A call to action: Lightning/Sunbird end-user documentation

We often get feedback from people that want to contribute to the Calendar apps, but lack the technical skills needed for programming.

This post is for you. We need your help!

We are currently lacking any kind of end-user documentation. We need tutorials, geared towards typical end-users like your neighbor or your grandma, explaining to them the basic tasks in a calendar app.

  • Installing Sunbird
  • Installing Lightning into Thunderbird
  • Switching between mail and calendar mode in Lightning
  • Creating a new event or a new task
  • Creating a recurring event
  • Changing the time or date of an event
  • Switching between the different calendar views
  • Inviting other people
  • Adding a holiday calendar
  • Exporting a calendar and sharing it with other people over the net
  • Creating new calendars
  • Printing a collection of events
  • and many more

It would be great if you could help us out here, either by writing a tutorial, contributing screenshots or thinking of other things that could be documented.
I’ve created a page for user documentation on our wiki. This should enable you to work collectively on the things that you want to
contribute to.

We really look forward to what our community can accomplish.

19 comments

  1. What about using the Sunbird Help extension content and updating it?
    http://calendarhelp.mozdev.org/help.html
    Isnt everything already documented there? Why not incorporate that content directly into Sunbird and maybe even the Lightning extension?

  2. Here is the url of the online version:
    http://calendarhelp.mozdev.org/open.xul
    Maybe Rod can jump in and help?

  3. Had a few minutes to spare, so I did up a bit on installing Sunbird for Mac.

  4. Will definitely see what I can come up with.

  5. New Libmapi realease :
    http://www.openchange.org/
    Wednesday, 31 October 2007
    Perl
    A new release of the MAPI library is now available for download. This release is a major step in our effort to provide a portable implementation of Microsoft Exchange protocols. The HOLODECK version represents 4 months of improvements, bug fix and implementation of new features.
    In many times , it will be possible to use Sunbird on a Exchange Server !!

  6. Let’s hope someone has the time and skills to create a SB-version…

  7. What about integrating this end-user documentation with what is currently becoming Support.Mozilla.com (SUMO). Currently SUMO only has Firefox end user documentation. It would be nice if this could be discussed with the SUMO team to also include documentation for other apps.
    Of course Thunderbird would normally be the second app to take, but if the Mozilla Calendaring software is currently in need of some why not integrate at this time ? This would be a nice case for the Mozilla Calendar team and also for the SUMO team. Than the latter would also know how to integrate other apps into SUMO which would likely make integrating more apps in the future easier.

  8. Is there a list of available keyboard shortcuts in lightning now? I just read about the Ctrl+D to hide/show the today pane. Does it exist a shortcut for swithing between email and calendar view?

  9. ctrl-1 is email
    ctrl-2 is adressbook
    ctrl-3 is calendar

  10. bvdbos: thanks a lot, that’s a real timesaver!

  11. Very much a newbie here. I’m impressed with how totally difficult it is to find any documentation for Lightening. The documentation wiki is all but completely buried. I don’t even know how I got here, and I have little hope of getting back, unless I note the URL. That’s simply wrong. The Mozilla support tab should have this information. I shouldn’t have to dig for it…unless Lightening is some kind of secret society. heh heh. Actually, I like the progress I’m seeing with the software and really want it to continue and become much more used. I plan on using it…if I can figure out how to get AN YTHING to print.

  12. If anyone knows how, I would like to see a tutorial on viewing a Sunbird calendar in Lightning. If you don’t have a webdav to publish to, how can the two programs share a calendar. It seems like the FAQ was written for an earlier version of the programs that no longer applies.

  13. discussion topic 600000 on the calendar-forum
    http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=600000
    is your answer…

  14. Can we have this documentation wiki in all of the lightning’s supported languages?

  15. Do you know how badly is working this calendar software? DOing something? .. if you keep going like this soon will be a funny joke…

  16. Do you know how badly is working this calendar software? DOing something? .. if you keep going like this soon will be a funny joke…

  17. Calendar and Lightning have a problem with saving new events now since the update. You’ll add them, and it’ll magically delete them.

  18. About documentation, french army and british telecom begin to produce some information about what the’ve done with thunderbird with nice pictures :
    http://milimail.org/milimail/index.php/Main_Page

  19. @carl
    Try the extension keyconfig – I’m not sure if it works with sunbird but it defiantly does with thuderbird (so might with lightning). It shows (and lets you change) all the keyboard shortcuts.