Thunderbird 3 disappointment

Today I migrated all my mail & calendar stuff from Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 3.0b3, thinking it would be safe to do so now, in its third beta incarnation. Boy was I wrong. Frequently I had to close the application in order to be able to access my mail inbox; an immobile message pane had blocked it.

Bells & whistles appear to have been more or less randomly added. The underlying idea must have been that if you make it look like Firefox, it will automatically have Firefox quality. Sometimes they're indeed functional, sometimes not. Some items are tabbed, others that should have been are not. The original fresh 'brand new interface' enthousiasm has faded into confusion.

I love Mozilla and its products but can't help feeling that something went really wrong here. In view of the sluggish and what appears to be increasingly uninspired development process of Thunderbird 3.0, I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to continue to build upon version 2's strength rather than carry on with the 3.0 chaos - if it ever gets to the stage of a usable product in the first place. Thoughts? Alternatives?

 

Go back to Thunderbird 2 as you main keep thunderbird 3 as a separate install, test it on uninportant email that you can lose without consequences. I use thunderbird version 2.0.0.22 as my email utility on the computer, I don't use alfas/previews or betas for anything except testing. Betas are very offen unstable at best as your findingout. I am just sorry you had to find that out the hard way, but live and learn.

 

Thanks for the advice, I've 'reclaimed my inbox'. No need to worry about my mail, it was all safely backed up. I do worry about the Thunderbird project, though. Messy betas are not Mozilla's style at all.

After the news of Thunderbird being outsourced to a 'new home' (2007) there has been a remarkably long and very silent silence. Two years later, there is still no convincing vision, and no way they're going to put this beta into a polished product anytime soon.

Quo vadis Thunderbird? Apart from the obvious Firefox-style tabs and the new Gecko engine, I haven't seen a single improvement that would make it better or easier to use than its predecessor, let alone gain market share.