Thunderbird Cloud

Discussion of features in Mozilla Thunderbird
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killthejoe
Posts: 11
Joined: July 10th, 2006, 1:14 pm

Thunderbird Cloud

Post by killthejoe »

A suggestion for the future that I think would be a huge benefit to everyone using Thunderbird:

It would be awesome to have a Thunderbird Cloud client accessed through any web browser. I find it very frustrating having to use my wife's laptop to access all my gmail accounts separately when out of the home. If a Thunderbird cloud were available, with the same interface, this would solve this problem for me completely.

Please let me know if you agree with this idea and if you have the same problem.

Thank you! :idea:
killthejoe
Posts: 11
Joined: July 10th, 2006, 1:14 pm

Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by killthejoe »

...or Google could just set this up =P
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by tanstaafl »

Somebody in the tb-planning mailing recently said the following while discussing the future of address books:

One direction we would like to explore is to deliver a Thunderbird 'experience' on multiple devices, ie desktop, web and mobile (ie touch devices) access to the same set of data. 'Experience' says it all: what should that be remains to be defined. But in this perspective, data sync (not only AB, but white/black lists, settings, credentials, and maybe not email....) should be very central.

I have no idea when or what form Thunderbird would take IF they ever produced a version for "the cloud". Perhaps a HTML5 application? They'd need to do something to add more value than being yet another webmail implementation, and would want to avoid re-inventing Mozilla Suite (aka SeaMonkey). There is also the issue of what impact this has on add-ons. I suspect if they do anything it would only be after several major architectural changes.

About 7 years ago there was a proposal (I think as part of a new gecko architecture) to convert Thunderbird into a XULRunner application that could be run either standalone or from Firefox (like an add-on). They went a different direction. Unfortunately I never saved a link to that web page, and cant figure out the right keywords to find it anymore.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by tanstaafl »

You might think about using Thunderbird Portable. That lets you store both Thunderbird and your profile on a usb/flash drive and just plug it in to a USB port to run it from another PC. No need to install it. Even better if you use IMAP accounts.

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/t ... d_portable
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_a_profil ... hunderbird
killthejoe
Posts: 11
Joined: July 10th, 2006, 1:14 pm

Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by killthejoe »

@tanstaafl Thanks for the feedback. Thunderbird Portable sounds almost exactly what I'm describing for the cloud, except I can't imagine ever wanting to use a USB stick everywhere I go. Half the time I end up forgetting or misplacing it which is more frustrating than just accessing my individual Google accounts when I'm out of the house. The cloud would simply be an adaptation of TB Portable, but the interface would run through a web browser.
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SledFang
Posts: 35
Joined: April 13th, 2007, 6:18 am
Location: England

Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by SledFang »

(This is a slightly old post now.)

I'm also interested in a TB cloud service. I know that you can combine google with Thunderbird addons but my major objection is that with any cloud service it depends on trust. I'm not sure I'm ready to give Google and therefore certain governments access to all my emails, calendar and todo list (although I've had to do this on emails). I'd personally be more interested in letting Mozilla do this as I have much greater trust in them. They could also make it totally private, encrypted and free of "back doors".

There is the other practical issue which is I have several email accounts and not all of them are with Google.
tackweed
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Joined: September 11th, 2012, 8:43 am

Re: Thunderbird Cloud

Post by tackweed »

I recently moved my mail folders to the cloud(Skydrive) - which works fine. What I have not tried yet (due to lack of physical computers) is to move all my profile information to the cloud (lack of foresight) and/or setting up a similar t-bird front end on another computer to see if it works - Can't think of any reason why it would not.

This was the basis for my move: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder
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