for collaborative calendaring but i lays a good groundwork for it, it's possible to make iCal a lot better, but the groundwork is there.

sunbird uses the same thing, why fix something that isn't broke? besides the best part of this is, you can export your iCal calendar and load it into Sunbird and it does the exact same thing. it coexists with iCal, unlike Outlook which obviously wants to remain closed and unopen to any outside influence.

it might look ugly but that's easy to fix after the functionality is built in big guy. why not get something working first, then make it pretty? if you're so upset about the ugliness, why not commission someone to go in and make it prettier? or do it yourself. there's only so many people working on it, so why not contribute instead of bitch?

Re:What can be done Right and what can be done Wro

(Paint.NET is Windows .NET only and "not there yet")

Microsoft "helped" them develop it, what do you expect?

(yes, I go to school with the developers)