Thunderbird Annoyances

Thunderbird 2.0 has been released! Huzzah. It’s like 1.5, but with slight changes! Right, enough of all that. Now I will complain. There are some things that have been bugging me about the new version. Some of them have been bugging me since v1.0. I first started thinking about them when I tried an early beta of 2.0, and I had hoped that would be fixed for the final release. Guess not.

• Horizontal view
  • Re-sizes message list instead of current message
  • Message list items don’t get twice as high to fit more info in
• The “from:” and “attachments” panes take up space at the top and bottom of messages. It would be better to move their contents in-line. It’s not like I’m going to forget who sent me the message halfway through. I’m also not fond of having my viewing space halved when someone sends a bunch of images. Can re-size both the from and attachment panes, (with a small button to target) but they still take up at space and it’s annoying.
• If you sort a folder by date so that the newest messages appear at the top, that view *only* holds true for that folder. There is no way to set the view application-wide; one must do the sort manually for every folder. A subtle annoyance.

There’s probably more, but those are the major things that have been getting to me. Within a year, there will probably be some extension called “Thunderbird Mix Plus Plus” or some such nonsense which fixes all this and more. Else, it all gets corrected in a future release. I await either of those with impatience.

Read Your Exchange Emails With Gmail

My school, as well as many others, uses Microsoft Exchange server for email. It provides a nifty little web interface that resembles Outlook. Sadly, it does not feature a search function. This means that it is a severe pain finding old emails. Other drawbacks to using the school’s email system include loss of account after you graduate, as well as a 100mb storage limit. This may seem reasonable, but consider that you’ll be using it for the next four years. Possibly more, for some of us. After a semester and a half, mine is already a quarter full; I’m not even a heavy email user.

So, what is one to do? You could live with it, but I dislike living with annoyances. I believe I have found a better solution: forward all your mail to Gmail.

Unfortunately, Exchange provides no way to forward email. That’s ok. Gmail has a feature to automatically grab email from any pop-enabled inbox. Here’s how to do it.

• Get a Gmail account. You can use your existing one, or set up a new one for this specific purpose. I opted for the latter.
• Click on the “Settings” link in the upper right-hand corner of the Gmail interface.
• Click on “Accounts”
• See the “Get mail from other accounts” field? Go for it.
• The address you enter for POP should be the address you go to for webmail, with the “exchange/” post-fix removed. The default port should be fine.
• Note that you can opt to reply to email using the the university address. I’ve got Gmail set to do this for mail grabbed from the university account.
• Also note that you can set imported email to be automatically tagged. Very, very nice.
• Sit back and wait. Gmail will periodically grab email (starting with newest) from the account in 200mb chunks. It might take a while.

So, yeah. Gmail is searchable, Gmail dosen’t randomly mark emails from my parents as spam, and Gmail has about twenty-eight times more storage space then the school gives me. I really don’t have much reason to open up university webmail anymore.

English Majoryness

I know my declared major is computer science and engineering, but I occasionally ponder whether or not I’m really pursuing the right degree. Am I actually an English major in some parallel universe? Sometimes I wonder. I’ll make a list to double check.

• I write stuff down. An immense amount. Scarcely a day goes by when yours truly hasn’t jotted something simply “because.” Over spring break, I wrote a letter or essay at least one page in length every day. Partially for personal entertainment and enjoyment, and partially because it helps me keep a perspective on things and observe my thought process. Actually, mostly because “they just happened.” You know, I only intended to publish one post today. In addition, regular scrawling helps me observe the lurking horror of my truly awful syntax, grammar, and editing errors.
• I tend to think of life in terms of what a great story it would make. Waking in a panic at 7 A.M. because of roommate’s fire-alarm clock, running to class an hour before it starts due to early morning disorientation, and holding the door for a random female becomes a decidedly epic tale of betrayal (how could you do this to me, clock?!), plot-twists (where is everyone?), and chivalry (the handicap button totally counts). I would continue with more examples, but The World At Large is probably better off not knowing exactly how I perceive things.
• On the flipside of simply enjoying life as it comes, I frequently attempt to direct and control it by composing sentences, paragraphs, and occasionally entire conversations in my head before initiating a join to normal socialness. These snippets of text frequently undergo revision a few times until I see it fit to release them into the wild. It *is* a jungle out there, though. There are nasty tribal people with spears who like to kill my fragile text and ideas, usually requiring me to reply shortly afterward. It’s tough to speak while mourning the loss of loved precomposed dialog.
• Perspective has a habit of killing the excitement brought on by the previous two bullet points.
• Technology interests me. Strongly. It’s the ideas of many people come together to better the world through communication, reason, and learning. Most of it is text-based. Think about it. It’s all currently about doing fantastic stuff with words. Connecting people, linking ideas, and creating new ways of thinking about information.
• That reminds me, the ultimate killer app has not yet been achieved.
  • Basic word processing functions
  • Basic spreadsheet functions
  • No need to save
  • Simple file format, pretty much just a zip file with XML and whatever inside. Images, video, MP3s, etc.
  • Ability to export PDFs.
  • LaTex support! Teh maths, they need notes about them. Kformula has a wonderful system. Embed or fork that off, maybe?
  • Allows text windows. Position text anywhere, take notes on images, write notes in the virtual margins etc.
  • Dump any file into a note in-line. Drag n’ drop from a browser, file manager window, etc.
  • Completely brainless outlining. Tab, enter, and backspace are the only non alpha-numeric keys the user should need to make an outline.
  • WikiLike CamelCase linking
  • Very small and fast. Instant, if possible. If the user is coming up with new stuff faster then the program can process it, it’s too slow. Load time must be minimal, regardless of notebook size.
  • Open source! Cross platform! USB key compatible! Everyone could use something like this. Palm, Generic Windows boxen, MacBook, Ubuntu Laptop, etc.
  • Get a peer-to-peer note server going, while we’re at it. (low dev priority. SAMBA shares will hold users over in the meantime).
  • OneNote does a ton of this, actually. Tomboy does some of it. Basket is a nice example of the whole “dumping” concept. None of them are close to perfect.
  • I shall call it “MetaScribble”(TM), and development of a prototype will commence eventually using Python and wxWidgets.
  • Copyright FremLog, 2007.

Oh, right. Enthusiasm displayed over a detailed spec list for an obscure software product targeted at a decidedly niche market. I guess I am an engineer after all.

Condescending Attitude Toward Mac Users

Alright, I’m getting really tired of the general condescending attitude toward Mac users. This post was brought on by Ben’s thing here, (”We won’t dwell on the Mac users; they’re pretty much hopeless and demented anyway.”), but I’ve seen the attitude elsewhere also.

(a) OS X is UNIX
(b) Better UNIX then Windows.
(c) OS X *is* easier to get started with *and* maintain then Linux, even Ubuntu. More expensive, certainly, but much easier by an order of magnitude.

I would recommend OS X over Linux (even Ubuntu) for the average Joe who can afford it. More mainstream software is compatible, things “just work”, and it’s less hassle in general.

Don’t believe me? ‘Ight. Let’s play a word game.

• MP3/DVD compatibility
• 3D acceleration
• Games
• Microsoft Office
• Photo manipulation
• Power management

You can, of course, do all of these things on Linux. However, it is much easier to do them on a Mac. It’s stupid to expect your average Joe to search through a bunch of documentation to get 3D games working. Heck, even Ben hasn’t gotten 3D acceleration working on his laptop. MP3 and DVDs can’t be played by default on Ubuntu and require installation of an illegal (in the US) codec pack. That sort of thing is unheard of on a mainstream desktop PC. I understand this stuff is getting ironed out as we speak, but as of right now, they aren’t.

Photo manipulation with The GIMP still lags behind Photoshop. *cough* CMYK *cough*

Power management is another area Linux lags behind on. My Ubuntu laptop can hibernate, but it stopped waking up after a kernel update several months ago. I’m not alone in this either. Yeah.

As for OpenOffice.org, have you compared it to Microsoft Office 2007? The interface is vastly inferior. Even Office 2003 for Mac scores better in my book. Office 2008 for Mac should pretty sweet, if they do even a fraction of what was accomplished in the Windows version. No, really. I haven’t drunk any Kool-ade, I’m speaking as someone who has studied HIG. Office is bloated and the DOCX format is pretty lame, but it still pwns all competition. OpenOffice.org can’t even display two pages of the same document side by side. Sad, but true.

Also, there isn’t anything that comes even close to OneNote available for Linux. BasKet 1.0 is a step in the right direction, but as a OneNote user, I cringed and put it down after a few attempts to get work done. Tomboy, while a good substitute for the OneNote mini-pad thing, can’t compare to the full program. Ok, yeah, I know, no OneNote for Mac either, but y’know. At least they have notebook view in Word, we don’t even have that.

Really, I love Linux and it’s my primary operating system, but there are many good reasons to use OS X instead.

Mail.app: new scourge of the internet

Apple recently released a “sneak peek” at the next version of OS X. It looked pretty spiffy… until I read about the new changes to Mail.app Behold the doom that awaits us all: “With Mac OS X Leopard, Mail transforms mere email into personalized stationery.” Why, Apple? Why? Why?

Sincerely yours

Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings to travelogues, each stationery template features coordinated layouts, fonts, and colors — everything’s designed to keep your mind on the message. You can even effortlessly add pictures to your email via a new Media Browser. Just find the perfect photo and drag it onto your template. Hit “Send” and get ready for some astonished replies from everyone — even folks on PCs.

iPhone

Some guy has a blog entry featuring fan-made mock-ups of what a cell phone designed by Apple Computer might look like. Of course, there seems to be an unwritten rule that any such official results would be integrated with an iPod. I think it far more likely that it would be integrated with a Newton-like system, but whatever. I’ll run with the iPod assumption for now.

Now, if I was Apple, I wouldn’t go with any of those proposals. Instead, the rotary phone would be king. It would go wonderfully with the iPod’s scroll wheel.

Here’s how it might work. When the thing is turned off, there would be no controls visible on the scroll wheel. When turned on, the controls would be displayed via a blue light behind the wheel. I’m not entirely sure how this would be accomplished, but I’m thinking of something like a doughnut-shaped glowing liquid crystal display. This would allow different controls to be visible in different modes. It would also let the thing to be used in the dark.
In music mode, the traditional iPod controls would be visible. In phone mode, numbers would light up on the dial. The user could drag their finger around the wheel to dial, like on a rotary phone, or they would be able to simply punch the buttons.

Sadly, I fear an Apple made phone may be nothing but a dream.

Oxygen icon preview

If you’re into KDE or theming Linux, you’ve probably heard about the Oxygen icons that will be officially released with KDE 4.

Unfortunately, the official Oxygen website dosen’t exactly have a whole lot of icons up. You can’t look at a complete gallery of the progress they’ve made, unlike with the Tango project.

You can, however, get a sneak peek of things to come at the official KDE development SVN here.

Some of the icons look pretty slick, others… not so much. Obviously, these are not the final results. Note that the current license prohibits distribution until the official release. I guess they’ve got some perfectionists running this thing. ^_^

A problem with the Thunderbird feed reader

…Is that it does not support organizing feeds in different folders. Not directly, anyway. An even larger problem is that it breaks feeds when you do so.

There is a workaround though, which is the only reason I'm posting this to a blog rather then just filing a bug report. (Blogs tend to be higher on Google searches then bug trackers, and I've found I'm often not alone in breaking things like this.)

If you make a directory and drag some feeds into it they will die. They just won't be updated. If you drag them out again, they still won't be updated. It's as if Thunderbird has lost track of them or something. If you try to re-add the atom/rss/xml address you'll get a notice that they are already in the system. It's really a mess.

Here's a work around I've discovered:

1. Make a list of all the "dead" feeds.
2. Export your feed list. It will only include the good feeds.
3. Goto where ever your Thunderbird email directory is and back up the contents of "Mail/News & Blogs". Then, delete it.
4. Open Thunderbird and import that list of feeds you exported at the beginning. It will be missing any dead feeds, but you'll have rebuilt the evil database, so it won't think you still have them.
5. In that backup you made, there will be a file named feeditems.rdf. It's human readable, so you can look though it with a text editor and and manually pick out the addresses of your missing blogs.
6. Manually put them back into Thunderbird using the "Manage subscriptions" dialog. Never touch any feed related stuff without using this.
7. Note the usability issues and politely ask Mozilla to do something about it.

Actually, there is no need for me to post a bug report. This bug has been known about for a year and a half. *cough*

SuSE Gnome Mockups

Someone involved with SuSE Linux has posted a bunch of new mock-ups based off usability research done by the Better Desktop project.

Some highlights:

Notification boxes - I've been waiting for something like this ever since I tried Opera. In addition to the examples pictured, it could also use a download monitor thing, a la every web browser but IE.

New menu - Looks a bit like the new Vista menu, though mock-ups of concepts like this have been floating around for years. More info here.

From the looks of things, I'm gonna have to try SuSE again sometime soon…