Mozilla Sunbird is the latest stand-alone application from the Mozilla foundation that follows in the footsteps of now revered browser Firefox and email client Thunderbird. OSDir reviews their first public release, version 0.2.
Review of Mozilla’s Sunbird Stand-Alone Calendar Application
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Does anyone know when I’ll be able to use a single gecko package for all the aviary, instead of having a 10 meg download for each of the apps?
Yeah that would be nice. My guess is they will wait until all of the pieces are mature before making that considertion.
I can’t wait until they get Sunbird integrated with Thunderbird. I want to open my email and be reminded of any appointments I have, kind of like what Outlook does. I’m also looking forward to the email alert notification thingy when that is implemented.
Firebird dev Blake Ross has publically stated that he will not use Gecko as a library because the linking hurts Firefox startup performance.
“Firebird dev Blake Ross has publically stated that he will not use Gecko as a library because the linking hurts Firefox startup performance.”
what are you smoking?
I’m pretty indifferent. The article mentions the inability to color code calenders, which yes, is annoying. Another fairly annoying feature is that it doesn’t handle handle events that span multiple days in a very nice way visually. Like, if I have a 2 day event, there’ll be a seperate entry on the monthly calender on each day, and the text will be cut off at the end of the day. It would be much nicer if it was displayed as a single event that spanned across the days of event and displayed the full name without cutting it off.
Overall tho, it’s pretty nice. It’s quite a ways away from being a real exchange replacement I think. The ability to share a calender on a webdav server doesn’t really scale I think, when you want all kinds of permissions rules for people’s calenders. A hypothetical scenario of this might be wanting to allow a secretary to modify a CEO’s calender. Everyone should be able to see it, but only the CEO and the secretary can modify it. Is it possible to achieve that kind of security with webdav?
Sunbird seems like another execellent mozilla product. Firefox and thunderbird are already great at sub 1.0 releases.
I keep wondering if they are going to change the actual style / colour of the calendar itself? The current “theme” reminds too much of the (failed? dead?) OEone HomeBase project, which leveraged / contributed to the mozilla suite.
It’s clear that there is _long_ long way to go still. There are a lot of problems/inconsistencies in the interface which really could be cleared up with not too much effort, but maybe these are being ignored on purpose as it is only 0.2. But still, whose idea was it to build against Gtk1.2?!
I can’t really comment too much of the functionality, as I never use calender apps, but I would warn that there doesn’t seem to be any point downloading this unless you have the time to test it; there’s really not much to see.
Agreed. For example, look at the tabs on the left: “Calendar” “Calendars”. Terrible usability there (it should have been “Subscriptions”). Some dialogs are also bad too. I had plans to email the author with some mockups to help out on this dpt. I just didn’t find the time to do it yet.
The ical standard, short for iCalendar, standard, greatly predates Apple’s confusingly named calendar app iCal. Evolution supports iCal/vCal, and I think its support also predates Apple’s iCal app. Apple named it’s calendar iCal to go with iPod, iBook, iTunes, iLife, iChat, etc. Sunbird’s (and Evolution’s) use of iCalnedar most likely has more to do with its status as the most recent and most comprehensive open calendar standard than any effort to be compatible with Apple’s calendaring app. I point this out because both the article and the first post are confused on this point. Apple has no responsibility for the open calendaring standard iCal/vCal/iCalendar. The following is a url discussing calendar standards: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/0000149.html
Been using it for a few weeks now. Never used Apple’s iCal until Sunbird on windows gave me an equivalent – I run desktops on Mac and Windows and only use software that can exchange files between the two
Thunderbird is also useful on both due to ability to move folders between computers with ease
I would love to see the Gecko engine become more of a library for window creation. Maybe, once it is more stable, it can become an important cross platform UI framework.
There are all kinds of possible performance enhancements that could go into it this way too.
AFAIK, Gecko is a rendering engine, while XUL is the windowing component.
So i guess is what you are looking for is stand alone XUL library, and not Gecko library (GRE).
Than again it’s possible that XUL depends on Gecko, not quite sure about that one.
First, I’m a Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderchick evangelist.
However, for Calendar, I’m probably not going to use it until it supports SyncML. I want to be able to sync my Nokia Series 60 phone (which supports SyncML) with my calendar. FWIW, this works under OS X.
mike
XUL is the language to define interfaces using XML. The Gecko engine renders the interface as described by XUL.
So in other words, you can think of the interface itself as a web page.
So yeah, the library is the GRE, but I don’t know its current status. I don’t know if Blake said that they won’t do it for Firebird because of speed issues, but I don’t see why it cannot be done for the other, less used standalone products.
because it’s unstable. Unlike Microsoft products, the final release is going to be stable.
Eugenia: why does the Mozilla Sunbird hyperlink point to your unofficial gnomefiles.org website rather than the correct and official website for sunbird.
I understand that you want to promote your site and increase its exposure: however this link in inappropriate. Sunbird is cross platfom and runs under MS Windows: unless you’d like to start archiving all FOSS Windows projects on your site, I ask that you link to the correct and official site for an application: rather than your own.
You can use the PalmOS-based PDA’s Desktop software with integrated calendar/todo/note without the PDA, and it’s free and much more polished in terms of usability. Available at palmone.com.
I don’t use Linux, never intend to. I am interesting in Sunbird but I see no reason to hit the GnomeFiles server in order to see it. And I’m highly, highly unlikely to click an ad whilst I’m there. Its not going to make me use GNOME or GTK. Hence, by going through it to the Sunbird homepage I will be costing Eugenia, or whoever pays for the GnomeFiles bandwidth a few KB’s worth. For no benifit to them, the website, the GTK users/developers or anything
Link to the real homepage and drop a link to GnomeFiles later….
“I don’t use Linux, never intend to.”
Wooohooo open minds…ya baby..
“I am interesting in Sunbird but I see no reason to hit the GnomeFiles server in order to see it. And I’m highly, highly unlikely to click an ad whilst I’m there.”
Well…maybe because there is actually quite a bit of info at those gnomefiles program descriptions. As for the ads, they may pay for the site (I doubt they actually cover all the costs) but I would bet that they are not exactly the reason Eugenia and Co. continue to work on osnews.
“Its not going to make me use GNOME or GTK. ”
Not the point
“Link to the real homepage and drop a link to GnomeFiles later….”
Its a sister site…think of it like osnews having a database of info on each program and linking to that database when a story comes up about the program.
I actually agree that there should be a link to the mozilla project page in the description somewhere, but your reasons suck and I couldn’t help mysel.f
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
not that hard.
Make this thing interoperate with Exchange and I’ll be a very, very happy guy because I’ll be able to uninstall Outlook at work.
– chrish
Used Linux, far too much really. Don’t like it.
I had an open mind towards it but found ‘it’ (meaning any distro you can name) to be nowhere near what I wanted.
And by refering to the ads I meant that I’ll be costing GnomeFiles money (bandwidth) and not clicking on the ads that make them the money to pay for said bandwidth