Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a Free software, Cross-platform email client and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a smaller and faster web browser. Just as Firefox aims to redefine the web browser, Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface. Users often use them both together. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over [http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007074.html 500,000] downloads in its first three days of release (and [http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007119.html 1,000,000] in 10 days).

=History=

Originally launched as Minotaur shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the latter, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.

Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, and will hopefully lead to more efficient and maintainable code, as well as allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives. Although this statement has since been retracted, the Mozilla Suite will continue to be released as one application while Firefox and Thunderbird are alternatives, it has continued to grow.

The original Thunderbird logo is just a modified Firebird logo: with a simple shifting of hue value from red to blue. In 2004, together with the change of Firefox s mascot by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use was introduced in version 0.6.

On December 23, 2004, the Project Mozilla Lightning was announced for tightly integrating Mozilla Calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is just a project name, but not a product name. A first general-user release is targeted for the middle of 2005.

=Features=

Thunderbird aims to be a simple email, newsgroup and news feed client. It is not a personal information manager. Additional features, if needed, are often available via extension (Mozilla)s.

==Message management==

Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders ( virtual folders ), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels can help manage and find messages. On Linux-based systems, system mail (movemail) accounts are supported.

==Junk filtering==

The built-in Bayesian filtering e-mail spam filter can effectively filter out unwanted email spam after a period of training.

==Customizability==

Extension (Mozilla)s allow the addition of new features such as OpenPGP through the installation of XPInstall modules (Enigmail in this case). Thunderbird also supports a variety of skin (computing)s for changing its appearance. Themes are simply packages of Cascading Style Sheets and digital image files. Many themes can be downloaded from the Mozilla Update web site.

All extensions and themes available on the Mozilla Update site may be upgraded through the browser interface itself. Mozilla Update also allows users to update Thunderbird without browsing the Mozilla Foundation s website.

==Standards support==

Thunderbird supports Post Office Protocol and Internet Message Access Protocol. It also support LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML emails are supported. The build-in RSS (file format)/Atom (standard) reader can also be used as a simple news aggregator.

==Cross-platform support==

Mozilla Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems :

*Various versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 98, 98SE, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 *Mac OS X *Linux-based operating systems using X.Org Server or XFree86

Since the source code is available, it can also be compiled and run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. Thus, Thunderbird is also available for many other systems.

==Internationalization and localization==

With contributors all over the world, the client is translated into at least 36 languages/locales, covering some of the least supported locales, such as Chichewa language. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string (computer science), part of the internationalization and localization job can be done easily by anyone without programming background, using simply a text editor.

==Security==

Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features such as S/MIME, digital signature, message Encryption, support for public key certificates and security devices. Security protections include optionally disabling loading of remote images within messages and optionally disabling javascript which provides increased privacy and security.

As of 2005, security site Secunia counts [http://secunia.com/product/4652/ 1 unpatched security flaw] for Mozilla Thunderbird 1.x.

=Market adoption=

As of April 2005, the will [http://blog.ebrahim.org/archives/2005/06/02/uchicago_to_distribute_firefox_and_thund.php include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package] for all incoming students.

==Portable Thunderbird==

John T. Haller has developed [http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_thunderbird/ Portable Thunderbird] as one of the major offsprings of the Firefox project. He designed it to run on USB flash drives, CD-RW drives (in packet mode), Zip drives, external hard drives or some digital audio players. It retains nearly all of Thunderbird s features. Extensions that work in Thunderbird also work with Portable Thunderbird. It uses compression to reduce overall footprint. As a result of this compression, Portable Thunderbird loads quickly from a USB device.

A similar product called Mobility Email has been developed by Opendawn Ltd. It is preloaded with several extension so as to provide OpenPGP encryption and signing, access to Hotmail, Yahoo!, Lycos and MailDotCom email accounts, and a simple way to quickly access the contact list. Mobility Email is designed to run on iPod Shuffles (or any other USB devices).

=Criticisms=

==Possible insufficiencies==

Mozilla Thunderbird lacks a number of features, (that are found in other email clients such as Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook):

*The ability to create mail filters based on the presence of attachments. *The ability to create mail filters based on the the size of attachments. *The ability to automatically save attachments to a folder. *The ability for messages to expire. *A built-in, user-friendly ability to back up and restore user data and settings. Currently an external application such as [http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ Mozbackup] is typically used.

=Footnotes=

# [http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/sysreq.html Thunderbird System Requirements]. Mozilla.org .

=See also=

*Mozilla Firefox *Mozilla Calendar *Moezilla#Thunderbird-ko, personification of Thunderbird. *List of email clients *List of news clients *Comparison of email clients *Comparison of news clients

=External links=

*[http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ Mozilla Thunderbird homepage] *[http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/ Mozilla Thunderbird project page] — For developers. *[http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/index.phpc=8 MozillaZine Forum for Thunderbird] *[http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/rumblingedge/ The Rumbling Edge] — Weekly developments in Mozilla Thunderbird builds. *[http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_thunderbird/ Portable Thunderbird] — An USB drive-friendly version.