New Bird on the Block

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REVIEWS Mozilla Sunbird Anneke Schram, Fotolia

Calendar management with Sunbird NEW BIRD ON THE BLOCK

Mozilla Sunbird may be just what you need to help you manage your stalling Sunbird. To keep to the the standard, first become root and then copy appointments and tasks on Linux. BY ERIK BÄRWALDT the Sunbird archive to the /opt directory; when you get there, type tar -xzvf sun- he Firefox web browser and the new version 0.7. Users with any other bird-0.5.de.linux-i686.tar.gz to unpack. Thunderbird email client are distro will need to download the tarball. This creates a sunbird subdirectory with Tstandard applications on Linux. According to the Mozilla Foundation, the files you need. Both programs are developed and main- Sunbird will run on older hardware. The At this point, you can delete the origi- tained by the Mozilla Foundation. minimum configuration is a Pentium II nal archive. To run the program without Mozilla also has the fairly young and with a clock speed of 233MHz or better, specifying the path, you could use a triv- virtually unknown calendar application 64MB RAM, and 52MB disk space. The ial script in /usr/bin to point to the un- called Sunbird [1]. The stable 0.5 ver- software dependencies are just as mod- packed sunbird binary in /opt/sunbird. sion is suitable for production use, de- est: A Linux system with kernel 2.2.14, To do so, launch your favorite editor and spite the low version number. XFree86 3.3.6, and Glibc 2.3.2 are all the type the following three lines: Sunbird is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendar application needs. second calendar application, and you #!/bin/bash would be forgiven for mistaking it for its Installation cd /opt/sunbird sibling Lightning. Lightning relies on the Although you don’t actually need to ./sunbird presence of Thunderbird, whereas Sun- build a stable version 0.5 after unpack- bird is a standalone application that will ing the tar.gz archive, don’t expect the Store the script as sunbird.sh in your run on almost any Linux system. convenience of an installation script to /usr/bin directory. Don’t forget to make Sunbird is currently fairly rare in the handle the configuration on your ma- the script executable by running the fol- online repositories of the major Linux chine automatically; manual steps are lowing command: distributions. In fact, the only Linux to needed. Basically, you can launch Sun- include the electronic calendar as part of bird from any directory. # chmod +x /usr/bin/ U its standard software package is the Irish If you prefer a more organized ap- sunbird.sh Ubuntu derivative, Linux Mint; interest- proach, you might want to keep to the ingly, Linux Mint gives you version conventions defined by the Linux File- To avoid typing the script name in a 0.6rc1, which is still beta, as is the brand system Hierarchy Standard [2] when in- quick launch window whenever you

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050-052_sunbird.indd 50 13.12.2007 17:37:47 Uhr HOT OFF want to run Sunbird, you users can hide tasks that have could create an entry in your been completed. Also, you applications menu. To do so, can assign priorities to tasks create a text file named sun- and define your progress. The THE PRESS! bird.desktop in your /usr/ panel on the right contains share/applications directory. a daily calendar with times, The entries in Listing 1 will and above this is a user-de- give you a starter and an icon finable list area in which you for Sunbird in your Applica- can display, for example, all tion | Office menu; the mes- your appointments for the Take your PHP sage shown when you hover next 14 days. the mouse over the icon is To create a new appoint- Appointments. ment or task, just double- skills to the next After navigating this click the calendar. As an al- slightly convoluted installa- ternative, you can right-click tion procedure, nothing stops in the task window to create level with these you from launching Sunbird. a new task. The dialog lets The program takes a couple you enter details of the pe- new Apress books of seconds to launch, which riod and appointment along is normal for Gecko-based with comments (Figure 2). programs. After the delay, Also, you can sort appoint- Sunbird comes up with a neat ments and tasks by various user interface; the three- categories, thus seeing at a panel window is self-explana- glance whether you need to tory, and you should be able call somebody back or have to use the program without an out-of-office meeting. any trouble (Figure 1). Coordinate Projects The View To coordinate projects for a The top of the window sports group of users, you can pub- a buttonbar that lets users lish a list of appointments to manage appointments and predefined participants. An tasks by pointing and click- optional audible warning at ing. Various views give users a predefined time – for exam- an overview of periods of ple, half an hour before an time. Sunbird distinguishes appointment – keeps you between fixed appointments from missing important and longer term tasks, and dates. Settings can be modi- the calendar displays the two fied after storing; right-click in a different way. the appointment you want to Matt Zandstra 978-1-59059-909-9 The left-hand panel shows change to pop up the familiar 512 pp. | $44.99 US Quentin Zervaas a calendar for the month and Create dialog in which you 978-1-59059-906-8 a to-do list. The latter lists can edit the appointment. 592 pp. | $44.99 US any tasks entered by the user; The use of this method re- unfinished tasks are high- moves the need to learn lighted in red. As an option, different menu structures.

Listing 1: Desktop Entry For more information about Apress titles, 01 [Desktop Entry] please visit www.apress.com 02 Name=Sunbird 03 Comment=Appointments Don’t want to wait for the printed book? 04 Exec=sunbird.sh Order the eBook now at 05 Icon=/opt/sunbird/chrome/icons/default/default. http://eBookshop.apress.com! xpm 06 Terminal=false 07 Type=Application 08 Categories=Application;Office;

050-052_sunbird.indd 51 13.12.2007 17:37:58 Uhr REVIEWS Mozilla Sunbird

toric calendaring data with their own calendars [4]. Conclusions Mozilla Foundation’s Sunbird is a standalone calendaring tool that is useful for both workgroups and individual users. Besides its well-thought out GUI, which flattens the learning curve, the program has all the functions you would expect. The program is not only suitable for appointment management, but lends itself to use in projects with multiple participants and for managing longer term tasks. Despite the fairly low version number, the program is quite stable, and you can install it on almost any Linux system thanks to its family ties to Firefox, Thunderbird, and so on. Sunbird is available for other operating systems, which makes it a good choice for a Figure 1: Self-explanatory and learning curve-free: the Sunbird GUI. standalone calendaring application for heterogeneous environments. If you deploy Sunbird for a user group, does not mean that the application is The import/export function is note- such as the staff at your office, or to co- isolated. Full compatibility to the iCalen- worthy – it allows users to import exter- ordinate family events, you can store dar standard means that Sunbird can ex- nal calendars in iCalendar format or to dates tagged as public on an internal change data with any calendaring pro- export calendars for use by other people. web server for coordination with every- gram that supports the iCalendar specifi- This lets users synchronize data with the one involved. cation – including Apple’s iCal. Thunderbird email client, assuming the Because not all users of a workgroup Thanks to the widespread acceptance user has installed the Lightning calendar. will have permanent access to online of the iCalendar format, many websites Full compatibility with iCalendar also data, a portable version of Sunbird is on the Internet have pre-built calendars lets users retrieve calendar files off the available for use on a USB stick; this is [3]. Simply point and click to copy pub- Internet, thus removing the need to add useful for synchronizing offline. lic holidays from these calendars instead public holidays manually. The various Sunbird stores its data in an SQL- of painstakingly entering the data manu- publication options for individual calen- based, proprietary file format, but this ally. Also, this lets users integrate his- dars make the software an excellent choice for offices or businesses that need to coordinate and manage the activities of several staff members. At the same time, the developers also have taken road warriors without permanent Inter- net access into consideration – a portable USB stick-based version is available. Overall, Sunbird is a convenient solu- tion for anyone looking for a powerful, lean, stable calendaring application for home or office use. I

INFO [1] Sunbird: http:// www. mozilla. org/ projects/ calendar/ sunbird/ [2] FHS (Wikipedia): http:// en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard [3] Pre-built calendars: http:// www. icalshare. com [4] Public Holidays by country: http:// www. mozilla. org/ projects/ calendar/ holidays. html Figure 2: Appointments can be added easily and quickly.

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