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This got kind of long for me rambling about trying out Mozilla, the Bat, and stuff about applications in general, so I'm cutting it.
I feel really dumb for not realizing that Mozilla would be exactly like Netscape. Somehow I was expecting differences (visible to the end user, anyway, as opposed to code differences) beyond cosmetic things like the logo and the fact that it isn't owned by AOL-Time-Warner, but I just can't find any. When I tried Firebird at home last night it didn't seem to do anything when I clicked on the exe, but today when I read the release notes it said something about first-run needing to create a profile with mozillafirebird.exe -p, so maybe that's what I wasn't doing. On the other hand, in the release notes it also said that turning off auto-form-completion wasn't working in the current release, and that's not something I like, so it's just as well.
I had poked at The Bat! once before and found it somewhat confusing, but I downloaded it again today at work to poke at it some more. It did take me a while to get my accounts set up, what with having to change all its default templates (couldn't find a way to do that globally for all accounts, had to do them separately), setting up the folders and filters I use for lists, and figuring out how to import my Outlook Express address book. In the process I lost my "blocked senders" list, but that could be reconstructed as needed, although I find it somewhat disheartening that there doesn't seem to be a way to make filtering rules apply globally to all accounts (in OE that's the default, although you can specify "when the message is from the specified account" if you want to narrow it to affect only one).
All in all I think I figured out what I need to figure out. My needs are really quite simple compared to the extremely advanced user.
*returns to tweaking*
EDIT: One of the main benefits I was hoping to get by using software other than Netscape and Outlook Express was smaller memory footprints. It doesn't seem that this has occurred. Perhaps there's only so small some programs can be, and still perform all their functions in a 32-bit GUI kind of environment. Oh well.
I wonder if it's more economical to have an all-in-one package like Communicator or the full Mozilla suite (although I have never been too fond of the mail/news program there) or to try to find browser, mail, and news readers that are separately satisfying. This isn't a big issue at home, where I have plenty of RAM to throw around and the main issue has been getting away from software that sometimes operates in profoundly annoying ways and is owned by big corporations. Here at work, however, I find that I am often bumping against my 128 MB ceiling when trying to run several applications at once (library software, browser, email, AIM, Norton Antivirus, and ZoneAlarm, at a usual minimum; add QVT-Term, Meeting Maker, Photoshop, livejournal client, random signature generator, Word, or Excel for extra flavour), so I always hope for less memory usage.
I feel really dumb for not realizing that Mozilla would be exactly like Netscape. Somehow I was expecting differences (visible to the end user, anyway, as opposed to code differences) beyond cosmetic things like the logo and the fact that it isn't owned by AOL-Time-Warner, but I just can't find any. When I tried Firebird at home last night it didn't seem to do anything when I clicked on the exe, but today when I read the release notes it said something about first-run needing to create a profile with mozillafirebird.exe -p, so maybe that's what I wasn't doing. On the other hand, in the release notes it also said that turning off auto-form-completion wasn't working in the current release, and that's not something I like, so it's just as well.
I had poked at The Bat! once before and found it somewhat confusing, but I downloaded it again today at work to poke at it some more. It did take me a while to get my accounts set up, what with having to change all its default templates (couldn't find a way to do that globally for all accounts, had to do them separately), setting up the folders and filters I use for lists, and figuring out how to import my Outlook Express address book. In the process I lost my "blocked senders" list, but that could be reconstructed as needed, although I find it somewhat disheartening that there doesn't seem to be a way to make filtering rules apply globally to all accounts (in OE that's the default, although you can specify "when the message is from the specified account" if you want to narrow it to affect only one).
All in all I think I figured out what I need to figure out. My needs are really quite simple compared to the extremely advanced user.
*returns to tweaking*
EDIT: One of the main benefits I was hoping to get by using software other than Netscape and Outlook Express was smaller memory footprints. It doesn't seem that this has occurred. Perhaps there's only so small some programs can be, and still perform all their functions in a 32-bit GUI kind of environment. Oh well.
I wonder if it's more economical to have an all-in-one package like Communicator or the full Mozilla suite (although I have never been too fond of the mail/news program there) or to try to find browser, mail, and news readers that are separately satisfying. This isn't a big issue at home, where I have plenty of RAM to throw around and the main issue has been getting away from software that sometimes operates in profoundly annoying ways and is owned by big corporations. Here at work, however, I find that I am often bumping against my 128 MB ceiling when trying to run several applications at once (library software, browser, email, AIM, Norton Antivirus, and ZoneAlarm, at a usual minimum; add QVT-Term, Meeting Maker, Photoshop, livejournal client, random signature generator, Word, or Excel for extra flavour), so I always hope for less memory usage.
