Mozilla's Thunderbird 3 email client gets a release candidate

by Jay Hathaway on November 26, 2009 at 08:00 AM



Thunderbird 3, the next version of Mozilla's email client, is almost ready for final release. Although it's almost a year behind schedule, the release candidate rolled out on Tuesday for all operating systems, and it delivers several significant new features, including tabs, better search, and Gmail-style archiving.
Thunderbird now plays nicely with Gmail all around, recognizing special Gmail folders that have traditionally been a bit of pain to set up in an email client. Setting up new accounts on Gmail and some other popular email services is also easier, thanks to some new account presets in Thunderbird. Even if you're not using Gmail, Thunderbird has borrowed the archive/all-mail sorting system from Google, so you can get email out of your inbox and find it later with search, without totally deleting it.

Since Thunderbird is a Mozilla product, plug-ins are another big selling point. Version 3 has a new add-on manager for themes and extensions. You can also now set up smart folders, for automated sorting of your messages. Thunderbird also integrates with Vista Search in Windows Vista and with Spotlight in OS X.

The final release of Thunderbird 3 should follow shortly after this release candidate. Going forward, Mozilla hopes to shorten Thunderbird's development cycle significantly, so maybe we won't see another year wait for the next major update.

[via CNET]


Tags: email, mozilla, release candidate, ReleaseCandidate, thunderbird, thunderbird 3, Thunderbird3