thunderbird

Reports of the death of Mozilla's Thunderbird may have been greatly exaggerated. But the e-mail program is no longer on the company's priority list.

Responding to news items that his company was dumping Thunderbird, JB Piacentino, managing director of Thunderbird, tried to clarify the future of the software in a Mozilla blog.

Thunderbird users can look forward to upgrades down the road, with versions 14, 15, 16, and 17 on the horizon.

Mozilla also plans to support the application at least until the second half of 2013, according to Piacentino, and is trying to determine how to support … Read more

Surprised to find out that Mozilla's Thunderbird isn't dead yet? Well, have we've got news for you.

Mozilla is just now (sort of) pulling the plug on its open-source e-mail software, TechCrunch reported today. The company is looking for feedback and plans to share a final action plan in September.

In a "confidential" message sent to "Mozillians" prior to an official announcement this coming Monday, Thunderbird Managing Director JB Piacentino said Mozilla is moving its resources away from further developing the software with hopes that Thunderbird's vocal fans will take over that … Read more

Thunderbird 8 arrived today, a new version of Mozilla's e-mail software that now is linked with the Firefox rapid-release program.

Thunderbird 8 is built using the same Gecko 8 browser engine that's used in Firefox 8, also released today. Notably, the new version is accompanied by Lightning 1.0, an add-on under development for years that gives Thunderbird a calendar module, too.

Thunderbird 8 also includes "improvements to attachment handling and accessibility, updated Search and Find shortcuts, and several security, and stability fixes," according to a blog post by Mozilla's Rafael Ebron.

The Lightning add-on … Read more

A reader named Eddy contacted me the other day to ask how to block mail from specific people in Mozilla Thunderbird. Eddy also wants to be notified when mail comes from certain addresses.

While I am familiar with how to create rules in Microsoft Outlook to block senders and receive notifications when mail arrives from a particular person or address, I had never tried to do the same in Thunderbird. It turns out Thunderbird's filters make it easy to automatically block mail from a person or address, but there's no equivalent in Thunderbird to Outlook's ability to … Read more

The latest version of Thunderbird jumps from version 3 to version 5, matching its sibling Firefox as it joins Mozilla's rapid-release program. Thunderbird 5, available to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, is mostly a bug-fixing release that improves stability. It also shortens and improves the workflow for adding new e-mail accounts.

Watch what the program's got, and what it lacks, in this new First Look video.

New to Google+ and looking for more contacts? A feature launched yesterday lets you hunt for potential prospects by uploading your address book from Microsoft Outlook and other desktop e-mail clients.

As described in a Google+ post by Google technical staff member Paul Lindner, the feature works with several e-mail and address book programs beyond Outlook, including Outlook Express, Mozilla's Thunderbird, and Apple's Address Book. But it apparently also supports any e-mail address book or contact list that can be exported to a VCard/VCF or CSV (comma separated values) format.

I tested the feature using Microsoft Outlook … Read more

Stability and bug fixes marked yesterday's debut of Thunderbird 5, which like its better-known relation Firefox has adopted a rapid-release cycle. Version-number hawks will notice that Thunderbird 5, available to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, has skipped version 4 entirely so it can keep pace with Firefox. The new Thunderbird also follows some of Firefox's feature leads by incorporating version 5 of the Mozilla Gecko engine, supporting dragging to reorder tabs, and adding the in-tab add-on manager that launched in Firefox 4 back in March.

By and large, the Thunderbird 5 release is more about keeping pace … Read more

Mozilla, which had hoped its Thunderbird e-mail software would rise to financial self-sufficiency like its better-known Firefox project, unveiled a Plan B yesterday that instead increases the organization's focus on other communication technology.

The Thunderbird group, called Mozilla Messaging, will become part of Mozilla Labs--a research center rather than a profit center--and lose its official name. David Ascher, who has led the Mozilla Messaging group, "now will lead a new innovation group within Mozilla Labs focused on online communications and social interactions on the Web," said Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, in a blog post … Read more

From what I recall, Ford in 1971 offered "his and hers" Thunderbirds in The Christmas Book from Neiman Marcus. Retailing at $25,000 for the pair, the T-Birds were outfitted with the latest connectivity of the day. I have no idea how many of these special-edition T-Birds sold, but the built-in telephones and tape recorders must have seemed like spy tech to the drivers.

Then again, in 1971, there were about one-third the cars that are on the road today, and passengers serving as navigators would direct drivers to their destinations using complex and hefty Thomas Guide map … Read more