Download Eudora 8.0.0 beta

As part of the Penelope project, Mozilla has released a beta of Eudora 8. In fact, it is a version of Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 in a Eudora guise, which includes some of the features of that classic mail client.

Eudora has been open source software since October 2006. The last version released by its then owner, Qualcomm, was Eudora 7.1.0.9. Meanwhile, the Mozilla Foundation has taken care of the further development under the name Penelope. The aim of this project is to combine the user experience of Eudora with Thunderbird.

In addition to the appearance of the ‘classic’ Eudora, Eudora 8 has included shortcuts, type-to-select and the ability to select grouped items with the Alt key pressed. More information about the new Eudora can be found in this news release or in the release notes posted below:

Changes in 8.0.0b1

Includes Penelope version 0.1a21. Synced to the THUNDERBIRD_2_0_0_6_RELEASE code branch: .

New Features

– Toolbar icons (and a few other icons) from the original Eudora were moved to Penelope.

– Keyboard shortcuts from the original Eudora were moved to Penelope. You can configure whether these shortcuts in Penelope or the original Thunderbird ones are used in the Penelope panel of the Options/Preferences dialog.

– The menu structure of original Eudora has been copied to a great extent in Penelope.

– Added the ability to display the list of mailboxes in a separate window from the mailboxes themselves, which was similar to the original Eudora. This can be configured in the Penelope panel of the Options/Preferences dialog. Mailboxes opened in a separate window have their size/position remembered and restored when opened up next.

– Double-clicking or hitting Enter/Return on a mailbox in the folders list now opens up the mailbox in a separate window.

– The toolbar customization dialog was modified to be similar to the way it was implemented in original Eudora.

– Modified the mailbox column headers to look like Eudora’s original. – The “Sender” column has been relabeled as “Who”, and outgoing messages display the name of the recipient there. This feature can be controlled by the hidden pref “mail.useWhoColumn”.

– You can quickly find messages in a mailbox by typing text in the list of messages. As you type the selection in the mailbox will change based on matching text in the Who and Subject fields. After finding a match you can use the period key to find subsequent matches in the mailbox (and Shift+period to find previous matches).

– Added the Group Select feature from original Eudora where if you hold down the Alt key (option for Mac) and click the left mouse button down on an item in the mailbox it will select all messages that have the same value as the item clicked on , and all of those selected messages will be grouped together. For example, Alt/option-clicking on the name of a sender of a message will select all of the messages in that mailbox sent by that person, and move the messages together. Note that the moving of messages in the mailbox list will break the current sort of the mailbox. The Shift key can be used as a modifier to make the selected messages remain in their original positions in the mailbox list, and thus retain the current sort order. – Importing mailboxes and messages from the original Eudora in to the new Eudora has been substantially improved under Windows. Import times are now 5 times shorter. Basic message attributes and status are now maintained (read/unread, priority, label). Inline images in messages now get moved over. Includes fixes to the following bugs:
301188: “Import Eudora mail fails to find attachments in other directories”
368360: “Importer (Win Eudora, Mail) does not import mailboxes with unusual leading characters”
380408: “Mail Import Crashes with Divide by Zero”

– Now filters can be imported from original Eudora to the new Eudora. There is not a one-to-one match up of original Eudora’s filtering capabilities and those found in Thunderbird, so not all filters will move over exactly. Filters imported that will lose some capabilities will be warned about in a list after the entire filter import process is complete. Also added was the “Stop Filter Execution” action. This is the equivalent to original Eudora’s “Skip Rest” action which causes the filtering process to end for messages that match the criteria in the filter with this action. – Improvements to the importing of original Eudora Windows Address Books have been made. Includes fixes to the following bugs:
368626: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Mailing list nickname not assigned to ‘nickname’ in Penelope”
368630: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Variouos fields not mapped to Penelope Address Book fields”
368634: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Unable to import if Eudora is using ‘.nnt’ format”
377816: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) incorrectly adds additional entries when resolving nicknames in mailing lists”
377821: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) fails to resolve nicknames with spaces when importing a mailing list”
377945: “Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) misses information when importing an alias (mailing list with one entry)”

– Importing on the Mac now looks for a Eudora folder in the user’s document folder (ie ~/Documents) in addition to the System Folder and the System Documents Folder.

– Added original Eudora-like IMAP auto-expunge behavior. This is controlled by the hidden pref “mail.imap.expunge_option”. It can have values ​​for if auto-expunging should occur never (0), always (1), or on a threshold (2). If on a threshold is set, then auto-expunge will occur when there are at least 20 messages waiting to be expunged. The number of messages for that threshold is actually controlled by the hidden pref “mail.imap.expunge_threshold_number”.

– Added a “Refresh Folder List” item to the context menu for IMAP folders which gets the current list of folders/mailboxes from the IMAP server and updates the folder tree for that IMAP account.

– Added support for viewing only messages that are not deleted in IMAP mailboxes. Use the “Not Deleted” item in the View->Messages menu or the Mail Views control on the toolbar. – New mail sound copied from original Eudora.

– Added “Make Address Book Entry” functionality (in Tools menu).

– Added the “SelectedTextURL” feature from original Windows Eudora, which allows selected text to easily be inserted in to a URL and launched. Menu items for them are located in the Tools menu, and they also get keyboard shortcuts associated with them as well. Use the hidden prefs “penelope.selectedTextURL#”, where # is an increasing number in sequence. Here’s the default values:
pref(“penelope.selectedTextURL1”,
“Google,
pref(“penelope.selectedTextURL2”,
“Dictionary,
pref(“penelope.selectedTextURL3”,
“Thesaurus, http://www.thesaurus.com/cgi-bin/search?config=roget&words=%s”);

miscellaneous

– Fixed “Bug 161775 – Reply shouldn’t quote inline attachments”: .