Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2.0 Beta 1

December 12th, 2006

5 Comments Written by Ryan

Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 A big milestone, Thunderbird 2.0 Beta 1, has finally landed for anyone trying to find a great email client that won’t cost them a penny. In a really surprising move only the English-U.S. version is available but I’m not sure if they will add more languages over time or if this is all they have planned for this milestone. From the looks of the release notes page I would say that they are only planning on doing the English-U.S. versions:

Windows: Installer
Linux: GTK2 + XFT (no installer)
Mac OS X: Compressed Disk Image

For those people who haven’t ventured over to the pre-release version of Thunderbird 2 then you may be quite surprised at some of the things that have changed:

Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
Visual Theme:Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability.
Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
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 Offline Management: Thunderbird (Linux and Windows) automatically adjusts the offline state based on current network connectivity.
Improved New Mail Notification Alerts:New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message text.
Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
Find As You Type
Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying folders to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
Updates to the extension system: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
MacOS X Universal Binaries

I’m still using the nightly builds of Thunderbird and have honestly never experienced a single problem. In fact, I would have to say this is the most stable pre-release application that I have ever used. Now I am just waiting for them to implement the tabbed messages feature and I’ll be really happy.

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Tags: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Mozilla, Thunderbird

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December 12th, 2006 at 9:45 am nogg3r5

Ryan, this post is screwed up. I don’t see the beginning of the first sentence. In Firefox at 1024×768.

Thunderbird always seems to be developed a little slower then Firefox, lets face it, which would you rather develop??

I think they need to add “minimize to tray” or some sort of mail checker for when the program is closed.

Not that I use Thunderbird, I’m a gmail addict.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:50 am SLA (All-Star)

This post looks OK (not screwed up) for me. I’m using Firefox 2.0 at 1280×960, and any window resizing doesn’t screw it up.

And I am Thunderbird user from pre-1.0 versions. I’m using “version 2 beta 1″ nightly builds for a long-long time, and it runs perfectly. Never had a single crash!
BTW, Ryan, make a pool about which e-mail application the folks are using.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:43 pm Ryan (Author)

SLA wrote:

This post looks OK (not screwed up) for me. I’m using Firefox 2.0 at 1280×960, and any window resizing doesn’t screw it up.

I think it is because the right-side image and the left-side advertisement collide when the screen is 1024×768. I’ll make the image a little smaller and then those people won’t have that problem. If your window is a little wider then you wouldn’t notice the problem.

SLA wrote:

BTW, Ryan, make a pool about which e-mail application the folks are using.

Ahh, good idea. I’ll add it to the list that I already want to ask.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:53 pm Murphy

Nogg, if you search the Add-Ons site for Thunderbird, you will find a MinimizeToTray extension for both Firefox and Thunderbird. Hope that helps with your frustrations.

Thanks for the heads up Ryan. I’ve always loved Thunderbird.
December 13th, 2006 at 5:13 am SLA (All-Star)

Thunderbird is definitely a MUST-HAVE replacement for Outlook Express 6.
There is proprietary software, which is better than Thunderbird 2.0:

1) The BAT!
2) Outlook (from MS Office)
3) …?

But Thunderbird is the BEST among FREE mailers.