I have to admit, I was a fan of Thunderbird far far before this latest Release Candidate Release. I use Microsoft Outlook, but only for development purposes. With this release, however, I pretty much think Mozilla put the nail in the coffin in terms of the e-mail wars, provided that it continues with the Thunderbird program.
With this release, Thunderbird moves closer and closer to the tabbed interface we’ve all come to know and love in Firefox. Gone are the floating windows that we’ve come to know and love by default (individual messages can still be pared off as separate windows by right-clicking them). While old-schoolers may not like the push, it’s inevitable that eventually we’re going to all have the same, web 2.5 design on our sites.
But perhaps the best improvements have to do under the hood. Thunderbird 3 now autodetects e-mail servers. It took a step there when it automatically detected gmail accounts. Now, however, it can autodetect a wide variety of web accounts, such as Hotmail and AIM. YahooMail seems to still be spotty but I’m sure that will come on line later on. Setting up these, or any other accounts, seems to be no harder than filling out the e-mail and entering your password.
Another way Thunderbird has implemented the easy button is in saving contacts. It used to involve right-clicking on the name, filling out a bunch of details, and saving it. Now, you just click on the star next to the name or e-mail, and the contact is added (you can add additional information later on).
But perhaps the biggest (in my mind) feature is the Archive function ala Gmail. Now you have an option to remove older e-mails from your view without having to trash them. At the click of the Archive button the e-mail is moved off into the archive fields but is still there if you have to search for a particular e-mail later on. While you could replicate this in earlier versions of Thunderbird, Archive makes it much easier as a one-click function.
Speaking of the searches, this is another area where TB has taken a nod from Google. Search is now laid out in a fashion eerily similar to Google’s search results, with the ability to sub-filter the search based on sender, recipient, and even date. As of RC 1, the ability to save the search as a filter was not implemented, but when it does go live you will probably be pleasantly surprised with the results.
There is more about this release to go into and I’ll probably post up on that later, but right now RC1 lis looking almost like it’s ready for prime time.
