Mozilla has released Thunderbird 2 Pre-Beta 1 onto their FTP. I have been using the latest nightly build since before Alpha 1 was released but I have only noticed one significant change and that is with the Options screen (pictured below). I am sure a lot has been done but it is probably more “under-the-hood.”
Here are the download links for Thunderbird 2 Pre-Beta 1 which are currently only available in English:
I hunted around to look for a release date on Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 but the most specific thing that I could find was “mid-September.” Since the Pre-Beta 1 was just released today I would treat that as a Release Candidate, which will normally float around for a few days before being marked as a release.
Here is what the Options screen now looks like:
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Tags: Pre-Release, Software, Mozilla, Thunderbird
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Groovy, I’ll have to check this out tomorrow evening. Need to go to bed as I have to work tomorrow
. I been using and loving Alpha 1 and I really like the looks of that options screen!
back in the days, u’ve placed a portable version of the alpha 1 of thunderbird 2. but when i tried to update it now (like i do with the portable firefox 2 beta 2), it doesn’t update to the newset version (using nightlies). is there a settings i need to change?
If you are using a milestone release (Alpha 1, Alpha 2, Beta 1, Beta 2, etc…) then both Firefox and Thunderbird will only update when a new milestone becomes available. You can change that by going into the “about:config” (in Thunderbird you need to go to Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor) and find the value “app.update.channel” and change it from “beta” to “nightly”.
Hope that helps.
strangely enough it didn’t. i did check those settings on the portable firefox, and it was the same. but in thunderbird it didn’t find any updates (after restarting it of course). is it possible to update it just by downloading the nightly files (xpi i am guessing)?
Yes, you can update it yourself. Here is the guide I put together for doing it with Firefox but Thunderbird will be similar:
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2.....e-firefox/
works like a charm. u should add it to the Additional Reading section.
thanks.
The additional reading section is automatically generated so I can’t add it
how does it work? by tagging? cool feature even if it doesn’t work all the time.
but i guess u can always manually edit the post itself
by the way, do u think “we” should call it microsummaries, or live title? cause i think the live title name was made for the firefox beta 2.
oh well, as long as we have it.
The additional reading looks for common words in this post and compares it to other posts.
I think the proper name is Microsummaries because that is what all of the Mozilla wiki pages call it. A Live Title sounds too much like a Windows Live Service don’t you think?
I’ve noticed the GUI seems to be different from that of Alpha 1 and the notification slider seems to give info on all the messages that come in on that particular check, instead of just the first.
I started using Thunderbird at the same time I switched to Gmail, but even though I liked it better than Outlook (which I had been using before that) I just found Gmail’s interface so much better than either of the two - especially the labels.
now that u said it, yes, live title does sounds like a microsoft thing. but maybe this was the reasoning behind it. cause microsummaries is more of a technology name, and live title is more of a brand name or something.
I’ve used Thunderbird a year ago, importing emails from Outlook Express (over 1Giga of emails). After one week I decided that Thunderbird is too slow for me (and the Thunderbird page admit that the program do not handle very well too much emails), so I make the reverse process (I found at that time some solution on the web). I use Outlook Express just as a backup solution, since I also love GMail very much. Now I may try this beta of Thunderbird 2. Maybe the situation has changed.
I am not sure this was on previous versions, but Thunderbird 2.0 has tags! Customizable tags (Options -> Display -> Tags): you can choose a name for the tag but also a color!!! You can define a filter and to “Perform there actions” choose “Tag Message” with whatever tag you want. Easy and clever. So this is a folder & label solution! Is this something new, or not?
I believe that came out with Alpha 1. Not something I have really messed with yet. Not being a G-Mail user I really don’t have a concept on this ‘label’ thing everyone keeps talking about.
Edit: Okay, I just took a look at this feature. Hmm, this could be very useful in managing my e-mails.
does anyone know of a guide on how to transfer all of ur profile from a regular, 1.X thunderbird to the portable version?
i ended up using the MozBackup program (which claims not to support portable versions of firefox and mozilla) to create a backup, then opened the backup file (which is zipped) and copy all files and folder to the profile folder of the portable version.
but my Hebrew named folder lost their names to a bunch of signs, and the program has problems opening msgs and crashes.
and one more thing, wasn’t this version suppose to have tab view for msgs?
Hadn’t heard of that before, would be a nice feature. I’ll dig around later in the developers notes and see if I can find anything. Could be something coming in Thunderbird 3
You know, I’ve seen the tag option before but I never really looked into it. They are pretty sweet though and I’ll have to start using them.
I also haven’t heard anything about tabs and looking through bug reports I happened to find this report about a tab implementation from December 2005. It was a proposed solution but it looks like nothing has come of it.
You should be able to copy the contents of your profile folder, which is “Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\something.default\” in Windows XP, to the “profiles” folder in the Portable Thunderbird directory.
Reading through all the notes the person who started this was reassigned away from the Thunderbird project in January. However I did find this in the Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Roadmap from February this year…
Is this a nightly build or did they officially release the Beta 1 tonight?
It hasn’t been put in their release folder and the nightly files still say “2.0b1pre” so I would assume that it hasn’t been released.
I’ll have to watch it tonight. I didn’t get offered a new version Saturday (unless I had already download that nightly release) as I did with Firefox.
I just got a new nightly build this morning, which is dated 9/18 (today) but it is still labeled as “2.0b1pre”. Thunderbird seems to push a little slower to get milestone releases out so my estimate would be next week for a final release.
Okay, I just force Thunderbird to check and was offered a ‘pre-nightly’ update dated today.
i think i have tried this, but will again. last time it didn’t work.
To Jack of all Trades…There is a thread addressing the ‘tabbed’ features (or lack there of) for T-Bird 2.0 over on mozillaZine, Thunderbird Builds, http://forums.mozillazine.org/.....p?t=466070
thank u, it was started by me :-). i was hoping to get a chance to speak with some1 who works on thunderbird. i even tried to contact the guy in charge on The Rumbling Edge.
hopefully i’ll find out something new. or at least they will fix the roadmap.
Oh so it was!
Didn’t even look at the name 
i am afraid i have some bad news regarding Tabbed Messages in Thunderbird 2 (well, not really news, since its from feb. 2006).
Kwong Gary from The Rumbling Edge informed me of an update he wrote way back about this feature.
turns out that the guy in charge of this had no time to work on it, so it got postpone.
this is a shame, and i use this site popularity to call all skilled developers to get some work done on this wonderful feature. in my opinion anyway.
Well may be he will get a chance (or someone else) to do this for Thunderbird 3.
I hope so, tabs would be really cool and it would give Thunderbird an edge to other email software. The list of changes seems to be pretty small so far and I almost don’t believe it should be called Thunderbird 2, maybe Thunderbird 1.6?
its the same thing people said about firefox 2, after they took down the Places system.
but i guess they will stick with 2, even for the sake of marketing. cause people would think a 2nd version, is at least twice as good as 1. and 50% better then 1.5
i don’t really know how working on such project goes, but i think for such a big improvement, they should have assigned the Tabbed system to someone new. although the original guy probably would have liked to keep working on it himself.
I think part of it is Mozilla is trying to keep the numbering the same between Firefox and Thunderbird.