Posted on 02/07/2005 2:50:00 PM PST by decimon
The Mozilla Foundation has released the first version of Sunbird, its standalone calendar application, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Sunbird 0.2 offers various features, including the ability to create scheduled events and to see an overview of events on a particular day, week or month. The calendar can be shared by publishing it to a WebDAV (World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)-capable server. WebDAV is a set of extensions to the basic HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) underlying the Web, enabling people to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers.
The Sunbird application is available for download on Mozilla's Web site.
Although Sunbird is a standalone calendar application, the Mozilla Foundation has started a project to integrate it with Thunderbird. The project, code-named Lightning, is scheduled for its first general release in the middle of 2005, according to the Mozilla Web site. The integration of the applications could take on Microsoft's widely used Outlook software.
However, according to some postings on the MozillaZine news site, some consumers don't believe that Sunbird is a viable alternative to Outlook just yet.
While Mozilla's Firefox browser has advantages over Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Sunbird and the Thunderbird e-mail application need extra features before companies can consider them as an alternative to Outlook, one user said.
Firefox "beats IE hands down, but no serious business users can switch from Outlook to (Thunderbird or Sunbird) because of numerous usability issues," according to the posting. "If all you want is the e-mail functionality, Thunderbird is fine. I use it for that, but I can't get anybody who likes the calendar, reminders, etc., to switch from Outlook still."
But Mozilla contributor David McGuinness pointed out that Sunbird is not currently aimed at corporate users.
"Sunbird is still in the early stages of development and is certainly experimental software," McGuinness said. "Nonetheless, Sunbird is a promising application for those already using Thunderbird or Firefox."
Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Mozilla Pinga.
For goodness sakes, it's version 0.2
Test it. Learn what's possible. Contribute what you'd like to see. Don't even consider it a viable business tool till version 1.x (never run a business on version 1.0 of anything). No serious business user would take this person seriously for having given this advice in this way. What drivel.
Sunbird Ping!
get it to sync with my blackberry, and I'll scrap outlook tomorrow.
They're working on a calendar extension to Thunderbird that they call Lightning.
alrighty, so I downloaded sunbird.
I thought it was pretty neat. And it's a perfectly viable alternative to Outlook for me...of course...that could be because I don't use Outlook.
.
Hi mel,
May I ask how you use or intend to use it?
Well, I am not very good at keeping up with finances and appointments, and I use yahoo calendar to keep up with when my bills come out (because 90% of them come out automatically) and when I have things to do, because yahoo will email reminders to me.
I only downloaded sunbird to check it out, but they are working on email support so it will send email reminders. When they get that feature working then I will PROBABLY replace my yahoo calendar with it.
I just thought it was really cool that you can make a different calendar for each type of event and color code them differently. And view them all together at once, or only view the events you want to see. You can also publish your calendar to a web server that supports it! Which I think is pretty cool. At that point, the only functionality it would lack that Yahoo Calendar service gives me is that I would not be able to EDIT my sunbird calendar online, just view it. Which means that if I make an appointment at work then I would have to wait until I got home to put it on my calendar, thus increasing the chance that I will forget! :)
Plus I love the mozilla line of products.
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