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Mozilla Thunderbird is free cross-platform email and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a smaller and faster web browser. Just as Firefox aims to redefine the web browser, Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface. Users often use them both together. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release [1] (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007074.html) (and 1,000,000 in 10 days [2] (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007119.html)).
History
Originally launched as Minotaur shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the latter, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.
Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, and will hopefully lead to more efficient and maintainable code, as well as allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives. Although this statement has since been retracted, the Mozilla Suite will continue to be released as one application while Firefox and Thunderbird are alternatives, it has continued to grow.
On 2004 December 23, the Project Lightning [3] (http://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php/Calendar:Lightning) was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is just a project name, but not a product name. A first general-user release is targeted for the middle of 2005.
Features
Features as of version 1.0 include:
Email:
- POP and IMAP
- HTML mail
- Multiple accounts
- Built-in, modifiable, manual Bayesian spam filter
- LDAP address completion
- S/MIME signing and encryption
- Certificate and security support
Interface:
- Heavily customizable interface
- New three-column view
- Customizable toolbar
- Customizable Mail Views
- Themes and Extensions
- Powerful sorting functions
- Message labelling
- Search tool
- Saved Search, aka virtual folders
- RSS and Atom reading
Newsgroups:
- Multiple accounts
- Detailed subscription manager
- Secure Socket Layering
Address book
Available through third-party plugins:
Thunderbird release history
| Version
| Release date
| Most important changes
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| 0.1
| July 28, 2003
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| 0.2
| September 3, 2003
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| 0.3
| October 15, 2003
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| 0.4
| December 5, 2003
|
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| 0.5
| February 9, 2004
|
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| 0.6
| May 3, 2004
| Pinstripe theme for Mac OS X, Windows installer, better junk mail handling, IMAP IDLE and LDAP version 3 support.
|
| 0.7
| June 16, 2004
| Smaller download size, improved IMAP support, updated extension and theme managers
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| 0.7.1
| June 28, 2004
| Bugfix release.
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| 0.7.2
| July 8, 2004
| Vulnerability patch (Windows only).
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| 0.7.3
| August 4, 2004
| Vulnerability patch.
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| 0.8
| September 14, 2004
| Improved Privacy Controls, Global Inbox, RSS/Atom Integration, Improved Data Migration, Improved Spell Checker Support.
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| 0.9
| November 3, 2004
| More RSS Integration, Favorite Folders, Menu and Dialog Polish, Message List Groups, Virtual Folders.
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| 1.0 RC-1
| December 1, 2004
| Bug fixing, improved theme, polish work.
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| 1.0
| December 7, 2004
| Official Version 1.0 release.
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| Next expected releases / dates
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| http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/plans.html
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Security
As of 19:00, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC), security site Secunia.com [4] (http://secunia.com) counts zero unpatched security flaws [5] (http://secunia.com/product/2637/) not yet fixed for Mozilla Thunderbird compared to 2 unpatched security flaws [6] (http://secunia.com/product/3292/) for Microsoft Outlook and zero unpatched security flaws [7] (http://secunia.com/product/3025/) for Ximian Evolution.
See also
External links
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