Tag: Mozilla

Thunderbird Lives

I’m a pretty big fan of Mozilla Thunderbird. The project has adopted the multi-channel development model of Firefox (which was adapted from Chrome’s) which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Instead of the nightly, Aurora and beta channels, though, Thunderbird’s channels are named Shredder (ha), Earlybird and Miramar. With the new names comes new logos, courtesy of Sean Martell, Lead Visual Designer for Mozilla.

I’m almost tempted to use the Earlybird builds just for the logo.

Jarring progress (with a swab of Vaseline)

D2D/Directwrite will become more of an issue the closer we get to FF4’s release date. It will not be a good idea to subject new users to something as basic as font readability…that’s too much of a comfort zone shock for new converts. Disabling D2D/DirectWrite by default off the bat (corrected with a point release down the road) is a saner approach, because I think Mozilla is underestimating the user pushback once the non beta testers (who generally have more conservative machine setups) are involved.

I guess there is some solace (depending on how you look at it) in that IE9 will probably beat FF4 in coming out first. That should increase significantly the chances Microsoft will fix the DirectWrite issues in the near future.

Another day, another spilled database

This has been making the rounds these few days. I don’t think I have a AMO account, that is, I don’t REMEMBER having one. Hard to sort ’em out these days, with a million and one sites requiring seperate (and generally badly hashed) logins…

That being said, this leak isn’t the scale of others that involve financial transactions (sometimes of an embarrassing nature.) And accounts of this kind are littered with dummy personal particulars, since as a rule of thumb the users are technologically savvy. There’s also the consideration that anything dealing with money and/or security clearances always require a heavier burden of security. If your throwaway blog poster account is compromised, the site only (nine out of 10) gets a spam infestation with possible malware links. If your favorite e-commerce account is 0wn3d by Mordor the Russian Mafia, you might be considerably out of pocket. Still, the stunning number of sites still using MD5 hashes (and Mozilla only switched in 2009) should put a chilling fear into any paranoid netizen’s heart and mind.

Thunderbird 3.0

Looks great, performs better. Best feature: super-powered search. Next best feature: global inbox.

Lightning doesn’t yet work on it though, so I can’t move my main work machine to it. At least Enigmail’s OK. Can’t wait…

Update: broke down and installed TBird 3.0 with the Lightning nightlies. Working OK so far.

Thunderbird 2.0 Released

Fantastic, been waiting for it. Features I have been looking forward to are message tagging and saved searches. What I consider the essential add-ons (Enigmail, Lightning and SmoothWheel) already work with 2.0, so no pain for me there.

The look and feel got an update too. The new theme is more refined, but perhaps a little duller compared to the previous version.

Thunderbird-2.0

Without further ado, the links: