I’m a really big fan of e-mail clients. While others will argue that using the web-based e-mail client is the way to go, I like having my information on my machine locally. I guess I’m just old-fashioned.

And speaking of old-fashioned, I’ve got myself a new PC that’s 64-bit, I’m trying to make sure that everything that I picked up or install is 64-bit compatible.

One of my favorite applications is Thunderbird, but I’m kind of disappointed in the development of the application over the past couple of years. It seems the application just isn’t getting attention it deserves or it’s not moving fast enough in directions that would make the application more attractive.

One of the biggest things that I love about Thunderbird is the amount of extensions and extra functions you can add to the e-mail client to do special things, but the client it’s self is really plain.

Although Thunderbird is a good email client, the next version is about to be released and I’m just not getting the vibe that it’s moving very far in a forward direction.

Application startup

When you start Thunderbird there should really be a summary page. There should be a page that links to your calendar, your tasks, your e-mail accounts and reminders.

There should also be a home button on the Thunderbird toolbar that allows you at any point to go back to this summary page to see all this information at once.

In Thunderbird, there is an option to select the start page. When you open the application the it’s supposed to default to this page, but if you have a custom default page specified once you move away from this page you can’t get back to; I haven’t found the button, nor the shortcut to get back there- you have to restart Thunderbird application…

Composition Window

Adding recipients to an e-mail is one of the most frustrating things that I do with Thunderbird, and it’s one of the most basic things that you have to do with an e-mail client.

I don’t really understand the execution of this process. The recipients of the e-mail are listed in a column and the recipient type is denoted just to the left of the e-mail address; to me this is just stupid.

If you dealing with one or two recipients, it’s not a big deal, but periodically I will send e-mails to a bunch of people and to make sure that I’ve selected all the people that want, I have to scroll through this long list of e-mails; it’s just time consuming.

While I hate admitting it, I think that most of the other email clients got it right by separating the contacts by a comma or a semicolon; keeping the contacts grouped by TO, CC and BCC. By keeping the contacts grouped the person composing e-mail can quickly see, by section, if the recipient has been added or added to the correct group.

E-mail signatures

Again, one of the most basic things that Thunderbird lacks is the ability to have, or manage, signatures. Thunderbird has the ability to assign a signature file; who does this?

There should be at least a basic editor to allow for the creation of a signature or signature file. Why do you have to have an HTML editor or a word processor to create a signature file and then import a signature file into Thunderbird; it doesn’t make any sense at all.

I mean at the very least you could have a text box that you could compose just a simple text that says thank you and your name; problem solved.

Embedding videos

In composing an e-mail, I would like to be able to embed a video. I don’t want to sen a 26 MB e-mail, but I would like o be able to send an embedded YouTube videos to my family and friends. Current practices allow for videos to be embedded into websites because they’re based on HTML; E-mails are composed in HTML.

Thunderbird allows for the injection of direct HTML code and therefore you should be able to embed YouTube videos into e-mails.

This seems like such an obvious ability that I’m surprised that Thunderbird doesn’t have this. The RSS feeds seem to handle it fine.

The example that I’m showing does absolutely nothing in Thunderbird, but if you view the source code from the composition of the HTML e-mail, the code is there.

Calendar and Task integration

Thunderbird is a good e-mail client, but I would never use it without the integration of the calendar and the tasks. It seems to me that Google is the biggest portal for integration. I don’t know why Thunderbird has not made more strides to synchronize Google contacts, calendar events and tasks.

The Mozilla foundation almost has a direct line, a Bat Phone if you will, to Google, why does Thunderbird still require a plug-in to make this work? I mean you have to install Lightning and Google provider to make this feature work. This is a serious oversight for Thunderbird.

Address Book

I don’t understand this area either. They want you to put all this information into the address book for Thunderbird, but they don’t allow for printing envelopes, labels or creating a mailing list; there’s not even extensions for this. What would you put all this information into an application that you can’t easily get the information out of?

Thunderbird is expecting you to put people’s home addresses, work addresses, birthdays, phone numbers and more, but yet the use of this type of information is clumsily utilized. Where’s the map for the home address [from Google], where’s the reminders for the birthdays, where’s the integration for the instant messenger [MSN, YAHOO, GTalk, etc] status in the application?

If you’re going to take the time to put all the information into the address book, the very least you can do is utilize the information in an intuitive way. If the contact in the address book has a phone number for a MOBILE; it would stand to reason that you could send this person a SMS message. If they have a Hotmail account you can assume they are going to handle IM conversations.

While I don’t have a detailed listing of everything that’s changed in the upcoming version of Thunderbird, all the changes could be just under the hood; something I’m just not noticing.

The only noticeable change that I’ve seen so far in the next release of Thunderbird has been in the preview of the e-mails in the inbox.

I’m glad they’ve done something with it, but I’m sure this could have been changed up very easily with another one of those plug-ins.

Again, all the changes to the application could be transparent, but when a new version of an application is released, I’m looking for the things that changed and the things that are going to make my life more enjoyable as it pertains to my e-mail client. If the next version of the application is so transparent that nothing has noticeably changed from the last version, I’m not impressed.

If Thunderbird can’t make some changes here soon that can show a reason to stay with it, I’ll move on to another email client that’s being developed by people who actually use the program they are developing.

Regards,
NapoleonAG
Email/IM: NapoleonAG.TSS@Gmail.com
Website: www.TechSideStories.com