A Look at Lightning: Mozilla's Calendar for Thunderbird
Everyone knows that Mozilla has a web browser or two. Most folks know about Thunderbird, Mozilla’s free desktop email client.
What you may not know is that Mozilla also has a calendar project. The code is available in two forms. Sunbird is a stand-alone desktop application, similar to Mac OS X’s iCal, and Lightning, which integrates within Thunderbird.
An email application with calendar and tasks? Hello, Outlook replacement?!? Maybe.
Lightning/Sunbird was recently upgraded to version 0.5, and is getting closer to a fully capable calendar application.
New features include a more polished interface and improvements in printing. Overall, Lightning feels faster and more stable than ever before. The mini calendar in the sidebar is quite handy, since you can see it all times when dealing with your email.
As a stand alone application, or even as an addition to Thunderbird, the Mozilla calendar is just okay. It’s still a bit clunky in spots.
What makes Lightning shine is how well it works with Google Calendar, thanks to the Provider for Google Calendar add-on that you install into Thunderbird right next to Lightning. You can add an event in Thunderbird, and view it from your phone or any web browser through Google.
Once you’ve installed the Provider add-on, you have a new option when creating a remote (network) calendar in Lightning. Paste in the calendar’s XML address, and confirm with your Google username and password. There is no need to change anything on the Google Calendar, or make the calendar public.
This isn’t a subscribed read-only calendar. It’s real bi-directional sync! Events created in Thunderbird appear on the Google Calendar website within a few seconds, and visa versa.
Lightning also has to-dos, but as tasks created in Lightning are stuck in Thunderbird with no connection to other services, it’s not nearly as useful as the calendar.
This is probably no replacement for a corporate Exchange server. But for those web workers who prefer desktop email applications but want our email and appointments accessible from other devices, it’s a good option.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Neat. I tried out Lightning a while ago, but didn’t like it. I then moved to Google Calendar and have been fairly happy. I think it’s probably time to give Lightning another look and see how things go. Thanks for the useful post!
My only problem with these programs and the only reason I won’t use them is the lack of syncing with my phone (Nokia E61i). Any suggestions?
Jeb, if you sync Thunderbird with Google Calendar, you can view your events at mobile.google.com/calendar/ Unfortunately, Google’s mobile interface is a little limited (can’t edit events or “go to” a certain date) so you could add Plaxo to the mix which syncs with Google (make sure you keep your calendars under a single Google account) and has a better mobile page.
“thanks to the Provider for Google Calendar add-on that you install into Thunderbird right next to Lightning.”
What’s disappointing is that I fully utilize Backpack’s calendar, iCal on my desktop, and Google Calendar, all synchronized and up-to-date using the iCal standard, without having to resort to add-ons.
I love the idea of Sunbird as a desktop calendar that bi-directionally syncs up with my Google Calendar. The only problem is that Sunbird is so slow and there are no themes available that make it look anywhere close to how slick Google Calendar looks. It’s a great idea, though. If some company can continue down this direction, I’ll be using their product.