Mozilla releases Thunderbird 2.0 to challenge Outlook

Adam Turner
Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:48

Your IT - Home IT

Microsoft's competitors continue to strengthen, with the open source community releasing version 2.0 of the Thunderbird email client.

Complimenting the popular Firefox web browser, Thunderbird 2.0 is a free download available for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems in over 35 languages. Version 2.0 comes after the release of two beta version and a release candidate.

New features in Thunderbird 2.0 include message tags, folder views, session navigation history, a refresh of the visual theme and improved new mail notification alerts.

The release of Thunderbird 2.0 comes 14 months after the release of Thunderbird 1.5, but still does not include calendar features. Mozilla's Sunbird offers a separate calendar application, while Lightning integrates with Thunderbird to offer a more Microsoft Office-like experience.

Looking in closer detail at Thunderbird's release notes, new featurs include;

Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.

Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2's theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.

Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.

Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.

Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.

Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.

Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.

Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.

Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.

Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.

Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.

New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.

Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

Thunderbird 2.0 as a free download from www.getthunderbird.com.