Open Bug 513527 Opened 15 years ago Updated 12 years ago

What's the name of MailNews?

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
General
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: mnyromyr, Unassigned)

Details

This came up during tabmail in bug 460960 comment 108:
| >+tabs.closeWarningPromptMe=Warn me when closing multiple messenger tabs.
|
| I thought we were using "Mail & Newsgroups" everywhere and not "messenger".
| For consistency, it would be good to use the same name for the component
| everywhere.

While "Mail & Newsgroups" is rather more descriptive than "MailNews" or "Messenger", it's also longish and partly wrong - e.g. RSS ist neither mail nor a newsgroup, and we may have other account types in future as well...

We could strip it down to just "Mail & News", which would still be a bit unwieldy.
We could revive the term "Messenger", which is rather nondescriptive ("Whose messenger?").
We could come up with something more meaningful (suggestions welcome!).
I think "Messenger" would be better. Being too descriptive would be restrictive. If we use Mail & News we might have to change it in the future to Mail & News & Feeds or Mail & News & Feeds & Twitter & Facebook. A generic "Messenger" can mean whatever we want it to mean.
(In reply to comment #1)
> I think "Messenger" would be better.

Definitely!
Especially since nobody had a better idea or felt like commenting... ;-)

> If we use Mail & News we might have to change it in the future to
> Mail & News & Feeds or Mail & News & Feeds & Twitter & Facebook. A generic
> "Messenger" can mean whatever we want it to mean.

The only question to solve here is if we'd run into a branding conflict with Netscape's messenger...
> The only question to solve here is if we'd run into a branding conflict with
> Netscape's messenger...

It's dead Jim. Netscape Messenger 9 (a rebranded TB2) never made it past Alpha1. And Netscape itself as a brand is DOA.
(In reply to comment #3)
> > The only question to solve here is if we'd run into a branding conflict with
> > Netscape's messenger...
> 
> It's dead Jim. Netscape Messenger 9 (a rebranded TB2) never made it past
> Alpha1. And Netscape itself as a brand is DOA.

The brand is still owned by AOL afaik.
(In reply to comment #3)
> > The only question to solve here is if we'd run into a branding conflict with
> > Netscape's messenger...
> 
> It's dead Jim. Netscape Messenger 9 (a rebranded TB2) never made it past
> Alpha1. And Netscape itself as a brand is DOA.

Is this a legal statement or an opinion?
Hmm, what about "Message Center"?
I don't think that it's more descriptive or more "touching" than Messenger -
and it's longer. 

Doing some brainstorming myself, with no claim of being better:
- Messages (as in "SeaMonkey Messages" as opposed to "SeaMonkey Browser")
- Courier
- Envoy (sounds strange in English, looks like French)
- Harbinger (probably too "dark" *g*)
- Communicator (hah!)
On that theme:
- Emissary (probably a bit difficult to spell)
- Herald
- Drogher

Courier is the name of an MTA so would be confusing.
Envoy is fine in English.
I agree about Harbinger being too "doom" laden.
I don't think we should create yet another brand name, we already have "SeaMonkey" as a brand after all. If anything, we should use a description or at the very most a descriptive name.
Both "Messenger" and "Communicator" would fit in there. Although the latter might be confusing, since we already used that term for stuff internally. 

(Else I'd offered "Hófvarpnir". ;-))
(In reply to comment #10)
> Both "Messenger" and "Communicator" would fit in there.

Both run into danger of being trademarks of Netscape/AOL - even if they have never been registered, AFAIK trademark law doesn't really allow someone else to use them without permission.

I don't understand why a two-word description like "Message Center" or "Communication Center" doesn't work.
(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > Both "Messenger" and "Communicator" would fit in there.
> Both run into danger of being trademarks of Netscape/AOL
Messenger was what 4.x used, too, even though Netscape Messenger 9 died.

> I don't understand why a two-word description like "Message Center" or
> "Communication Center" doesn't work.
So why can't we call them message tabs?
"Message Central" anyone?
FWIW I'd vote for Messenger (with an obligatory capital M!), too. Also matches "IM", should we ever go that way. :-)
My vote would be for something like SeaGull, in reference to the bird (akin to a carrier pigeon, though not closely related in the animal kingdom). That said, Messenger is surely better than MailNews.

Robert, to your comment #11, two-word descriptions which cannot be concatenated just get, well, verbose. If the browser is one word, the page editor is one word, the chat client is one concatenated word, having two for the email client seems odd (at least to my way of thinking).

Oh, and while Envoy is nice by itself, it seems to me to be reminiscent of MS' Entourage email client for Mac (but perhaps that's just because I was discussing Entourage with a client earlier today, vis-à-vis SM or TB as a mail client). ;-)
Hi,
"Message Center" is a good idea, that may be mark the difference between web and the other protocole (but RSS is based on web).


Communicator would be very interesting, some applications after Netscape used it : http://www.google.com/search?q=trademark+comunicator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:fr:unofficial&client=seamonkey-a 
http://finance.zibb.com/trademark/communicator+inc/30055618
Harvey, any obvious legal reason why we should not use "SeaMonkey Messenger" as the name for the MailNews part?
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.