Yahoo!'s Zimbra Desktop beta 3 launched

Stephen Withers
Friday, 25 July 2008 04:18

Business IT - Open Source

Yahoo! subsidiary Zimbra has released beta 3 of Zimbra Desktop, its new email application designed to make it simpler to work with multiple web mail accounts, even when offline. The program also includes calendaring facilities.

Zimbra Desktop is largely written in Java. Google is expected to deliver offline support in Gmail by using Gears, just as it has in Google Docs. Gears, an open-source project initiated by Google, basically provides a local cache of code and data so web applications can continue to work when an Internet connection is unavailable.

According to Yahoo! officials, Zimbra Desktop supports mashups, so "for example, when viewing an e-mail, users can see their schedule by hovering over a date, or see the status of a flight by looking at a flight number".

The software incorporates other convenient features usually associated with web mail, such as organising email exchanges into conversations and advanced search capabilities.

"[S]witching between multiple e-mail accounts is one of the communication headaches that users encounter on a daily basis," said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and Yahoo! vice president.

"With Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, we have taken our world-class collaboration suite and made it available for everyone for use anywhere, anytime, with any email account."

The open-source software provides simplified setup for Zimbra, Yahoo!, Gmail and AOL mail accounts, but configuring for any POP or IMAP account is as straightforward as it is with any other mail client.

There's more to Zimbra Desktop than just email, so please read on.