Why I switched from Thunderbird 3 to Seamonkey 2

[jmcdaniel]

A feature I'd like added is to be able to delete all the contents of a spam folder without opening any of it, like the "empty trash" works on that one folder.

It's already there: if you enable junk controls for your account and choose to automatically move junk to the spam folder, then the spam folder gets a special icon and when you right-click there is the option "empty junk"

Thanks, this was helpful. I was careful to say "spam folder" rather than "junk" because McAfee added their own spam folder and that's the one I wanted to delete contents of without selecting or opening any of the contents. Just selecting the folder caused at least one spam item to be displayed in the preview window.

After looking at your reply, I now see two solutions. One is to have TB automatically move the contents of the McAfee Spam folder to the trash or junk folder then do what you suggest.

The other is the route I took. I dumped McAfee. I got tired of it bringing my computer to its knees and using fear tactics to try to force me to keep all its features enabled. I'm testing out Norton and it seems to work much better ( and that's despite my long-held anti-Symantec prejudice).

[jmcdaniel]

Buttons! add-on that supports 3.0.4

Thanks for this great tip! . For the life of me I can't grasp why TB 3 still has no Forward/Back buttons in the email header area along with reply/forward/etc. Seems pretty basic for an email tool. (Seems that the buttons could be much smaller so the header could take less space but that's another issue.) Again thanks.

[Noel8]

Well, the one thing that i would have appreciated in the 3 version, would be the multiple imap accounts that i have...3. Each time i try to send an email, I manually have to go to the outgoing mode and keep changing the account name. It seems that the 3 get mixed up...why can't they make it stay put? Of the 3 accounts i am only confronted with 2 of them asking for the password. I've clicked on "Password Manager" and it still does nothing.

[indiannews007]

let see what Thunderbird can do. Thunderbird has a new wizard for creating new accounts, which I find much more confusing than the previous one. It tries to be intelligent and guess your provider settings but in many cases it doesn't work right and provides only confusion. In most cases I ended up cancelling it and setting up all server info in standard account settings window.

[Noel8]

et see what Thunderbird can do. Thunderbird has a new wizard for creating new accounts, which I find much more confusing than the previous one. It tries to be intelligent and guess your provider settings but in many cases it doesn't work right and provides only confusion. In most cases I ended up cancelling it and setting up all server info in standard account settings window.>>>

Sorry, i don't understand what your saying...can u elaborate? BTW, the 3 version does not seem any different in account settings as the previous version.

[LIMPET235]

indiannews007...
Please remove the commercial sig links.
Thank you.

[edit] Links removed.[/edit]

[SirArthur]

OK... I also gave up on TB 3, out of the new features just one catched my eye; the reminder to attach something when you write "attached" or "attach".
Other than that is just a blow up of resources for uninteresting features, to not mention the messy add account wizzard. - Please, don't turn this into an "Apple ideology" of "Steve Jobs (in this case Mozilla) already knows what's best for you, so you don't have to touch anything", keep this project out of such fascism, please.

Unlike most I don't see TB 3 as a work in progress, taken how it started and the "overall idea" it's a destruction in progress. And what needs an update these days are the old email protocols, specially SMTP, to prevent many things that came along and weren't thought at the beginning, such as email address forgery, spam, and so on, not the email clients.

So, sorry to say it, but TB 3 is really disapointing.

[SirArthur]

Sorry, i don't understand what your saying...can u elaborate? BTW, the 3 version does not seem any different in account settings as the previous version.

Sure it is! probably you just ported your settings from TB2 to TB3, but try to add a new account on TB3 and you'll see. To make it just a bit (lot more) worse if the "Thunderbird config guesser" decided IMAP is the best for you, there's no way on config to revert it to POP3 or vice-versa, taken there's no place to change protocol of an existing account by the account manager. But this "bug" was already present on all the previous TB releases.

[dmnelson]

I agree with most of the original comments. I have used both Thunderbird and the Mozilla/SeaMonkey suite for email at various times over the years. Granted there is always room for improvement in any software, but I think that the interface in SeaMonkey and Thunderbird 2 is/was excellent. Then Thunderbird 3 threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I feel like the changes to layout and button placement are just change for the sake of change, but do not add anything to the usability of the application.

[Noel8]

Noel8 wrote:

Sorry, i don't understand what your saying...can u elaborate? BTW, the 3 version does not seem any different in account settings as the previous version.



Sure it is! probably you just ported your settings from TB2 to TB3, but try to add a new account on TB3 and you'll see. To make it just a bit (lot more) worse if the "Thunderbird config guesser" decided IMAP is the best for you, there's no way on config to revert it to POP3 or vice-versa, taken there's no place to change protocol of an existing account by the account manager. But this "bug" was already present on all the previous TB releases.
Well, I did not ported my settings from TB2 to TB3...hoping it would bypass the previous problem that i had mentioned. My server is only Imap, so I am not looking to convert to other servers. Just this morning, I tried to send an email, and as I previously mentioned, it denies me cause the outgoing servers name has changed to one of the other accounts i have. Now, in TB2, I was able to go to account settings and edit the right server, click OK and send the mail successfully, but not this time, it just keeps going back to the wrong server in TB3. I wonder if this problem exists with Greasemonkey...i have never used it.?

[tanstaafl]

"there's no way on config to revert it to POP3 or vice-versa"

You can't change the account type after the account is created, but you can change the account wizard's choice.

Right after it checks that your username/password is good look for a Edit button on the right side of that window. Press it. That will add controls to let you change the account type etc. There is also a Manual button on the left side you could use to bypass the wizard (no idea why they didn't display that button in an earlier screen). Its not as easy as it should be, but it can be done.

Mozilla Messaging has a KB article on changing IMAP to POP that I think was written for 3.0.3, it doesn't mention the Edit button that is available in 3.0.4. I'll create a KB article on the account wizard for our wiki after 3.1 is released. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:UX/Priorities/3.1 for the changes they are planning.

[TheBorgInvasion]

I understand about the icon arrangement. They should give us the ability to move icons where we want if they insist, like Microsoft, what is better. So, I am using an addon called CustomizeHeaderToolbar to adjust to this icon change.

[rsx11m]

If you look at TB 3.1 beta 2, you can now right-click on the toolbar in the message headers to remove or rearrange the header-pane buttons as needed, and also allows to switch between icon and text views as with a normal toolbar. The author of the CustomizeHeaderToolbar got approval for his code to be checked in for the next release.

[Noel8]

Well, now i tried to send a test message to myself went to the so called account settings wizard, cliked on the edit button and that did nothing. Then i tried the manage button, filled out the info requested, and that did not work. Each time i get the usual sending mail message with the green line moving one right after the other...till finally i had to cancel.

[tanstaafl]

What version did you use?