Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, cross-platform e-mail 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. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release (and 1,000,000 in 10 days). As of 25 June 2006, the download number has exceeded 27,750,000 since 1.0 release. A current download count odometer is available over at The Rumbling Edge.

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 Although this statement has since been retracted, the Mozilla Suite will continue to be released as one application while Firefox and Thunderbird are alternatives, it has continued to grow.

The original Thunderbird logo is just a modified Firebird logo: with a simple shifting of hue value from red to blue. In 2004, together with the change of Firefox's visual identity by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use was introduced in version 0.6.

On December 23, 2004, the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is a project name, not a product name.

Features

Thunderbird aims to be a simple e-mail, newsgroup and news feed client. It is not a personal information manager. Additional features, if needed, are often available via extensions.

Message management

Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels can help manage and find messages. On Linux-based systems, system mail (movemail) accounts are supported.

Junk filtering

Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin Mozillazine Forums

Extensions

Extensions allow the addition of extra features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation). One example is Enigmail, which uses OpenPGP for message encryption.^*

Extensions and themes (below) available on the Mozilla Update site may be upgraded through a Web browser.

Themes

Thunderbird supports a variety of themes for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and image files can be downloaded from the Mozilla Update web site.

Standards support

Thunderbird supports POP and IMAP. It also supports LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML e-mails are supported. The built-in RSS/Atom reader can also be used as a simple news aggregator. Thunderbird supports the S/MIME standard and extensions like Enigmail add support for the OpenPGP standard.

Cross-platform support

Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems Thunderbird System Requirements. Mozilla.org.:

Microsoft Windows, including 98, 98SE, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Server 2003
Mac OS X
Linux-based operating systems

Since the source code is available, it can also be compiled and run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. Thus, Thunderbird is also available for many other systems.

Internationalization and localization

With contributors all over the world, the client is translated into at least 36 languages/locales, covering some of the least supported locales, such as Chichewa. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string literals, part of the internationalization and localization job can be done easily by anyone without programming background, using simply a text editor.

Security

Thunderbird provides enterprise- and government-grade security features such as SSL/TLS connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. It also offers native support for S/MIME secure email (digital signing and message encryption using certificates). Any of these security features can take advantage of smartcards with the installation of additional extensions. Other security features can be added though extensions. For instance, Enigmail offers PGP signing, encryption, and decryption.

Optional security protections also include disabling loading of remote images within messages and disabling JavaScript.

Market adoption

As of April 2005, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences was making a customized version of Mozilla Thunderbird available to students and faculty. According to an article posted on May 9, 2005, New York University's Stern School of Business had also started using the open source e-mail client. Starting 2005 fall, the Networking Services and Information Technology department of University of Chicago will include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students. More recently, Saint Louis University's College of Arts & Science has adopted Thunderbird as its e-mail client of choice.

Portable Versions of Thunderbird

John T. Haller has developed Portable Thunderbird as one of the major offsprings of the Thunderbird project. Portable Thunderbird is a mobile version of Thunderbird that allows you to carry your whole e-mail client and all your contacts with you on an iPod, USB flash drive, Zip drive, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it into any Windows computer and use it just like you would a locally-installed version. It retains nearly all of Thunderbird's functionality and includes a specialized launcher that allows extensions to be portable as well. It also uses UPX compression to reduce the overall footprint making Portable Thunderbird load quickly from a USB device. It is also available with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured for those that encrypt and sign their e-mail. There is also a portable version of Thunderbird for Mac OS X ^*.

There is a distribution called the Mobility Email client that makes use of Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) code and aspects of the portable launcher code used in the now-defunct Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail (PTEG) maintained by John Urbanek. It supports the S/MIME and OpenPGP signing and encryption standards, as well as the forthcoming DSA2 and SHA224 technologies, and is backward compatible with TIGER192. It allows users to lock their passwords, mail, and account details with AES256 symmetrical encryption. It has pre-installed support for Webmail accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo!, and AOL. The Mobility Email client works on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003 PCs and GNU/Linux machines through the WINE API.

Criticisms

As for Firefox, the Mac OS X version is poorly integrated and generally considered inferior to other ports.

Possible deficiencies

Mozilla Thunderbird lacks a number of features that are found in other e-mail clients:

The ability to save multiple messages to one file.
The ability to update (not just search) an LDAP address book—that is, change, add or delete entries.
A built-in, user-friendly ability to back up and restore user data and settings. Currently an external application such as Mozbackup is typically used.
A built-in calendar feature (a calendar extension exists, but launches the calendar application in a new window; integrating calendar functionality into Thunderbird is the goal of the Lightning project).
The ability to synchronize messages and address book entries with a Pocket PC (the latter is provided by FinchSync, a third-party Java program).
The ability to automatically detach and save attached files to a specified folder, although an extension does exist that adds this functionality.
Compacting folders can lead to the loss of messages in the folder you are viewing at the time.
A feature-rich addressbook (more fields, pictures, more dynamic schema, folders, good import/export ability, full vCard support, etc)

Release History

List of all Thunderbird releases

1.0 — Official Release Notes
1.0.8 changelog — Official Release Notes — Last official release from 1.0.x Aviary branch
1.5 changelog — Official Release Notes
1.5.0.2 changelog — Official Release Notes
1.5.0.4 changelog — Official Release Notes
2.0a1 changelog (Tentative) — Not released yet

Footnotes

External links

Mozilla Thunderbird homepage
Mozilla Thunderbird project page — For developers.
MozillaZine Forum for Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird extensions on Mozilla Update
Mozilla Thunderbird themes on Mozilla Update
The Rumbling Edge — Weekly developments in Mozilla Thunderbird builds.
Portable Thunderbird — A portable/USB drive-friendly version (not distributed by Mozilla)
Portable Thunderbird for Mac OS X (not distributed by Mozilla)
Collection of all ThunderBird Extensions
Unic0der: Importing Mozilla Thunderbird mails in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express — Exporting mails from Thunderbird to Microsoft Outlook (Express)
Thunderbird Settings Backup/Restore — Backing up and Restoring the personalized settings for Thunderbird
Thunderbird Changelogs — Thunderbird Changelogs @ The Rumbling Edge

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Mozilla Thunderbird