Kevin Young wrote:
megan wrote:
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
____/ ed on Sunday 22 July 2007 13:54 : \____
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:46:22 +0100
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thunderbird is not the most sophisticated newsgroup client (the same
goes for RSS), but I still use it for mailing lists, which are
similar (been manageing them in Horde for years, but it was slow). If
you intend to participate in busy newsgroups, consider something like
KNode (KDE required) or maybe even Pan. Windows has its own powerful
newsreaders (third party, of course), but they are not cross platform
and I am not sure they are all actively maintained (making it a risky
investment in terms of skills).
If that fails there's always Tk and perl modules.
Yes, there are more rudimentary methods (with a steeper learning
curve), but
the paradigm is being killed by the perception that commands are
inferior to a
single little cursor moving around the screen (with a trigger).
Communication
with machines changes from language to pointing and grunting (like
cavemen).
But guess what? After a decade of striving to kill the command line,
even
Microsoft decided that it needed a comeback, which will come in 2008
or 2009.
Found a flaw in Thunderbird.....
The "T" command (View>Sort by>Threaded) and the "U" (View>Sort
by>Unthreaded) do not seem to work at all. Although the "\" collapse
command works just fine.
The "customization" of the toolbar is woefully lacking also. There
are so few commands that can be added, that it could be done away with
altogether. I don't know why ALL menu items are not available to be
added to the toolbar...but that's just me I guess.
Although I really like Thunderbird, it seems to suffer from the same
flaws as many other freeware apps...not simple enough for the average
slug to just pick up and run with (it leaves to many questions in a
users mind for them to feel comfortable with it). And, it is missing
common features "out of the box" that users have come to expect
(because of Outlook) like a built in calendar and to-do list.
So, sadly, it will never gain the market share that will make it
commonly used or commonly supported in business.
That's too bad. It has great potential.
megan
Megan,
The"T" and "U" command use the menu structure so you have to enter
ALT+V+S+T for the Threaded command and ALT+V+S+H for Unthreaded. The
collapse "\" is a shortcut.
To add a Calendar to Thunderbird you simply go to the Mozilla site,
download and then install Lightning which gives you Calendaring features
in Thunderbird. OE and WLM have no Calendar functionality at all and WM
simply runs the Vista Calendar program.
In terms of performance TB blows OE\WM and WLM away. As for toolbar
customization, this is one of the main WLM complaints, presently it
allows no customization. In terms of ease of use I would argue that TB
is no more difficult than OE, WM or WLM and the power that it has that
the others don't is the ability to use themes and add-ons.
With respect to market share look at what has happened with the adoption
of Firefox. If it weren't for Firefox, MS users would likely still be
using IE6.
When switching programs you need time to adapt to new ways of doing
things. For me the transition to TB has taken some time but just
recently I have started using it exclusively for personal email and
newsgroups, while I continue to use Outlook for work purposes. I am also
now using Firefox as my primary browser. I still haven't made the full
Linux leap but I am constantly switching between Vista and Ubuntu and
the only thing holding me back in a full transition is I find the fonts
in Ubuntu more difficult to read even after trying numerous different
fonts and settings.
Your mileage may vary but I'm very happy with TB.
Thanks for clearing up the shortcut mystery for me.
I'm thinking of writing my own simple newsreader as an exercise in
learning VB.Net (or perhaps C# - but I HATE C# syntax).
Although I hate Cx syntax, I would like to learn C & C++ to be able to
write some code that I (so far) haven't been able to hire anyone to do.
C should also help me with the Linux stuff.
Being already so swamped with work, learning a new language looks like a
hike up Mount Everest, in shorts, on your knees, on a bed of glass in
the dead of winter. But, whatcha gonna do?
Maybe I'll post a link here to the project if some of you want to help
me by pointing out its problems and things I could do better.
megan
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