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These Release Notes cover what's new, download and installation instructions, known issues and frequently asked questions for Sunbird 0.3. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla.

What's New in Mozilla Sunbird® 0.3

Mozilla Sunbird 0.3 is the latest release of our standalone calendar application. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.

  • New storage architecture handles calendars with hundreds or thousands of events more responsively.
  • More intuitive interface shows you more of what you need, and less of what you don't.
  • Redesigned preferences allow you to easily customize Sunbird for your needs.
  • Add-ons support allows you to extend Sunbird's functionality with extensions, themes, and language packs from addons.mozilla.org.
  • New Windows installer makes it easier than ever for Windows users to install Sunbird.
  • Better printing gives you more ways to print your calendars. Mac users can now print as well!
  • 24-hour views show you your entire day, not just a few hours.
  • Reliable alarms ensure you are notified about events or tasks.
  • Improved localization support means Sunbird can easily install, enable, and disable language packs.
  • Vastly improved reliability makes it much more difficult to lose data.
  • Many performance improvements

Release Date: October 11, 2006

Downloading and Installing

System Requirements

Before installing, make sure your computer meets the system requirements. Starting with Sunbird 0.3, Mac OS X users must have Mac OS X 10.2 or greater, and Windows users must have Windows 2000 or later.

Downloading Sunbird 0.3

Mozilla.org provides Sunbird for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages. To get Sunbird 0.3, download it here.

For builds for other systems and languages not provided, see the Contributed Builds section at the end of this document.

Installing Sunbird

Once you have downloaded Sunbird, follow these instructions to install:

Windows

Before installing, uninstall any previous versions of Sunbird you may have. From the Start menu, choose Control Panel. When the Control Panel appears, double click Add/Remove Programs. Select "Mozilla Sunbird" in the list and click Removeto uninstall.

Then, double click the installer to start the install.

Mac OS X

Once you have downloaded the Sunbird 0.3.dmg file, double click the Sunbird Disk Image to open it in Finder, and then drag the Sunbird application onto your hard disk. Drag the icon to your Dock if you want it to appear there.

Linux/GTK2

Extract the tarball in the directory where you want to install Sunbird:

tar -xjvf sunbird-0.3.tar.bz2

This will create a sunbird subdirectory of that directory.

Other Platforms

Extract the compressed archive and run sunbird.

Uninstalling Sunbird

To uninstall Sunbird, follow these instructions:

Windows

From the Start menu, choose Control Panel. When the Control Panel appears, double click Add/Remove Programs. Find "Mozilla Sunbird (0.3)" in the list and click Remove to uninstall.

Mac OS X

Drag the Sunbird application to the Trash.

Others

Remove the sunbird folder.

These instructions leave your profile in place in case you install Sunbird again in the future. If you wish to remove your profile folder, remove the location described below in the "Profile Folder" section. Note that by doing this you are destroying all of your calendars, saved passwords, settings and other information and should you decide to use Sunbird again you will be starting with a clean profile.

 

Other Information

Profile Folder

Sunbird stores your user data in one of the following locations:

Windows 2000, XP Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Mozilla\Sunbird
Mac OS X ~/Library/Application Support/Sunbird
Linux and Unix ~/.mozilla/sunbird

 

Known Issues

This list covers some of the known issues with Sunbird 0.3. Other important known problems in this release are listed on this page. Please read both lists before reporting any new bugs.

All Systems

  • Sunbird 0.3 will not automatically migrate your old calendar (.ICS) files from Sunbird 0.2, or from the deprecated Mozilla Calendar Extension. Instead, manually import them from your profile folder and resubscribe to your remote calendar files. This will ensure your data is converted properly.
  • Sunbird 0.3 will attempt to guess your timezone on startup. As this is only a best guess, you should manually set the timezone in Preferences/Options before entering data.
  • The timezones in Sunbird 0.3 do not yet have the Daylight Savings Time (summer time) changes passed by the U.S. legislature in 2005.
  • Events and tasks imported from non-Mozilla calendar clients into a calendar stored on your computer often show up at the wrong time. Calendars stored remotely that are subscribed to will not exhibit this error. (bug 314339)
  • Having multiple people edit a calendar stored on a remote server can cause the previous editor's changes to be overwritten. (bug 329570)
  • Event exception dates are not handled when adding events from other calendar clients via copy/paste, email, or import. (bug 354578)
  • Sunbird 0.3 cannot subscribe to .ICS files created by Sunbird 0.2 (bug 352795)

Windows

  • Because of architectural changes in the Mozilla core code, Sunbird 0.3 will not work on Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME. This is not a bug, and is out of the calendar team's control. (bug 330276)

Mac OS X

  • Sunbird 0.3 is not a Universal binary. It is currently built as a PowerPC-native application. However, it performs well under Apple's Rosetta environment.

Linux and Unix systems

  • Printing may crash from time to time on Linux. (bug 351944)
  • Due to differences between the asynchronous drag-and-drop model in X and Mozilla's synchronous model, drag-and-drop can occassionally freeze Linux desktops, especially over remote X sessions. (bug 348009)

Troubleshooting

  • Poorly designed or incompatible Add-ons can cause problems with Sunbird, including making it crash and slowing down calendar display. If you encounter strange problems relating to parts of Sunbird no longer working, Sunbird not starting, windows with strange or distorted appearance, degraded performance, etc, you may be suffering from Add-on trouble. Restart Sunbird in Safe Mode. On Windows, start using the "Safe Mode" shortcut created in your Start menu or by running sunbird.exe -safe-mode. On Linux, start with ./sunbird -safe-mode and on Mac OS X, run the following command in Terminal: /Applications/Sunbird.app/Contents/MacOS/sunbird-bin -safe-mode When Sunbird is started in Safe Mode, all Add-ons are disabled. Disable the Add-on that is causing trouble and then start normally.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What can I do to help?

    The next planned release of Sunbird is planned to be Sunbird 0.5.

    Users wishing to follow the progress towards this release should feel free to download nightly builds. As always, testing and good bug reports are greatly appreciated. To learn how to submit bugs and get involved with calendar testing, click here.

  2. Where's the Sunbird source code?

    A tarball of the Sunbird 0.3 source code is available for download. The latest development code can be obtained by cvs. Sunbird-specific source is in "mozilla/calendar", "mozilla/toolkit", and "mozilla/chrome". Please follow the build instructions.

 

The following resources contain useful information about Sunbird:

 

Contributed Builds

These are unofficial builds and may be configured differently than the official Mozilla.org builds. They may also be optimized and/or tested for specific platforms.

Solaris builds (contributed by Sun Microsystems)

OS/2 builds (contributed by Peter Weilbacher)

Other Systems

Builds for platforms other than the trio officially offered by Mozilla.org can be found on the FTP site.

Localized Builds

Many localized builds are now produced and distributed by Mozilla.org on behalf of their authors. View All Systems and Languages to see the set of official builds that we offer.

Builds that have not yet been certified as official Sunbird 0.3 localizations are available by browsing the FTP site.

Previous versions of the Release notes: 0.3a1 | 0.3a2
Sunbird® and the Sunbird logo are trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation. All rights reserved.