---
layout: post
title: new firefox and thunderbird releases
created: 1095211668
permalink: blog/walkah/new-firefox-and-thunderbird-releases/
tags:
- drupal
- mac os x
- linux
---
<p>
i'm not the first to point out that everybody's favorite <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox">web browser</a> and<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird"> mail clients</a> both released updates today. i've got to totally disagree with <a href="http://www.jluster.org/">jonas</a> here, i have to say that both the new versions rock.
</p><p>
however, there's even a cool drupal tie-in! check out <a href="http://spreadfirefox.com/community/">spread firefox</a>, a new site devoted to firefox advocacy - and oh ya, it's powered by <a href="http://www.civicspacelabs.org/">civicspace</a> / <a href="http://www.drupal.org/">drupal</a>.  right on.
</p><p>
<strong>firefox</strong>
</p><p>
maybe it's wishful thinking, but firefox 1.0RC seems to be a bit snappier on os x than 0.9 was. my only real complaint is that the incredible <a href="http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabextensions.html.en">tabbrowser extensions</a> don't seem to be updated yet. (i'll live). however, that extension allows you to put close buttons on each tab, re-order tabs by drag and drop (and a whole lot more).
</p><p>
the latest version also includes a funky RSS - bookmark thing. i'm not sure i really would ever use it, but when you're browsing a site that has an atom/rss feed there's a little "RSS" button that you can click to 'bookmark' the feed... which then creates a folder in your bookmarks that contain a list of headlines. nice i guess, though it ain't netnewswire ;)
</p><p>
the #1 reason i still love firefox though: the <a href="http://webdeveloper.mozdev.org/">webdeveloper extension</a>. it kicks serious butt. if you're unfortunate to spend most of your life building websites or web applications you should try it.
</p>
<p><a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&amp;id=7295&amp;t=58"><img border="0" alt="Get Firefox!" title="Get Firefox!" src="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/community/images/affiliates/Buttons/180x60/get.gif"/></a></p>
<p>
<strong>thunderbird</strong>
</p><p>
thunderbird 0.8 brings one big new improvement (as far as i'm concerned) and that's the ability to quick search by different fields in a manner similar to mail.app. the other feature (on os x) is that the dock icon now shows a count of new messages (instead of the green checkmark) - though i wish it was persistent a la mail.app.
</p><p>
i still have some nit-picky complaints with thunderbird, namely i wish that you could quickly limit the message view to all 'flagged' messages (on IMAP accounts) <em>or</em> if the thunderbird markings were stored on the IMAP server (rather than the local cache) so that they persisted across machines. the only other thing is that, i agree with jonas here, not doing addressbook.framework integration is stupid on os x, though it looks like there is a patch.
</p><p>
i was a long time mutt user... and still use it on occasion. but mutt's imap support sucks (no local cache makes imap unfun for lots of mailboxes &#38; messages). and, it's _really_ hard to compose multiple messages at once on a text mode mail application.
</p><p>
i'll still stick with the mozilla* family. the apps are good - but the #1 motivation for me is that they provide me (in combination with gnu emacs) a truly cross-platform solution for my "mission critical" applications.
</p><p>
... now if only there were a linux equivalent of <a href="http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/">ecto</a>. ;)
</p>
