Print this article | E-mail this article | Comment on this article

Thunderbird to Get Calendar Add-in

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

September 28, 2005, 12:51 PM

It looks as if Mozilla developers are attempting to make their Thunderbird e-mail client more competitive with Microsoft's Outlook. A roadmap to integrate a calendar application with Thunderbird was posted recently, which details the project known as "Lightning."

The group hopes to have basic functionality ready for release in November. Better Thunderbird integration, e-mail and task linkage, as well as CalDAV support are goals of the second revision, for which no timetable was given. Successive releases of Lightning will add localization support, device synchronization and cached offline calendar support.

Add a Comment (12 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

By AntiochMedia

edited Sep 29, 2005 - 4:15 PM

Anyone try the nightly of Lightning? It's compatible with Thunderbird v1.5 Beta 1 -- and it's fantastic! Only issue I have is that it didn't import my previous Moz Calendar plug-in dates...

http://ftp.mozilla.org/p...atest-trunk/windows-xpi/

Score: 0

By xoineg

posted Sep 29, 2005 - 9:05 AM

anything would be better than outlook which has really good features, but it is a heavy load on computer resources.

Score: 0

By GeorgeSantayana

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 5:03 PM

Pardon me if I don't hold my breath.

From an article on Betanews (12/23/2004):

The Mozilla foundation has unveiled a new project called "Lightning" that will be tightly integrated into Mozilla's new Thunderbird e-mail client and sharpen the client's elbows against rival Microsoft's Outlook software. With Lightning, Thunderbird will have user features that may compete with Microsoft in the enterprise and thwart the software giant's size advantage by being free of cost.

Mozilla developer Mike Shaver announced the project saying, "The first Lightning release is planned for the middle of 2005."

Score: 0

By rpavl

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 4:55 PM

Long way to go....MS has this market wrapped, like it or not OUTLOOK is top of the line software.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Sep 29, 2005 - 9:43 AM

Outlook 2003 is the first version I have ever liked. All others were, frankly, bad! 2003 borrowed heavily from Lotus Notes.

Score: 0

By twosheds

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 3:22 PM

Good news. Sunbird is great but it seems it can only alert you by sending you an e-mail behind your back from the e-mail client it is installed on. Absurd! Absolutely no integration at all. Hopefully this will be an improvement.

Score: 0

By RobertM

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 2:15 PM

Lightning isn't new, it's just that the roadmap was recently published.

And, IIRC, they *claim* they aren't targetting Outlook. :-)

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 2:44 PM

If it does not have exchange support, which I'm betting it won't, they'd be lambasted if they called it an outlook replacement.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 1:58 PM

I would love a decent Mozilla-based alternative to Outlook. Exchange integration would also be wonderful, but doubtful.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 1:44 PM

Only useful (for me) if it will sync with my Windows Mobile 2003 calendar and inbox.

Score: 0

By Metshrine

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 1:11 PM

Been waiting for this for a very long time. Hopefully its worth the wait and they decided to take their time and get it right. We shall see. Sunbird was nice, but it was way to buggy for my tastes and the integration behind it was sloppy

Score: 0

By techie_G33k

posted Sep 28, 2005 - 1:37 PM

Yes, I personally can't wait for this. Though I must comment that this is older news (heard about it a couple months back)...but still good to hear it's still in the works :-)

Score: 0

Nov 21 - 6:51 PM ET Coalition urges better laws for e-mail and cell phone privacy

Nov 21 - 6:42 PM ET How is Internet advertising faring in this bad economy?

Nov 21 - 6:15 PM ET From out of the Amazon Cloud, an AWS winner emerges

Nov 21 - 5:20 PM ET Mufin music finder enters public beta, adds widgets

Nov 21 - 5:01 PM ET Google launches its SearchWiki semantics plug-in

Nov 21 - 4:57 PM ET Asus previews a slimmer, less costly Eee PC

Nov 21 - 4:32 PM ET New Adobe Media Player ushers in AIR 1.5

Nov 21 - 2:11 PM ET AT&T to add Pantech's low-cost C630 phone to 3G lineup

Nov 21 - 1:11 PM ET iPhone gets firmware 2.2 update

Nov 21 - 11:51 AM ET The Dell surprise: Higher earnings on lower revenue