Mozilla Lightning

One thing many people have complained about in regards to Mozilla Thunderbird is unlike Outlook, it does not have a calendar. Today on CyberNet News I came across this entry: Mozilla Sunbird And Lightning 0.3 RC1 Available. Mozilla Sunbird is a standalone calendar application where as Lightning is a Thunderbird Extension.

While I have not yet had a chance to a look at Sunbird, I have installed and started briefly using Lightning. Here are some of the features:

  • Adds a ‘Calendar’ Menu option which allows you to view your calendar in your message and preview panes.
  • Adds Lightning pane in the Preferences or Options dialog (go here to setup your time zone)
  • Calendar can be displayed as daily, weekly or monthly
  • Adds a small monthly calendar under your folders list along with a ‘task manager’
  • Create multiple calendars (home, work, kids, etc.)
  • Export and Import Calendars

There a lot of features and options I have not yet had a chance to play with. There are currently three different versions of Lightning available for download:

  • Thunderbird 1.5 or 1.5.0.* builds
  • Mozilla 1.8 branch Nightly Builds for Thunderbird 1.5.0.* and 2.0
  • Thunderbird 3.0 Trunk Build

A word of warning from the developer’s site about the versions in red: the use of nightly developer builds has some risks associated with it. Don’t use them with production data.

2 Comments on Mozilla Lightning

  1. Alan Morris | December 4, 2006 at 2:40 PM |

    I’ve been using MS Outlook for years and recently switched to Thunderbird and Lightning for home and office use. I’m now changing companies and urging our division to deploy FireFox, Thunderbird and Lighting to replace Lotus Notes and IE.

    These products are wonderful and I’m turning folks on to them all over the place. Coupled with OpenOffice.org this suite offers new tools that are light weight, powerful, scalable and, oh yes, free!

    Team keep up the wonderful work and thanks for all the effort!

    -Alan

  2. Thanks for ‘Spreading The Word’ about Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org (OOo). I’ve been using Firefox and Thunderbird for nearly 2 years now and wonder why the heck didn’t I do this sooner! I like OOo, sure it is not the same as MS Office, but I don’t need all those extra bells and whistles that come with MS Office and you cain’t beat the price.
    ~Al

1 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Mozilla to deliver Ligthning functionality to OpenOffice.org « Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

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