Mozilla's Lightning Project

NetRyder

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Simon Paquet writes: "Mozilla developer Mike Shaver has announced the Lightning project. Lightning is the working project name for an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. See the corresponding page on wiki.mozilla.org for more information.

"The first Lightning release is planned for the middle of 2005. Lightning is a different project as the current calendar extension for Thunderbird and it is not planned to replace the current extension with Lightning. While the current extension only aims for a loose integration with Thunderbird, Lightning aims to integrate into the main Thunderbird UI and user interaction model as tightly as possible.

"With Lightning, Mozilla Thunderbird will have a set of user features that is much more competitive with Outlook, especially in enterprise usage."

While Lightning is separate to Mozilla Calendar and Sunbird, the three projects will share large amounts of code.
Source: mozillaZine

Are we finally going to see some real competition for Outlook? ;)
 
NetRyder said:
Are we finally going to see some real competition for Outlook? ;)

In the near future? I doubt it.
 
vern said:
In the near future? I doubt it.
Very true.
I actually posted something about this last weekend, but at least with Lightning, they're coming a little closer.
 
Here is some of what Microsoft said about it in this article:
Thunderbird does not offer an equivalent comparison to Microsoft Office Outlook," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers expect much more than simple calendaring and the ability to send and receive e-mails. The integration of Exchange and Outlook far outweighs any feature that Thunderbird may deliver, and we don't see it as being applicable for serious business use.
 
It's true. Thunderbird, in its current state, is not even close to Outlook. It's a (far better) replacement for Outlook Express, but I it seems like the Lightning project aims to bridge the gap between Tbird and Outlook.

This will be a more difficult goal to achieve though. Firefox and Thunderbird were able to take on IE and OE since neither of them have been seriously updated for the last several years. On the other hand, Outlook is one of the key products in the MS Office suite, so MS has been taking it much more seriously. Outlook 2003 was a huge improvement over earlier versions (I would never use Outlook 2000/XP...ick). Thunderbird will really have to put up a tough fight if it intends to eat into Outlook's market share. :)
 
I won't be changing from Outlook, but I would like to use this. I use the calendar extention for TBird now, it works ok but I would definately give this a try :)
 
I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird and am trying Sunbird for my calendar functions ... not bad :)
 
I want to see progress in the project, but I'm just too attached to Outlook 2003. I switched from Eudora a bit over a year ago and haven't looked back since.
 
vern said:
I want to see progress in the project, but I'm just too attached to Outlook 2003.
I know what you mean.
I tried to stick to Thunderbird, but Outlook 2003 was just a better fit for what I wanted. Besides, it's still the only app that has contact and calendar sync with my Nokia (apart from Lotus Notes...yuck)
 
i stick to thunderbird because all i need is a mail client :p no fancy trimmings
 

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