Not having experienced the original Google RSS reader, I can't offer that comparison. All I will say is, when I fed all my blogs and news sites feeds into Thunderbird (more on that next) earlier this year, I was bored to death of the experience within three days. Something about this Google product tells me i'll stick with it for quite a bit longer. Excellent interface. One question though: In amongst this excellent interface, why have non-clickable shortened stories on the "Home" front page summary?
Thunderbird. Its fine. Nothing really wrong with it. Certainly at least as good as *shudder* Outlook Express - That was a bleak five years. However, compare it to the at-work Exchange connected experience with Outlook 2003, and its very flat.
Little things really. No underscored keyboard shortcuts on the toolbar icons. This is something me and i'm sure most tech-savvy will have come to swear by in both Lotus and Microsoft products, albeit implemented in slightly different ways. In Thunderbird, I need to look up and learn the shortcut to actually send my messsage. As at this second in history, I don't know it, and next time I write an email, I will be clicking Send with the mouse pointer. Say what you want about me being lazy, but I won't hear a word against the lazy masses. They simply expect more than this. The bar is higher. In auto terms, Thunderbird is a 1996 Ford Escort, and Outlook is the 2006 Ford Focus. Reclaim my inbox? Reclaim my interest.
This underwhelming experience carries over to other Mozilla products that aren't Firefox. The Calender quite simply has no discernible features over say, a cardboard calender. The same feeling arose when I last tried whatever they're calling the integrated browser/mail/news Netscape inspired suite that nobody uses but just won't die.
Looking around the current offerings, is there really no way the Mozilla kids couldn't find a way to create a modular system centered on Firefox, the only product they have with name recognition. Nobody knew Firebird, nobody knew Pheonix. People know Firefox. Don't waste that, Mozilla.
Anyway, bottom line. If it isn't possible from a tab in Firefox, I don't think I want to know.
Firefox developers please note - View Source should NOT be restricted to a separate window after all this time. Get Gecko to mark up the source (it probably already does, i'm guessing) and throw it in a tab. If you can do it with the config page you can do it with the source viewer.
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