User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1 The structure of contacts information is terribly unusable for serious business usage, it is too old and bad designed. It would be cool if Thunderbird could syncronize its Address Book with the Windows one. Here follows just my idea on how contacts informations should be managed. I am not a programmer so I don't know how to implement it, but would really like to receive suggestions and comments. It would be great if someone could implement it, I will finally be able to use Thunderbird in our business! I think it could be a big improvement on corporate usability. Again, comments are welcome! * General o Name o Surname o Title o Display o Nick name o Nationality o Date and place of birth o Picture o Notes * Personal contacts o Internet + Email # Receiving messages preferences # Main address # Other addresses + Instant messenging # Jabber # ICQ # MSN # Yahoo! # Skype # others + Home page address o Addresses + Permanent address # Address # Post code # City # Province # State # Country + Current address # Address # Post code # City # Province # State # Country + Other address # Address # Post code # City # Province # State # Country o Telephone numbers + Mobile # Main # Others + Fixed telephone # Permanent # Current # Others # Fax * Permanent * Current * Others # Pager o Work contacts + Position + Company/Organization + Internet # Email * Receiving messages preferences * Main address * Other addresses # Instant messenging * Jabber * ICQ * MSN * Yahoo! * Skype * others # Company/Organization site # Personal page on company/organization site + Addresses # Main address * Department * Office * Company/Organization * Address * Post code * City * Province * State * Country # Other address * Department * Office * Company/Organization * Address * Post code * City * Province * State * Country + Telephone numbers # Mobile * Main * Others # Fixed telephone * Permanent * Current * Others * Fax o Permanent o Current o Others * Pager Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Mozilla Thunderbird really needs to be totally redesigned boh technically and in concept. Without an improved Contacts management system Thunderbird is not ready for a business-corporate-professional usage. Present Address Book is nor really useful for Personal daily use too.

While the summary line of your request is a bit.. inflamatory.. I would have to agree that the Address Book feature needs some serious re-thinking. I have found that the numerous problems with Address Book are a consistent stop-stopper when it comes to transitioning my users from Outlook / OE to Thunderbird. It's really a shame because Thunderbird is much better than Outlook as an email client -- especially for IMAP. Just as it required Firefox to make Mozilla palatable to the masses, we need a project to develop a completely revamped address book designed from the ground up with real-world needs in mind. I honestly believe that this is the only thing keeping Thunderbird from being as successful as Firefox, at least on the home / small business desktop. (On the corporate side, yes, it's also a competition against Exchange features) The current problems generally fall into these categories: - static schema (unable to adapt to diverse imported user data) - missing expected features (address book folders, etc.) - import related issues (bugs esp. in Outlook/OE filter, missing import/export filters, insufficient user control over import process / data mapping, etc.) Yes, I would volunteer except that I'm swamped between my job and my existing OSS projects. Maybe someday.. :)

Changing title to something easier to search for and more descriptive. Original: "The Address Book is Outdated!" new: "Address book needs restructuring"

I agree that the address book need improvements. It is absolutely imperative that it can import and export vCard addresses (multiple per file) and that it keeps multiple email addresses per person. I use an iPAQ to keep my address book (the iPAQ addresses are the master to my home as well as the work computers). Currently, I have no way of exporting an address from Thunderbird and loading it into the iPAQ. Thunderbird's Address export formats are all not very useful and I do not quite understand why vCard is not supported. -- Chris

Regarding the entries ICQ, Skype, etc.: there should be an option to execute them from within TB - like the MAP button. Since some of those programs to not register themselves to the OS, an additional option menu would be needed to specify the appropriate execution path. And since many of us in non-US countries change the URL of the MAP feature, this option window would be handy here, too. Furthermore, the card view for all contacts in Outlook is a nice thing to think about for future releases. In my opinion, there are quite a few Outlook adress book features TB could adapt.

related bug 99938 bug 233144 bug 255641 bug 256831

I also think the address book really needs a major update. In addition to the fields already posted a UID field is missing too. Right now export/import from vcard/kolab is almost impossible because of all the missing/unmappable fields.

Thunderbird is the best EMail Client i used so far. But Adressbook is a shame. A lot of features are missing like Telefon deailing or only a field for Birthday with can be shown and is able for sorting Fields.

Sorry for adding useless comment here. But... is anybody working on this bug at the moment? Or any plan to work on it anytime soon? (e.g. before tb 2.0?)

I would like to be able to search for things based on the notes or to have categories of addresses that I can sort by. I'd like the custom fields to actually be customizable.

Giving an addressbook entry more degrees of freedom for hosting contact information is a good idea. Address this by maintaining an XML file to which the user can (visually) add contact information the way he likes. There won't be ONE scheme which fits for all. More essential for me: there should be given more freedom to maintain addressbook entries in a tree structure like this: Home +-Family I.+-Helen I.+-Paul I.+-Andrew +-Friends I.+-Oregon I...+-Jim I...+-Jane +-Hobby ..+-Climbing ..+.+-Jack ..+-Astro ....+-Seti ....I.+-Frank ....+-Telescope ......+-Barbara Job +-Team I.+-Anne I.+-Joe +-Sales I.+-Paula +-Customers I.+-Webit I.I.+-IT I.I.I.+-Henry I.I.+-Sales I.I.I.+-Eric ... (Maintaining LARGE numbers of addressbook is cumbersome in today's linear structure.) I suggest employing "natural" file system capacities for hosting such a tree structure. Each addressbook entry should be a physical file (why not XML?). The tree structure is composed of (lightweight!) filesystem (sym?)links. Hardcore hackers then even could apply their own scripts/XSLT Stylesheets for managing addressbooks, and it might be easier to import/export contacts. This helps, by the way, solving a number of other issues I found in the forums, e.g. - maintain consistency of an addressbook entry for one person, even if "linked to" from different folders of the addressbook - give freedom of ordering of entries by individually felt priorities - share (parts of?) addressbooks Summary: - An addressbook should be a freely configurable tree structure of addressbook entries. - Each addressbook entry should be a freely configurable tree structure of contact information items. - Have only one addressbook entry per person, link to it from different folders, if needed. - Employ file system capabilities (files & links). - Use fully-qualified URIs where needed (eric.sales.webit.customer.job) - Use XML/XSLT technology. Thanks Detlef

Thunderbird is MultiPlatform & should maintain feature compatibility with other OSes too. I would welcome the addition of more vCard, LDAP schema object classes or other forward thinking Contact Management database standards (RDF) at the W3C and in the Mail Related RFCs - http://www.imc.org/rfcs.html ...However, it should not add features that bloat addressbook until it becomes a yet anther Windows only PIM replacement, despite the many requests to add more MS-Outlook features. Compatibility with other OpenSource PIMs & PDA Sync tools like Chandler - http://chandler.osafoundation.org/ KDE-PimPI http://dot.kde.org/1114105085/ and PI-Sync http://www.pi-sync.net/html/documentation.html would be welcome. RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-dawg-uc/ http://www.w3.org/2000/04/maillog2rdf/toAddrBk.py Sharing Address Books - LDAP Compatibility, Editing & Sync http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_address_books Multiple e-mail addresses per address book entry - MozillaZine Knowledge Base http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_e-mail_addresses_per_address_book_entry vCard Compatibility - Pictures http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcardoverview.html http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=367332 Pictures in the address book? - MozillaZine Forums http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2029109#2029109 New List "Format" Option for multiple recipients or local mail-lists http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=367806

I would also like to see the possibility to >> assign a specific character encoding to each e-mail address in the address book. Since I frequently send e-mails to non-ASCII users it is really annoying to have to use the main menu to change the encoding option every single time I compose a new message. Of course, I know that there is UTF out there, and I would love to use it if it only was supported properly. Especially webmailers like MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. have no Unicode support at all; as far as I know the only one is Google...

I can't believe you missed such a thing! Please do something it makes your fabulous program looks like the microsoft ****! It would be great just to have a right-click menu "hide this field" or "new field" or simply a list of available fields with the opportunity of activate or desactivate each one.

The functionality lacking in the address book (i.e. more than two email addresses) was one of only a few factors in the decision to not use Thunderbird at a client company I work with. I think Thunderbird is an awesome mail/PIM client! But I do agree that the address book is one of it's weakest areas. Is there anyone heading up designing a new Address Book? Scott? Does Scott have the time? :-) btw, don't forget to vote on this bug if it's a priority for you. As of today, this bug ranks #12 in votes on open Thunderbird issues.

I agree with the need for major revisions on the address book component. Among major goals should be adherence to standard formats (vCard, a compatible LDAP schema) and a flexible schema (see bug 118665). I'd be interested in ways to help this move forward.

given mark's current work, assigning to him.

The most obvious missing fields are multiple fields for addresses, emails, etc as well as category, dates (i.e.: birthday, anniversary) and the photo field. An extension that seems to address this issue is MoreFunctionsForAddressBook https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html by KAOSMOS. Perhaps one could have KAOSMOS and jcranmer work on integrating some of that code? See also the Thunderbird 3 enhancement request site: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Thunderbird_3_Possible_Enhancements#More_flexible_address_book (Originally From Bug 42463: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424643)

blocking-thunderbird3? is enough for drivers on this bug, when they consider it they will set other flags as necessary - in short, one flag is enough, please don't set others unnecessarily.

Syncing has only been mentioned in comment 11, and not favorably. Given the rise of PDAs, smartphones and devices yet to come, and possible need of things (extensions being one example) to "plug in" to the AB, etc, ... it would be good if 1. the AB is easily extensible 2. all or most fields are available that might be synced to other devices or software [1] [1] sampling of bugs: bug 121948 investigate SyncML protocol (PDA palm) bug 303963 Write opensync conduit to sync / synchronize addressbooks etc to palm, phone and other devices bug 239784 Add Microsoft windows ActiveSync support to mozilla Address Book (PDA)

(In reply to comment #10) > Giving an addressbook entry more degrees of freedom for hosting contact > information is a good idea. Address this by maintaining an XML file to which > the user can (visually) add contact information the way he likes. There won't > be ONE scheme which fits for all. > > More essential for me: there should be given more freedom to maintain > addressbook entries in a tree structure like this: > > Home > +-Family > I.+-Helen > I.+-Paul > I.+-Andrew > +-Friends > I.+-Oregon > I...+-Jim > I...+-Jane > +-Hobby > ..+-Climbing > ..+.+-Jack > ..+-Astro > ....+-Seti > ....I.+-Frank > ....+-Telescope > ......+-Barbara > Job > +-Team > I.+-Anne > I.+-Joe > +-Sales > I.+-Paula > +-Customers > I.+-Webit > I.I.+-IT > I.I.I.+-Henry > I.I.+-Sales > I.I.I.+-Eric I think that giving the user tools to structure their address book as they see fit is a great idea, but I'm not convinced that a simple XML implementation would allow enough freedom. The address book will be implemented in SQLite, so why not use the power of SQL to make structuring and search of the address book easier? Users, Groups, Addresses, Organisations, Services etc. could all be summarised in one table (Nodes), a second table (Edges) would describe the links or relationships between Users, Groups etc. A third table would contain additional information and about the nodes and additional tables could contain edge information, tags, labels etc. Example data for these tables... Nodes/Entities: Person A "Fred" Person B "Jill" Organisation A "Mozilla" Group A "Family" Address A "Bloggs residence" Address A "Blah campus" Edges/Interactions/Relationships/Links: Person A belongs to Group A Person B belongs to Group A Person A lives at Address A Person A works for Organisation A Organisation A is at Address B Person A is the cousin of Person B (we can describe basic social network graphs) Node Information: User A has Nickname "Freddie" User A has Phone# "A" (Tags: Personal, Mobile) User A has Phone# "B" (Tags: Personal, Home) User A has E-mail address "A" (Tags: Personal, Google) User A has Instant Messaging address "A" (Tags: Personal, Google) Organisation A has Phone# "C" (Tags: Switchboard) Address A has post/zip code "ABC 123" Address A has Lat/Long "10.10,10.10" There are other ways you could describe the data in this fashion, this is just one. Cytoscape (http://www.cytoscape.org/) is a great tool that could be used to mock up such a data structure.

I agree, Address books in computing have been a long irritation of mine. The way I see it is this: A major advantage of a computer is that you should only need to input data once and can retrieve it as much as you need it after that. Address books do not have that flexibility. Integration of messaging programs like MSN and Skype etc. are essential I think, but also you should be able to extract the info from within MS-Word and OO-Writer for example. Integration of appointments and birthdays in a calendar application is also important, but only if the appointments show up on screen without the need of launching Thunderbird. (For example by means of a task as is done in Windows- calendar on Vista).

Please can we not have more comments along the lines of "I agree - these are my thoughts". Half of the comments made so far are actually covered in other bugs. Bugzilla is not a place for discussion - please use the newsgroup news://news.mozilla.org:119/mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird for discussion. We have already had several discussions on various aspects of address book fields and we will be holding more there.

I am sorry. but I was under the impression that bugzilla is not only a place to file bugs but also to file enhancements. The fact that I start my comment with "I agree" does not mean that I do not add something else. We, the users, file enhancement requests and "vote" for them in the hopes that they will find their way into the next release. I merely tried to stress the point that all existing address books today are inflexible. I don't use or subscribe to newsgroups as I find them to complex. Perhaps another way for requesting enhancements should be considered if decentralised comments are a problem. I am sorry if I sound touchy, but I have been irritated and rallying for integrated address books for so long now (I have to keep up with 5 address books on my computer simply because none of the programs I use can read one single one), and it seems nobody ever gives me a serious answer about it. I had hoped that since Thunderbird is a "community product" it would at least seriously file my (added) request and not give me a "go somewhere else" reply. Last time I looked, this functionality is NOT included in TB3, so it is still a "bug" in that sense.

(In reply to comment #24) > I am sorry. but I was under the impression that bugzilla is not only a place to > file bugs but also to file enhancements. Bugzilla is a place to file enhancements. > I merely tried > to stress the point that all existing address books today are inflexible. Something which we know as is apparent by the various bugs that are filed on the address book fields. > I don't use or subscribe to newsgroups as I find them to complex. Maybe then a mailing list, apologies for not mentioning it before, but I always forget we have these: https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-thunderbird There is also https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/wishlist > Last time I looked, this functionality is NOT included in TB3, so it is still a > "bug" in that sense. Integration of applications is important to Thunderbird. If you read the mailing list/newsgroup archives, from the last 3-4 months, you'll see that this has been discussed a lot already. Unfortunately, due to the timescales we won't make many major strides towards this in the TB3 timeframe (although we do now integrate with the Mac OS X Address Book, and we should have calendar integration). Enhancements requests are important to us, but in your case they are covered elsewhere already: integration of instant message items, etc is covered by at least bug 218714 and I'm sure there's another that I can't find at the moment, birthday field integration is bug 13595 and bug 151994, integration with a calendar is bug 401779 (that will give us big scope for more). So I hope you can see that your general comments are pretty much covered by these bugs already. The problem with discussing/expanding ideas on bugs, is that the bug quickly looses focus (although this bug was probably too general to being with) and it makes it really hard to find where the actual comments relating to the specific implementation lists are. This is why we use the mailing lists/newsgroups to discuss the problems with the current implementation and how to improve them.

I have mentioned this in the newsgroup, but I feel I should add this comment here too (if just to plant the idea): I agree with what others have said about the need to extend the functionality of the AB, but I think it needs to go further and probably requires thinking WAY outside of the box.... It needs to be available to multiple computers. In other words, what is *really* needed is a sort of "personal LDAP". Allow me to expound for a moment - using the Google Calendar system as a model. I'll preface this by saying I have become a HUGE fan of the Google Calendar. Why? Because it solves several very real issues: * it's easy for the generic average user, yet has almost every feature you would want out of a calendar program * it's personal * it can be shared - either in whole, or just in parts * it's available anytime I'm connected to the 'net * it can be sync'd to PDA's (goosync) and to other calendar programs on "your local PC" * it is platform independent It seems obvious to me that this is the real model that people are asking for. It is also obvious that the moz folks are probably NOT the ones to be developing it (almost certainly should be Google) - other than making sure the AB in TB can use the personal LDAP (either in real time via a LDAP lookup or by syncing). Alas, I haven't been able to convince anyone at Google that this is a project worthy of them to take on. But then, I am just a lowly user. A developer at mozilla *might* have a bit more influence with them - especially if they are willing to make sure it works with TB from the beginning.

(In reply to comment #26) > I have mentioned this in the newsgroup, but I feel I should add this comment > here too (if just to plant the idea): I agree with what others have said about > the need to extend the functionality of the AB, but I think it needs to go > further and probably requires thinking WAY outside of the box.... > > It needs to be available to multiple computers. > In other words, what is *really* needed is a sort of "personal LDAP". There are many ways that we are thinking of expanding the address book, this bug is about restructing the address book for more cards. Please leave it that way, and use the newsgroup for its proper discussion purpose.

I'll try not to be repetitive, but I don't think I saw everything I am interested in in the comments. For me, the most important items that have not been added yet in TB3's AB: 1. Salutation / Title 2. The ability to enter a full name (or import it) and have TB parse it (something like what Outlook 2003 does) 3. Syncing with PDAs

More e-mail addresses ...

Really want a new field structure, but won't block tb3.

Kolab format (http://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/Kolab_Format_Intro) is now being or will soon be supported by a number of email clients. These include Horde, Evolution, Kontact and even Thunderbird via the Sync Kolab extension (http://www.gargan.org/extensions/synckolab.html). Kolab format is XML and is usually stored in IMAP folders, but could be suitable as the address book schema within Thunderbird. Alternatively, an SQLite implementation of the Kolab schema might work. Using a pre-existing standard instead of reinventing the wheel should make the job easier, and ease the development of cross client address book synchronisation software in future. If Thunderbird were to support Kolab fully then synchronisation might even be free, as Thunderbird and other clients could use the same IMAP address book folders. Thunderbird could also benefit from a generic opensync-kolab plugin, which could allow mobile sync with devices (such as phones) that only support vcard or similar.

Just wanted to chip in quickly... I just had my first (partially) successful sync to Thunderbird 3 with Nokia's PC apps (currently OVI Suite 2.1.0.87), which raised an issue that led me here, namely that the contact page really needs to move/duplicate the email addresses, screen names and phone numbers to the various pages (private/home & work). Most of my contacts have multiple mobile numbers (home, work), not to mention multiple land-line numbers (home, work), and a few have VOIP-to-land-line numbers as well. ...not to mention the multitude of IM account details (Jabber, GTalk, Facebook, ICQ, AOL, Yahoo, etc.) that aside though, the address book is light-years better than it was with Thunderbird 2.0. I was pleasantly surprised when the contact photos synced. Supporting LDAP (and/or the other various data sources) however would need a field mapping system (perhaps letting Thunderbird delegate field values to a backend and just storing the fields they don't support), etc.

To add another item that's missing. A 'sex/gender' field encoded like 0=n/a, 1=female, 2=male e. g. because I use the MozAB as a source for creating letters in OOo. (see Comment #28 "Salutation")

Simple but powerful: Make it possible for the user to create as many "custom fields" as he needs. The user can chose a "Key" for his own fields. This new field then appears in the "Custom" tab for every contact so that the user can use it. I know this is the killer feature, which fulfills the needs of most of the people above. Any other approach like to add all the fields most people wish to have, would leave a smaller group of people unsatisfied. So this is the best solution. I used it in my outlook days, and believe me, if you once used your own custom fields, you never want without them.

wow.

related: bug 29106 "Address book should have full RFC2426 (vCard 3.0) support" bug 1182922 "Address book should support vCard 4.0 (RFC 6350)"

Any news on the status? This seems pretty dead too: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Thunderbird/Modern_Address_Book This and similar addons makes the Adressbook bearable for me: MoreFunctionsForAddressBook - https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html But the lack of flexibility in the Adressbook really seems a glaring hole in Tunderbird to me. Most people I know have given up on Thunderbird, I myself only use it at home now. It doesn't seem that any programmer is going to make a new Adressbook soon. This Bug is over 10 years old (2004). Is there any possibility of folding in some of the addon capabilties into the development trunk?