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Sunbird Portable 0.2 Revision 5 Pre-Release - Testers Needed

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John T. Haller
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Sunbird Portable 0.2 Revision 5 Pre-Release - Testers Needed

As promised, I've posted a test version of Sunbird Portable. This updates the launcher to add in all the handy new features within Firefox Portable. It also marks the debut of the new name: Mozilla Sunbird - Portable Edition (aka Sunbird Portable). New in this version:

In-Place Upgrades - Sunbird Portable now supports the ability to do what I'm calling an "in-place upgrade". This means that you can extract it right over an existing installation of Sunbird Portable without losing any of your existing data and it'll Just Work (tm). This will apply to future releases as you can't do it to an old Portable Sunbird release due to the name change.

Live Support - Portable Sunbird now has built in support for running from a CD or other read-only medium (aka Sunbird Portable Live). You just need to grab the INI from the Other\SunbirdPortableSource and drop it next to SunbirdPortable.exe. Edit it and set RunLocally to true. Just be sure to run SunbirdPortable.exe at least once BEFORE setting both these options so that it correctly sets up a default profile. Your sunbird, profile and plugins directories will be copied to the local machine's temp directory and Portable Sunbird will execute from there. When you exit, all the temp files will be cleaned up.

Improved WaitForSunbird - The code that waits for Sunbird will no longer exit prematurely when Sunbird restarts itself due to an updated extension or other reason. It also won't leave a directory in TEMP with newasdvsplash.dll anymore when you use this option. Using AllowMultiple Instances will negate this new WaitForSunbird feature, though, as the detection would get confused as to which copy of Sunbird is running. This will be improved in a future release.

Wine Support - Sunbird Portable supports running within Wine on your favorite Linux/Unix distro. You can both install and use it without ever touching Windows.

Grab a copy, give it a whirl and drop a note back with any comments.
Download Sunbird Portable 0.2 Revision 5 Pre-Release

Thanks!
John

cbj0129
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Same old Sunbird?

John,

I assume you put the new wrapper around the old Sunbird. I like the look of the new splash screen. Everything seemed to work, but I didn't test extensively. Just did the standard install, no playing with .ini files or anything else. Did move it between machines and had no problems.

Feature development seems to have slowed on Sunbird. I see there is a developer nightly build (sunbird-0.3a2+.en-US.win32.zip) time stamped today. I have tried 0.3a2+ and can't see much difference from 0.2 so I guess it is either code rework or bugfix that has slowed feature development. IMHO, until the feature set is fleshed out, there are better calendering programs available.

Keep up the good work,
Clair

Rob Loach
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Other Calendering Systems

IMHO, until the feature set is fleshed out, there are better calendering programs available.

I would have to agree. Sunbird has always been at the back of Mozilla's mind and, personally, I think putting focus on implementing a portable version of a different PIM system would be a better idea.

One such possible solution is Chandler.

Rob Loach [Website] [Projects] [Blog]

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