February 7, 2005 11:57 AM PST

Mozilla's Sunbird spreads its wings

The Mozilla Foundation has released the first version of Sunbird, its standalone calendar application, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Sunbird 0.2 offers various features, including the ability to create scheduled events and to see an overview of events on a particular day, week or month. The calendar can be shared by publishing it to a WebDAV (World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)-capable server. WebDAV is a set of extensions to the basic HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) underlying the Web, enabling people to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers.

The Sunbird application is available for download on Mozilla's Web site.

Although Sunbird is a standalone calendar application, the Mozilla Foundation has started a project to integrate it with Thunderbird. The project, code-named Lightning, is scheduled for its first general release in the middle of 2005, according to the Mozilla Web site. The integration of the applications could take on Microsoft's widely used Outlook software.

However, according to some postings on the MozillaZine news site, some consumers don't believe that Sunbird is a viable alternative to Outlook just yet.

While Mozilla's Firefox browser has advantages over Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Sunbird and the Thunderbird e-mail application need extra features before companies can consider them as an alternative to Outlook, one user said.

Firefox "beats IE hands down, but no serious business users can switch from Outlook to (Thunderbird or Sunbird) because of numerous usability issues," according to the posting. "If all you want is the e-mail functionality, Thunderbird is fine. I use it for that, but I can't get anybody who likes the calendar, reminders, etc., to switch from Outlook still."

But Mozilla contributor David McGuinness pointed out that Sunbird is not currently aimed at corporate users.

"Sunbird is still in the early stages of development and is certainly experimental software," McGuinness said. "Nonetheless, Sunbird is a promising application for those already using Thunderbird or Firefox."

Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.

5 comments

Join the conversation!
Add your comment (Log in or register)
telling
<<but I can't get anybody who likes the calendar, reminders, etc., to switch from Outlook still.">>

Once upon a time, Open-Source proponents openly complained about Microsoft focus on integration and suggested that integrated products were monolithic and bloated. This was going to be the downfall of Microsoft. Now open-source efforts are being integrated because its the only way real consumers can find enough value to replace their Microsoft tools. Go figure. Hopefully they won't forget that Exchange Server integrates with Active Directory. I mean... you wouldn't want to ask your customers to maintain two seperate databases of all their employees, would you?
Posted by David Arbogast (1712 comments )
Reply Link Flag
we're catching up
and fast.
Posted by (54 comments )
Link Flag
Needs work
It does not have a plug in that would insert public holidays by country, the days post offices are closed, valentines day, forgetting which, could get you in trouble. So I uninstalled it. Seems to be a solution in search of a problem.
Posted by (4 comments )
Reply Link Flag
perhaps you didn't realize
that this isn't anywhere a 1.0 release. why news.com decided to report on it is beyond me. it will be feature-full by the 1.0 release.
Posted by (54 comments )
Link Flag
What?
Then why did the "Mozilla Foundation" release it at all?

Durrr, asl lolz.
Posted by katamari (310 comments )
Reply Link Flag
 

Join the conversation

Add your comment

The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Click here to review our Terms of Use.

Inside CNET News

1-2 of 12

Scroll Left Scroll Right

What's Hot

Discussions

Shared

RSS Feeds

Add headlines from CNET News to your homepage or feedreader.

Markets

Market news, charts, SEC filings, and more

Related quotes

Microsoft (0.28%) 0.08 30.58
Dow Jones Industrials (0.57%) 72.81 12,874.04
S&P 500 (0.68%) 9.13 1,351.77
NASDAQ (0.95%) 27.51 2,931.39
CNET TECH (0.84%) 17.13 2,049.14
  Symbol Lookup