Mozilla

Thunderbird 3 Released

December 8th, 2009

Email on the desktop just got a lot better. Mozilla Thunderbird 3 is here.

Thunderbird 3 is a vastly improved email client. More powerful — check out the new search capabilities and the new tabbed functionality, similar to tabs in browsers. More polished — many UI improvements that make life much more pleasant. More extensible. So extensible that an extension like Personas, which was conceived for Firefox, now works in Thunderbird

The extensibility is an important part of the future roadmap as well. It’s clear that for many people “email” as a category is changing to a broader “messaging” category that includes tweets, RSS, IM, etc. The Thunderbird extension mechanism allows a massive increase in exploration as a complement to the exploration underway in the Raindrop project.

I’ve also found that the update mechanism for Thunderbird 3 — beta to RC to final — has been great. In other words, painless, including my extensions. This makes using a separate client a lot easier.

I’ve been using Thunderbird 3 beta builds for some time now, and it’s been great. Get it here: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

10 comments for “Thunderbird 3 Released”

  1. 1

    Pingback from Auto hide tab-bar in Mozilla Thunderbird 3 | Truben's Journal

    […] Mozilla launched a new version of it’s fine e-mail client Thunderbird. Thunderbird 3, as it is called, […]

  2. 2

    Ferdinand said on December 9th, 2009 at 12:54 am:

    I don’t agree with anything cuz84d just said. Names like Firefox, Foobar, Winamp, Songbird, Pidgin, Miro and Opera don’t make them less serious than Firefox webbrowser, Foobar music player, Winamp music player, Songbird music player, Pidgin messenger, Miro internet TV and Opera webbrowser.
    You even mention Outlook which has nothing to do with email or even computers.

    Windows Live Mail sounds extremely cheesy to me and even though it is probably good I won’t recommend it with Microsofts track record. I advise everybody Thunderbird.

  3. 3

    Pingback from Links 09/12/2009: Thundebird 3 is Out | Boycott Novell

    […] Thunderbird 3 Released […]

  4. 4

    Jon said on December 9th, 2009 at 10:18 am:

    🙁 Lightning is not compatible with TB3 for now.

    I also don’t see anything wrong with the name “Thunderbird”

  5. 5

    Matt said on December 10th, 2009 at 7:16 am:

    Naturally “Firefox” makes one think immediately of the internet … come on there’s nothing wrong with the name Thunderbird.

    And by the way you can get the beta version of lightening here:

    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/download.html

    it works with T 3 (so far).

  6. 6

    Pingback from Why Mozilla’s Deal With Google Gets Ever Shakier – GigaOM

    […] released version 3 of its free, open source Thunderbird email client. Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker calls the release “vastly improved,” and points to its new search capabilities and tabbed functionality as strong points. […]

  7. 7

    gdf said on December 11th, 2009 at 2:27 pm:

    I just tried to install the lighting add-on above, but I get the message below: 🙁

    Lightning 0.9 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Thunderbird 3.0

  8. 8

    NewDoc said on December 15th, 2009 at 5:45 pm:

    gdf, I get the same message. Frustrating; I want to use the entire Mozilla suite, but I need the integration of calendar with messaging. Wonder if it has anything to do with Windows 7?

  9. 9

    Doug H said on December 20th, 2009 at 9:05 am:

    I upgraded to T3 and was also disappointed by the incompatibility with Lightning. I do not want to use a nightly build of Lightning so I am using Sunbird for now. To import my existing calendar into Sunbird I did the following:

    Installed Sunbird and ran it to create a profile, then exited Sunbird.
    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/#applications

    Using Windows explorer, went to the Sunbird profile folder** and renamed storage.sdb to _storage.sdb, then went to my Thunderbird profile folder and COPIED storage.sdb to the Sunbird profile.

    Restarted Sunbird and my calendar appears.

    When Lightning is released for T3, I will copy storage.sdb from Sunbird back to Thunderbird or if it is incompatible, I will export from Sunbird and Import to Lightning. It won’t be incompatible but it might. 🙂

    ** So, where are Profile folders?
    In XP, look in
    C:Documents and Settings[username]Application DataMozillaSunbirdProfiles
    and
    C:Documents and Settings[username]Application DataMozillaThunderbirdProfiles

    For newer versions of Windows, look in C:UsersAppData and you may need to show hidden files. In XP, it is Menu Bar->Tools->Options->Folder Options->View Tab->”Show Hidden Files and Folders”

  10. 10

    Randy said on January 4th, 2010 at 7:26 am:

    Hello,

    I downloaded the bata version of Lightning for Thunderbird 3. I am getting a load error because of fire fox I am using V 3.5.6. This is the latest version of FireFox and I can’t seem to clear the error. Any advise?

    Randy

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