Mozilla pitches first release candidate for Thunderbird 2

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 13 Apr 2007 at 12:18

Mozilla has announced the Release Candidate 1 of the next version of its Thunderbird email client.

Following on from the last beta release in December, the release candidate establishes new features including Message Tags that enable the creation of custom tags for organising email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags that can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organise email.

Other features include: Session History Navigation - the Back and Forward buttons allowing navigation through message history; Advanced Folder Views - allowing customisation of the folder pane to show favourite, unread or recent folders; easy access to popular webmail 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 - alerts can now include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text; folder summary pop-ups - moving the mouse over a folder with new messages displays a summary of the new messages in that folder; improved saved search folder performance - search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance; find as you type; and improved filing tools - recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders.

All that is wrapped in a new visual theme designed to improve usability and maximise screen real estate.

Windows users benefit from a new installer and Vista-specific enhancements and bug fixes.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 RC1 is a free download for Linux, Mac OS X, Unix and Windows from mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.0/releasenotes.