Sunny Man’s Blog

July 21st 2007

(1) Sunbird: Wax Wings?

Life, Technology

The release of a major milestone at the end of June went unnoticed by me, for which I give myself a slap on the wrist. Mozilla’s under-publicised calendar application Sunbird finally churned out their 0.5 release. This new release, as with all previous releases, brings ever more features, bug fixes and urgently needed life into the overshadowed application. Sunbird has been overshadowed by its older siblings Firefox and Thunderbird but is just beginning to break out on its own.

I have used Sunbird, and its Thunderbird extension twin Lightening, before but only at an early state - version 0.1 or thereabouts. Here are my thoughts about this latest stable release and why Outlook should watch out.

Major Improvements

You can find a full list of the improvements and big fixes on the development blog but one major difference in this version compared to 0.1 is that 0.5 hasn’t crashed yet. This enables me to actually use the application! Seriously, there has been major improvements in just about every area. The theme has been updated and other interface elements have been graphically improved.

One warmly welcomed introduction was the support for shared Google Calendars and Outlook meeting requests. This start to integrate with Google Calendar should stand Sunbird well as Google Calendar is one of the few online calendar services that people actually use. If only Google would allow calendars to be externally edited. Oh wait! You can!

Google Calendar Support

The same people that built in Google Calendar support have produced an extension for Sunbird that enables read and write support for Google Calendars. When installed it provides another option when importing or subscribing to calendars which is specifically for Google shared calendars. This tight integration will be vital to the success and adoption of Sunbird in later releases although it’s no the be all and end all for it, let it be known.

Wax Wings?

Sunbird has come a long way since it was announced way back in 2001. With each release it is looking ever more professional and brings ever more needed and improved features with it, the application looks increasingly set to achieve as much success as Firefox and Thunderbird in the not to distant future. The fact that it is built upon Mozilla’s XUL tool kit stands it in good stead for a plethora of extensions and themes when it becomes more popular and more user friendly.

It’s twin Lightening - an extension clone for Mozilla Thunderbird - is another matter at the moment. There are a few issues with the integration of it and the e-mail client but it has the potential to be a free and popular consumer alternative to Microsoft Outlook. I do think however that if it’s to succeed then Sunbird will also have to integrate with Thunderbird rather than just providing a separate extension which is the current situation.

The Mozilla Calendar Project has come a long way and know they still have a long way to go but they’ve come this far in a relatively short time. If they’ve come that far in that short a time, we can only expect great things in the time to come. Will we see the dissolution of Lightening for a Sunbird that automatically integrated with Thunderbird? Time will tell. Go and grab a download of either Sunbird or Lightening and see what you think. If you haven’t used it in a while, I fell you will be pleasantly surprised. Sunbird definitely does not have wings made of wax and will be flying higher and higher.