Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0: New calendar, better search
A new Mozilla Foundation effort to improve its Thunderbird open-source e-mail software now has an official name--and its first public goals.
Thunderbird 3.0 is due to ship by the end of the year with a more comprehensive search feature and official integration of the Lightning calendar add-on, said David Ascher, chief executive of the newly named Mozilla Messaging subsidiary. The first alpha release will come sooner, though, for those who want to test the software.
"I'm expecting we'll have some public releases probably within three months," Ascher said.
Mozilla is best known for its success with the Firefox browser, which has dented Microsoft Internet Explorer's dominance and sparked programmers to build a rich selection of extensions. Now the group is trying to apply the formula to e-mail software. Even though many rely on Web-based services for the chore, e-mail software is still widely used, and Thunderbird could open another major beachhead for open-source software in mainstream computing.
Although Mozilla Messaging's priority is to produce good software, not specifically to dethrone Microsoft's dominant Outlook software, the new calendar ability makes Thunderbird a more viable competitor, particularly in corporate environments.
Adding a third Mozilla group can be confusing, so let me spell out the distinctions for those of you who haven't scrutinized every development in the last 10 years since Netscape and its acquirer, AOL, spun off the Mozilla project in 1998. The Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit group, is in charge overall; for-profit subsidiaries Mozilla Corp. and Mozilla Messaging run the Web browser and e-mail projects, respectively.
Mozilla Messaging also has named a three-person board of directors: Ascher; Chris Beard, general manager of Mozilla Labs; and Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, the open-source database company Sun Microsystems has just agreed to acquire for about $1 billion. More are likely to be added later as the organization grows, Ascher said.
The organization has only five or six employees, he said, but others contribute, too, including Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox engineers, Sun's employees working full-time on Lightning, and Qualcomm programmers moving their Eudora software to a Thunderbird base. "You quickly get to dozens of developers and hundreds of testers," he said.
Messaging beyond e-mail
Mozilla Messaging isn't just about e-mail. The new name reflects some of the subsidiary's ambitions.
Thunderbird already can handle RSS feeds and newsgroups, but ultimately, Ascher wants Mozilla Messaging's software to work with instant messaging, mobile phone text messaging, and Web sites such as Facebook or Flickr that have their own e-mail systems.
Although many of those sites don't open up their internal e-mail systems, at least at present, tightly integrating over the Web could sidestep that barrier. "Because we're built on the same platform as Firefox, we can use Web sites quite easily," Ascher said.
Ascher hopes the new Thunderbird will begin paving the way for such possibilities, in part by enabling a wide range of experimentation.
"There's a lot of engineering work that may not show its face in 3.0 but that will make it possible for other people to build extensions that plug into Thunderbird 3," Ascher said.
Another fruitful avenue for experimentation is spam filtering and antiphishing security, he added. Firefox has a blacklist security feature that attempts to protect people from phishing e-mails that try to trick recipients into entering passwords or other sensitive information into bogus Web sites. "It's possible to leverage technology in Firefox 3 to detect phishing and incorporate it into Thunderbird," Ascher said.
For instant messaging software, Ascher is looking at XMPP, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol used by Jabber and Google Talk. "That kind of technology might make its way into Thunderbird someday," he said.
Improving search--but not with ads
Nearer-term priorities, though, are improving Thunderbird 2.0's search, adding calendar abilities, and making Thunderbird easier to use, Ascher said.
"What we're trying to do with Thunderbird 3 is make a better, more integrated search experience--search that spans e-mail, calendar, address books (and) maybe someday IM conversations," he said.
Integrating search has proved lucrative: Google paid Mozilla $66.8 million in 2006 for making Google the default home page and search-box option. But adding that sort of search to e-mail isn't on the Thunderbird to-do list.
"When people search (e-mail), they tend to be searching for information, not for things to buy. It's not a great environment to be throwing ads in front of people," Ascher said.
Revenue, in fact, isn't even on the current worry list.
"I'm deferring the revenue model issues for a while," Ascher said. The first priority will be to produce good software. "The model used for Firefox was not to generate something that would generate revenue, it was to create the best browser possible. I'm following that recipe again."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
And please,don't call it 'seamonkey 3' !
I'm looking forward to see what they can do with Thunderbird 3.0. I'd love to see Thunderbird make inroads in corporate environments.
Microsoft should know this game. Offer a product that has less features than the market leader and give it away for free until you win the market over. Like they have done in the past, and are doing with say Hypervisor vs WMware.
i downloaded the nightly Sunbird builds for months but there didn't seem to be any traction. i'm glad to hear they're making a commitment to the calendar product, but if they don't make a similar effort on the address book i won't bother. so i'm stuck w/Microshaft.
Yes -- I would LOVE to see a good, solid, clean HTML editor like the old Netscape 4.8 added.
Mark
Thunderbird {in my go through} did not live up to my expectation of quick email, but once ThunderBird version3 comes out I give it another try.
I think Mozilla has been doing a great job, even their betas seem pretty stable compared to some applications.
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/01/05/spicebird-email-calendar-im-rss-and-more/
http://www.spicebird.com/
For personal email, I have been through them all. I dumped Outlook Express and went through many other clients. Thunderbird competed with most and I stuck with it for a couple of years. However, it now feels old, the junk mail controls (which I once thought were top of the line) are now average. My latest pop client is Windows Live Mail (this is a separate download and not Windows Mail which is included with Vista). This is a superb email client (for a 1.0) release with multi-account functions, news, rss, etc... The junkmail controls in WLM are as good as those as the full-blown Outlook 2007. There are a ton of new user-centric features as well like photo-mail.
Whatever the Mozilla guys decide on, it needs to complete with the newest mail client from MS.
You have to see this where it actually fits in. There is a whole ecosystem growing around Linux where companies and governments and schools and other organizations are starting to realize enormous cost savings by not equipping hundreds or thousands of computers with the MS suite of Windows-Office-IE-Outlook, but rather going with something like Ubuntu-OpenOffice-Firefox-Thunderbird. It's true that OOo and Thunderbird fall behind in the nth degree of features and polish departments, yet they are still extraordinarily capable, and in fact more capable than 90% of users actually ever use.
With versions 3 of OpenOffice, Firefox, and now Thunderbird-Lightning coming to fruition in the coming months, the features gap with any MS apps will pretty much become irrelevant.
The final advantage will be the extensioning ability due to the open nature of the programs. This has already propelled Firefox past IE in functionality, it's starting to do the same for OOo and it will probably also happen for Thunderbird-Lightning.
I try to use sunbird or the calendar function on TB :-(
I would love a calendar, adress book, notes pages, todo, planning with Thunderbird as on my Lotus Organizer 6.1
The multiple calendar, multiple adress books and so.... features is still the only reason I still use Lotus Organizer.
The usability and the friendness more the look are absolutely fantastic. I use it for at least 10 years now and never have a problem.
It misses just an email client...
Unfortunately It's a long time that IBM had abandoned the development.
The MS outlook killer will be Thunderbid 3 or maybe 4.0 with the functionality of Lotus Organizer 6.1 and working on Linux too.
Simply the best
The only real complaint I had with the current version of Thunderbird was the address book would not move records... I would have to copy, confirm, then go back and delete, which was a pain. However, I've recently noticed that when I drag and drop the record moves, so one of the recent updates must have finally fixed that glitch.
<rant>
I don't want Outlook or anything that pretends to be like it. I won't use Evolution on a Linux box for the same reason. I don't want (or need) IMAP and I don't want Outlook (by any other name)... reading the comments here I guess I'm in the minority. It's really sad that folks can't break the m$ habit. Next thing you know someone is going to insist that activex and other assorted bad stuff be automatic with Thunderbird, just like Outlook.
I just want a fast, reliable email client. Having one that can also handle newsgroups (which Thunderbird does reasonably well) is a bonus. But then newsgroups have a lot in common with email, just the distribution method is different.
All the other, non-email crap, is just a pain and a waste. Mind you, I still insist on viewing email as plain text. I refuse html or images in my email and only create plain text messages. So I am so far out of the main stream today I don't expect anyone to agree with me. On the other hand you'll never get any nasty stuff onto my system via email...
</rant>
The goal is to bridge the gap between the two, let people migrate easily, and then, at that point, you can move away from what remains the dominate program out there.
The kind of instant revolution you call for doesn't happen most of the time. And if the world started today, with unlimited money, it would still be years before a solution would be found as you would like it.
I relate to the desire to see people break from a fixed mentality, but there is more to it than just following a leader.
Not really. Most corporate environments are running Microsoft Access. Poor access support is what's holding me back from switching completely to Linux.
- by February 1, 2010 7:51 PM PST
- ThunderBird 3.0's index and search feature is very usable now. I'm glad you listened to feedback and made the changes. As others have said, calendar and contacts is not great, but a strong e-mail client perhaps as a backup client on other machines.
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(28 Comments)IMAP is not usable for many reasons, especially if you use Outlook. I've been using POP3 and only allowing the main workstation to delete from server, while all the other backup machines (one laptop and iPhone Mail) just download e-mails. Its been working out very well and works a lot better for me than IMAP. If Outlook did a better job of IMAP support, I would try it again, but Outlook did a terrible job with Rules Wizard and IMAP. So much so, I gave us IMAP on Outlook.