Comments on: Naming alphas

By: Vlad Shredder

Vlad Shredder — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:56:32 +0000

Looking Forward for a new release!

By: Internetagentur München

Internetagentur München — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:17:44 +0000

I love the introduction sentence “Software production is a lot like sausage factories.” This one will be used as a desktop wallpaper – and whenever I start my computer I will smile.

By: Kirk M

Kirk M — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:09:45 +0000

I agree with Samuel, the codename plus alpha/beta build number should be together as his example of Shredder3.0a1 (although I kind of like “ThunderBomb” or “T-bomb” instead of “Shredder”).

And speaking of testing the Alpha’s I finally dumped that ludicrous, buggy, feature-poor “Windows Live Mail” (WLM) desktop email client for the the nightly builds of Thunderbird 3 of all things. That should tell you what I think of the stability of the 3.0a1pre’s (now 3.0a2pre in the trunk). I’ve left all messages on the respective servers except for one of my several email accounts I have loaded into the Thunderbird 3.0 nightly builds (all Gmail but one) and despite the occasional minor glitch now and then it’s a heck of a lot more reliable than WLM ever thought of being. Sure, the inline spell checker doesn’t work yet on anything but a brand new message (replying, forwarding or even pasting text into a new blank message seems to knock out the inline spell checker) but as long as the actual spell checking module works…no problem.

I can’t tell you how glad I am to see Thunderbird still being developed. I used version 2 for a long while before I tried out WLM. Never should have left.

By: Nick Thomas

Nick Thomas — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:03:58 +0000

Shredder sounds like a good name for nightly builds, it has the same slightly-scary feel as Minefield does. Not sure it works for alpha’s though.

By way of example, Firefox 3 has three sets of branding – Firefox for the official branding (betas and later), Gran Paradiso for the unofficial branding (alphas), and Minefield for nightlies (also the default for DIY builds).

By: Gijs

Gijs — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:56:27 +0000

In my mind, Shredder is still a chess engine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shredder_%28chess%29

Otherwise, it seems nice.

By: Eddy Nigg

Eddy Nigg — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:49:26 +0000

LOL

Shredder is good! And I’m delighted to see TB processing with a captain steering the ship, lots of good people on board! I must say, it was worth the effort

By: Samuel Sidler

Samuel Sidler — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:46:27 +0000

If Shredder is supposed to be to Thunderbird what Minefield is to Firefox, you should change the branding on the trunk and it should be Shredder 3.0a1.

Otherwise, it’s weird to call it “Shredder a1″. What happens for Thunderbird 4 alpha 1, for example?

If you’re looking for a codename for the Thunderbird 3 codeline, similar to Gran Paradiso for Firefox 3, then it could be Shredder a1, but you’d need a new codename for Thunderbird 4.

Anyway, just trying to avoid confusion later. Love the name “Shredder”, btw.

By: Ian Thomas

Ian Thomas — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:07:21 +0000

You realise you’re still going to get forum posts saying “I upgraded to Mozilla Shredder and it lost all my email!”, don’t you?

Personally I’m not too keen on the shredder name – sure it’s document related and sounds dangerous, but it does kinda imply that its actually a product to prevent deleted data recovery (I can easily see a ’shredder’ add-on for Thunderbird).

I like the Thunderbolt suggestion, or how about other birds: Pigeon (as in carrier) or Owl (Harry Potter)

By: Michael T

Michael T — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:37:39 +0000

Perhaps you could consider the mythological origins of the thunderbird name, and use a codename like Pterodactyl or Pterosaur!

By: Chris Keene

Chris Keene — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:47:43 +0000

Remember there are two zeros between the ‘2′ and the ‘14′ 2.0.0.14

Surely this gives you some options.

a 2.1 release?

a 2.0.1 release?

and the alpha could be for this, e.g. 2.1 alpha 1

just a thought

Chris Keene