The Mozilla.org Penelope project released the fifth public beta of
its slow-gestating Eudora 8 email client replacement for Qualcomm's
classic Eudora application earlier this month (the first beta was
released in September 2006).
As a longtime Eudora user and consummate fan, I've been especially
interested in tracking Eudora 8's progress, especially with a system
upgrade (finally) to a Macintel machine in the offing, so I duly
downloaded Eudora 8.0b5 for a looksee at the latest developments (see
Appendix below). There are no major new features; this beta release is
mainly about refinements and bugfixes.
The Eudora betas are a fairly big deal for those of us anxiously
trying to find an adequate email client replacement for classic Eudora
6 and not having much luck.
The Eudora Legacy
IMHO, Eudora Classic
was and remains the closest to perfection in an email application I've
encountered, doing everything I need it to do and executing these
various tasks well and without much hassle. Meriting particular mention
are Eudora Classic's superb search engine and its very graceful and
trouble-free support of multiple accounts and SMTP server
configurations for outgoing mail.
I love Eudora Classic and have been unsuccessful in finding anything
that even comes close to being an adequate substitute, not for lack of
looking. Now I'm faced with saying farewell to PowerPC and not
enchanted with the prospect of living without my Eudora.
I've tried OS X Mail and found it not to my taste. I like, nay, I
demand full manual control, and Mail tries to do too much for me. I'm
also underwhelmed by Mozilla's Thunderbird, which the
Open Source Eudora 8 is also based on, and as much as I love the
Opera browser, its mail module is
improving but not yet there.
Odysseus, the Other Great Hope
The other great white hope for Eudora junkies is Odysseus,
a new email client that Infinity Data Systems has been developing since
late 2007. Odysseus is designed to be a real replacement for the
classic Eudora application we know and love. The current release is the
1.0 Beta 9 build, which shows promise, has a reassuringly Eudora-esque
user interface, and follows Eudora configuration conventions very
closely, but unfortunately it isn't developing much faster than the
Penelope project's Eudora replacement.
Compared to Eudora, Odysseus has the advantage of being a universal
binary that works on both Intel and PowerPC Macs, and it is under
active development by a software company that says it's dedicated to
making Odysseus the best email client in existence. That includes
improving on areas where classic Eudora had started to lag behind, such
as integration with the individual operating systems that it runs
on.
Odysseus will be commercial software (as Qualcomm's Eudora was) and
not open source. It will sell for $39.95, about the same price point as
classic Eudora. However, it's not ready for prime time yet with the 1.0
Beta 9 build, which was released on November 29, 2008.
Eudora 8
But back to Eudora 8, which thankfully has an optional 2-pane
interface mode that supposedly causes mailboxes to open in a similar
manner to Mac Eudora's 2-pane message list and message preview. The
list of mailboxes will open in a separate window. Well, not quite, but
it's an improvement on the Thunderbird interface. Unfortunately, one
thing not improved is that you can't "select all" in a message and get
the address and subject line info along with the body text - something
that drives me nuts in Thunderbird and Eudora 8, as it makes frequent
copy and paste tasks take literally twice as long.
Eudora happily allows you to check your email accounts individually,
which Odysseus doesn't do yet, as well as all at once, and as a dialup
denizen (not by choice), I appreciate that it disables downloading of
embedded images in email messages by default, leaving it to the user's
discretion to manually bring them down with a convenient button.
I'm also skeptical that Eudora 8's Search/Find function will be as
good classic Eudora's fast, slick, and powerful search engine, but I
have to say I found it pretty good searching the sparsely populated
archive I have so far accumulated in Eudora 8.
Eudora 8.0.0b5 seemed to be reasonably stable, so I imported all of
my account settings and Address Book information, a process you will
find under the Tools menu, and which was quite quick and slick. I
especially appreciated being provided with the option of downloading
only the configuration files from Eudora Classic and not being obliged
to bring in my email message archives as well, as I'm not ready to
switch just yet. There is also an option to just import everything.
22 Email Accounts
A particular point I wanted to check was how well support for
multiple email accounts was working. I have 22 email accounts
configured in Eudora Classic, some with different SMTP server
configurations. I can report some success, but not across the board.
Gmail
accounts work very well, but I already knew that. Unhappily, I was
unable to get my ISP's email server (which imposes the wretched Port 25
block) to work, or the SMTP servers of lavabit and clovermail. The error
messages reference authentication issues, but I have been unsuccessful
in fathoming where my configuration is wrong - obtuse and clunky SMTP
server configuration being one of my longtime gripes about
Thunderbird.
I should note that I experience similar outgoing mail issues with
Odysseus, and that my ISP's SMTP server refuses to work when I'm
running in Leopard, although it works just fine on my Tiger Macs using
the same build of Eudora Classic.
Consequently, I provisionally deduce that there is an issue with
support for email with my ISP as well as authentication problems
particular to Leopard, at least on PowerPC Macs. Tiresome. Gmail gets
around all that thanks to SSL support for its SMTP server. I also find
task progress monitoring lame compared with Eudora Classic's excellent
and informative Task Progress window.
Eudora 8 is making gradual progress, and in a pinch I think I could
use it, although not happily at this point, and I do like the charming
little new mail chime.
It's kind of difficult to give this application a rating, since it's
a beta build and a work-in-progress, but I'll say 2-1/2 out of 4
provisionally, anticipating or at least hoping for more improvement in
the context of making it more like real Eudora.
Eudora 8.0.0b5 is based on Thunderbird 3.0b, and includes the
Penelope extension version 0.5a2. Eudora 8 is a branded version of
Thunderbird with some extra features added by the Eudora developers,
while Penelope is an extension (also called an "add-on") that can be
used with either Eudora or Thunderbird. The Eudora installer includes
the corresponding version of Penelope along with it, so there is no
need to install Penelope if you are installing Eudora. Most features in
Penelope can be accessed when used with Thunderbird, but there are a
few that require Eudora in order to work correctly, and it's not
something that gets tested.
Link: Eudora
Releases
Mac System Requirements
- Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4.x and later
- Minimum Hardware
- Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5
processor
- 128 MB RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater)
- 200 MB hard drive space
Appendix
Changes in this version include:
Mailbox Window
- "Show message preview pane" setting added to Penelope pref panel.
If on (which it is by default), then the preview pane is shown at its
last saved position. If it's off then both the preview pane and the
splitter before it are hidden.
- Fixed bug where double-clicking on a mailbox in a folder view other
than "All Folders" (i.e. "Unread", "Recent", or "Favorites") would not
open the mailbox.
- Added prefs for opening mailboxes/messages in tabs rather than
separate windows.
- Fix for Bug 466046 - MsgOpenNewTabForMessage() broken when
specifying a message
- Added middle click to open folder/message in a tab.
- Fixed bug 429440 - Preview pane must be visible for tabs to
render.
- Tabs are now hidden in the Mailboxes window.
- Prevent opening windows in tabs in the Mailboxes window.
- Added mail.tabs.autoHide setting, which hides the tab if there is
just one in a window (default value is true).
- Fix for Alt+click for group selection causing the menu to get the
focus.
- Fixed bug where double-clicking on the scroll bar of the thread
pane would cause a message to be opened in a new tab.
- Fixed Transfer menu and Transfer mailbox buttons on toolbar.
- Added shift key modifier to the Transfer menu items and toolbar
buttons to do copy vs. move.
- Holding down alt/option when clicking on an open mailbox toolbar
button will now do a transfer.
- Keep thread pane scrolled to same place when switching tabs and
back.
Toolbars
- Fixes to Mac Customize Toolbar dialog to allow it to open multiple
times.
- Added "Cancel" functionality to the Customize Toolbar dialog on the
Mac.
- Added the Restore Default Set button to Windows and Linux Customize
Toolbar dialog.
- The default Penelope toolbar doesn't show text on the buttons, so
when restoring the toolbar to the default state set the mode to icons
only.
- Fixed bug 417081 - Send Later toolbar button mapped
incorrectly
Importing
- Extra settings now imported from Classic Eudora: default mail
check, mail check interval, skip big messages, skip big message
threshold, submission port send, and SSL send and receive.
IMAP
- Fix for Bug 369964 "subscribe to IMAP folders window doesn't allow
subscribing to folders below 2nd level". Turns out Exchange doesn't
like LIST commands without a trailing % on the path.
Miscellaneous
- Fixed open In/Out mailbox toolbar buttons.
- Added Babelfish language translation to the default list of
Selected Text URL tools.
