Andre Molnar

Mozilla Power Combo

I've talked before about being one of those people that never went to IE as a browser - always sticking to Netscape through the good times and the bad (remember the wonktastic 6.0)... and in turn the other mozilla products - most recently firefox (browser) and thunderbird (which is a beefed up more feature filled version of 'netscape' mail available since 6x).

Now there is a new tool to add to the box. Mozilla Sunbird! Only in version 0.2 right now - this calendar/scheduling app is already looking good. Really, it has a good foundation, because its the next generation of the existing mozilla Calendar.

I've never been a calendar application user.... A white board or post it notes used to be my low tech way of keeping track of appointments. While this sort of 'organization' would drive a person with a Gold personality nuts - My brain is wired differently and my own system worked for me....

But, recently santa brought me an iPod. Besides being a wicked cool music storage tool it also doubles as a uber-simple PDA - with calendar and notes tools. So why not make use of this feature. The calendar application accepts industry standard .ics (iCal) files. Just fill up your calendar on your machine - and export the file to your iPod and all your appointments are a clickwheel away.

So what are .ics files? Like i said - a standard calendar file format. i.e. NOT OUTLOOK - which happens to be a good thing in my opinion, because along with never swithcing to Internet Explorer - I never switched to Outlook for my mail.

Outlook will export to .ics - so outlook users can make use of the iPods calendar too - they just have an extra step.

So back to Sunbird. Sunbird uses the iCal standard. SO - Syching with the iPod is as simple as drag and drop of the calendar file into the iPod calendar folder. You don't need a mac, you don't need special synching tools, you don't need an expensive calendar application. All you need is an iPod and freeware in the form of Sunbird.

Having said all that - Sunbird is still in early development. Its still got a bunch of known bugs (with printing and other features). But, its still quite stable - and all the calendar functionality you would expect is there and working. Sunbird may not yet be ready for enterprise use, but if you just want to keep track of personal appointments and tasks you can't beat the price. And in time (say version 1.0), I'm sure it will be ready for enterprise use.

So there it is - The mozilla power combo. Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird - who needs Microsoft for anything other than maybe an operating system.

andre

Posted by andre at December 30, 2004 02:21 PM