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<div id="newHeader"> <b>To: </b>"Tanstaafl"<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tanstaafl@libertytrek.org"><tanstaafl@libertytrek.org></a>
<br>
<b>From: </b>"Patrick Cloke"<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:clokep@gmail.com"><clokep@gmail.com></a><br>
<b>CC: </b>"tb-planning" <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a> <br>
<b>Sent: </b>Friday, 20/07/12 15:53:39 15:53 GMT +0100 [Week
29]<br>
<b>Subject:</b>Re: TB End Users survey - do not distribute</div>
</div>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 5:55 AM,
Tanstaafl <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tanstaafl@libertytrek.org" target="_blank">tanstaafl@libertytrek.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote id="Cite_0" class="gmail_quote cite" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On 2012-07-20 5:30 AM, Gervase Markham <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:gerv@mozilla.org"
target="_blank">gerv@mozilla.org</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote id="Cite_1" class="gmail_quote cite"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">
It seems to me that the evidence is that IM/social
integration is not<br>
a heavily-desired feature, and people have trouble
understanding what<br>
that might even mean. Is that a fair conclusion from the
data?<br>
<br>
That doesn't mean people shouldn't do it, necessarily, but
it does<br>
mean that it would need careful defining of use cases and
explanation<br>
of benefits.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
I would love to be able to initiate an IM session *with my
preferred IM client* directly from Thunderbird</blockquote>
<div>This is generally capable by using link / protocol
handlers. Most IM protocols have some URI scheme associated
with them. Thunderbird could attempt to open links with these
with the OS and if your IM client supports them (and properly
registers with the OS), I think this should work OK.<br>
</div>
<blockquote id="Cite_2" class="gmail_quote cite" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> - and
maybe even have Thunderbird be able to reflect a Contacts
status by monitoring my preferred IM client that is running in
the background. This would most likely require the Address
Book rewrite that has been planned for so long.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote id="Cite_3" class="gmail_quote cite" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Why reinvent the wheel? It would make more sense to spend a
lot less dev hours on just figuring out a way to 'integrate'
with the most popular IM clients (and do it in a plug-in type
fashion so that other users could write extensions to support
other IM clients if they wanted to).</blockquote>
</div>
This would also require the IM client to provide this information
in some way. I highly doubt that any IM clients do this (except
maybe Telepathy) support this. I suppose you could make a plug-in
for both the IM client and for Thunderbird, but honestly that
sounds like a lot more work to me. Additionally, this would only
be reasonable for clients with some sort of plug-in infrastructure
that can get presence information. It's also pretty difficult to
find out which clients are "popular" (you can't get information on
this like you can for browsers as most networks are proprietary).
There are a few papers floating around that I or Florian have come
across about which networks / protocols are most popular; but not
necessarily what clients are popular.<br>
</blockquote>
I think the OP meant just to <b><i>fire up</i></b> the IM client,
without any further integration, that could probably be added "<i>fairly</i>"
easily. (You would still have to look at command line / URI
parameters of each client to figure our how to pass addressee info)
However it wouldn't give you added perks such as online status of
your Addressees. <br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<br>
Also, if the numbers in that PDF are to be believed...Skype is the
most popular and they're not much fun to integrate with. :)<br>
</blockquote>
But probably also most rewarding as they support voice as their main
medium; I think this would be a good project for an Add-on, not for
core. Why not ask the Skype developers to write one?<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">"reinvent the wheel" seems pretty strong too, are the
protocol code is shared with Instantbird (and was first developed
for, and is supported by Instantbird developers as well as
Thunderbird developers). The UI was mostly uplifted initially from
Instantbird and tweaked to fit into Thunderbird. It isn't like
huge sections of code are being written from scratch here.<br>
</blockquote>
I liked what I am seeing so far... lets create a lightweight
modeless window (or alternatively a dockable vertical pane,
defaulted to right hand side of the mail3pane) similar to the usual
clients (narrow) and push the content of the chats into that; I
think it is a mistake to restrict chat contents to a tab, as it
wastes too much valuable workspace.<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
About IM in email clients in general...I agree with Vincent that I
find it extremely beneficial for work. It's less intrusive than
calling, but more immediate than email. Having the presence
information is nice if you want to walk down to someone's office,
although opening up the actual contact list shows that as well. </blockquote>
Contact list of <i><b>what</b></i>? Is Thunderbird supporting
presence already? Or are you talking about the other IM clients?<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">I find that the combination of Microsoft Outlook +
Lync (Office Communicator) is <i>far</i> superior to Thunderbird
(+ any instant messaging client).</blockquote>
+1 as well.<br>
<blockquote class=" cite"
id="mid_CAC4yypn_TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU_L7__kh9ZD_ektchgoK4KtxgN4A_mail_gmail_com"
cite="mid:CAC4yypn-TzpHfZPPkw1XJAU+L7-=kh9ZD=ektchgoK4KtxgN4A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"> Support for initiating phone calls or IMs directly
from an email is clutch, as well as fully integration of free/busy
from the calendar (and also integrated with presence
information). Ironically, this is probably an area that
Thunderbird could choose to be innovative in.<br>
</blockquote>
+1 from me. <br>
<br>
And you could potentially later on <i>"bolt on"</i> screen sharing,
which is a hugely expanding market. Has anybody of you guys tried <a
href="http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx">teamViewer</a>?
It's the fastest that I have tried so far...<br>
<br>
Axel<br>
<br>
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