Spicebird Beta 0.4 Release Notes

Spicebird is an free and open source collaboration client from Synovel. Spicebird simplifies communication for users by providing integrated access to the various tools of collaboration in a single application. It provides easy access to various web services while users can retain all the advantages of a desktop application.

Home Screen

Home Screen

Mail Screen

Mail Screen

Contacts Screen

Contacts Screen

Calendar Screen

Calendar Screen

Tasks Screen

Tasks Screen

 

Known Issues

  • Suite hangs when unable to connect to imap server
  • Event detection in mail text is limited
  • Instant messaging contacts cannot be sorted based on online status
  • Calendar assist timzone view not proper in winXP/Vista

 

Home screen - See It All At Once

 

The Home screen provides a unified view of various information that you might want quick access to.

An Agenda Applet lists your schedule for a specified duration.

Agenda Applet

A Folder View Applet shows a preview of mails in a particular folder.

Folder View Applet

An RSS Feed applet lists the feeds on your favorite website. The tooltip for an item in the RSS applet shows the complete RSS article. Clicking on an item opens the corresponding webpage in your favorite browser.

RSS Feed Applet

A Date/Time Applet which gives you the current time in your contacts timezone.

Date/Time Applet

You can add applets from the tool bar and configure them as you desire.

A familiar tabbed interface lets you access the rest of functions in the suite.

Tabbed Interface

Secure and Efficient Messaging

 

The mail application derived from Mozilla Thunderbird, inherently provides functionality like grouping mails on various fields, threaded views, spam and phishing detection.

Spicebird can group mail on any field so mail are presented to you better organized than ever.

Grouped Mail

Spicebird tries to identify junk mail as you read your mail. When you mark a mail as junk. Spicebird learns from your action to improve its own ability to mark junk mail.

Junk Mail Detection

Spicebird tries to identify mails that try to trick you into revealing confidential information to malicious entities.

Phishing Detection

Spicebird allows you to tag messages and create new tags to better sort and search your mails.

Message Tagging

For repeated searches can be saved as virtual folders showing search results.

Search Folders

Searching mails begins as soon as you start typing. Searching within a displayed mail is also done as you type in the search pane.

Search Messages

When you receive a new mail, Spicebird checks for the presence of any event information in the mail text and prompts you to create a calendar event.

Event Detection

You can schedule the event by just clicking on it. All the necessary information is automatically filled in.

Scheduling an Event

Fast and Easy Calendaring

 

The calendar application, derived from Mozilla's Lightning, has all the expected features: multiple calendar subscription, web calender subscription, day/week/month views, alarms etc. Spicebird introduces new ways to speed-up and simplify your calendering.

You can quickly add an event by simply typing or pasting an English sentence containing time, event and date.

Quick Add

You can quickly add an event by dragging on the day, week or month view.

New Event

You can reschedule an event or change its duration by simply dragging the event.

Rescheduling an Event

Improved Contact Management

 

The addressbook card view gives you a quick look on the relevant information of your contacts.

Card View

Quickly locate a contact by clicking on the alphabet in the toolbar or by search for it.

Card Search

Instant Messaging

 

Spicebird provides inbuilt support for instant messaging using xmpp4moz. You can configure multiple jabber accounts.

Instant Messaging Menu

The online status of your contacts is visible on each card in the addresbook.

Online Status in a Card

Spicebird shows contacts online status in the mail application so that you can choose to reply using an email or if possible an instant message.

Online Status in a Mail Header

Right clicking on the contact address and choosing to send instant message opens an instant messaging conversation window.

Chat Window

Powerful Platform

 

To stay secure Spicebird automatically checks for security updates and downloads them. The downloads are incremental and hence small in size.

Update Manager

One can easily create add-ons to Spicebird that can lead to tighter integration, more applications, home screen applets etc.

Addons