Thunderbird - it’s a complete email solution, with support for POP, IMAP, and Gmail email accounts (and .Mac on OS X), contacts, as well as RSS and USENET newsgroups. Like Firefox 2, Thunderbird is a somewhat tepid upgrade compared to the previous version (Thunderbird 1.5 in this case). However, since fewer users are familiar with Thunderbird, many new users will be impressed by the wealth of functionality in this product. It is cross-platform, with native versions for Mac OS X, Linux, and other systems. Thunderbird is now the default email client on many of the Linux distributions I test.

Message tagging

One of the most useful features in Thunderbird 2, message tags allow you to apply tags like “Important,” “Work,” “Personal,” and so on to individual emails. Each tag comes with its own color, so when you tag a message, it is colorized in the mail folder. You can, of course, edit the existing tags and create your own tags. Outlook users will recognize tags as a rendition of the flagging feature in older Outlook versions, or Categories in Outlook 2007. It’s as useful in Thunderbird as it is in Outlook, especially since you can auto-categorize email using Thunderbird’s Filter Rules (like Outlook’s Rules) to parse email when it arrives.

Message history

Users are familiar with the way Web browsers track your navigational progress and the use of Back and Forward buttons is so well-accepted in navigational UI. Thunderbird adds capability to email, and you’ll see prominent Back and Forward buttons in the toolbar that allow you to arbitrarily return to email messages you’ve previously viewed in the current session. This is the type of feature some users will find quite useful, especially if you tend to triage email by manually clicking on the emails that look most important, regardless of order. Others, of course, will simply ignore this feature, and of course you can remove those buttons (and otherwise configure the Thunderbird toolbar) if you’d like.

Find as you type and saved searches

Thunderbird makes it easier than ever to find the information you need. For individual email messages, a new find as you type feature–identical to that in Firefox–lets you search for text within the current message. Just tap CTRL+F and you’ll see the familiar find as you type pane. (ESC causes it to disappear.)

Thunderbird also supports an Outlook-like Saved Searches feature, which is a pretty sweet addition to a free application. Basically, a saved search is a folder that contains the results of a search you previous performed. (In Windows Vista, this is called a Search Folder.) The folder doesn’t actually contain the email messages, but is rather a live view of the search results.

To save a search, perform a search using Thunderbird’s inline search bar. Then, click the magnifying glass icon next to the search box and choose Save Search as a Folder. A dialog will appear, allowing you fine tune the search or just save it as is. Neat.

Smarter notifications

Thunderbird previously offered Outlook-like “toast” notifications that pop up in the lower-right corner of the screen when new messages came in, but in Thunderbird 2 they’ve been made even more Outlook-like: Now, in addition to the subject of the email, you’ll see information about the sender and the part of the body text when possible. Thunderbird’s notifications are usually quite a bit bigger than those offered by Outlook and are more simply styled, but no less useful.

Gmail and .Mac support

Thunderbird 2 natively supports Gmail and, on the Mac, .Mac email accounts, giving users of those systems a way to configure the client in the simplest possible manner. With Gmail, for example, all you need to configure is your name and Gmail account name; after that, Thunderbird will automatically configure itself to access Gmail via POP3 access. Thunderbird is also smart enough to use a non-destructive default configuration (i.e. messages are left on the server by default), and it presents the Accounts management dialog so you can tweak things if you’d like. (A .Mac account is automatically configured for IMAP access.) Kudos to Mozilla for providing this kind of functionality. You can, of course, manually configure Thunderbird or other email clients for Gmail POP3 use, but to do so, you’d have to visit Google’s support pages for the configuration information. This makes Thunderbird 2 so much more accessible. I only wish similar support was available for other Web mail types. (This isn’t exactly Mozilla’s fault, of course: Only paying Yahoo customers can currently use an email client, and Hotmail is notoriously unfriendly to desktop email applications.)

Phishing protection

Thunderbird 2 provides users with what is arguably the most important half of their client-side anti-phishing toolbox: Protection against the emails that try to fool users into visiting malicious Web site that can steal their personal information. Thunderbird will display an IE-like information bar with a graphical red shield any time it believes the currently-selected email is an email scam. You can then tell the application the email is not a scam, or delete it. (This is similar to the way junk mail works in Thunderbird.) Suspicious emails are allowed to display simple text only, so they can’t access your system programmatically.

Remote image blocking

By default, Thunderbird blocks remote images in email messages, which is now a standard security feature in virtually all email clients. You can load images by clicking the Load Images button in an email message’s information bar or, if you trust the sender, add them to an address book so that images in other emails from that sender will always automatically display. Actually, this is one of Thunderbird’s nicest features: When you add a address book contact card in this fashion, you can choose between your personal address book, which is of course typically used for people you know, and a second address book called Collected Addresses. I use this second address book specifically for email newsletters from companies.

Automatic updates

Like Firefox, you can configure Thunderbird 2 to automatically download new product versions and security updates. My guess is that we’ll see only sporadic updates from now as occasional security fixes and updates are released. You can also manually check for updates via the Help menu.

Add-ons galore

One of the best reasons to use Firefox is its robust collection of extensions and themes, and this is true of Thunderbird as well: Using a Firefox-like Add-ons Manager, you can manage the Thunderbird extensions and themes you’ve installed, as well as find new add-ons online. This Add-ons Manager also lets you disable and uninstall extensions and themes you don’t want, all from a single, convenient interface. (Note that you almost always have to restart Thunderbird to apply new themes or use new extensions.)

In case it’s not obvious, extensions are basically software utility add-ons of varying complexity, while themes are user interface styles that can somewhat dramatically change the look of the application. Mozilla installs a single extension in Thunderbird by default–for error reporting–and a single, default user interface theme. I find the default Thunderbird theme to be pleasing and in keeping with the standard Firefox look and feel.

Thunderbird is among the best of it’s class.

Version: 10.2

http://software.opensuse.org/download/mozilla/openSUSE_10.2/

 

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