Mozilla Thunderbird

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Mozilla Thunderbird
Image:Thunderbird-logo-64x64.png
Image:Thunderbird-1.5.png Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 under Linux
Maintainer:	Mozilla Corporation
Stable release:	1.5.0.8 (November 8, 2006) _[+/-]
Preview release:	2.0a1 (July 27 2006) _[+/-]
OS:	Cross-platform
Available language(s):	Multilingual
Use:	E-mail client and news client
License:	MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
Website:	www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, cross-platform e-mail 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. On December 7 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release (and 1,000,000 in 10 days). As of 01 December 2006, the download number has exceeded 36,800,000 since 1.0 release, as the odometer has been shifted here.

[edit] History

Main article: History of Mozilla Thunderbird

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 Although this statement has since been retracted, the Mozilla Suite will continue to be released as one application while Firefox and Thunderbird are alternatives, it has continued to grow.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 visual identity by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use was introduced in version 0.6.

On December 23, 2004, the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird, and is now available as an extension.

On October 11 2006, Qualcomm and the Mozilla Foundation announced that "future versions of Eudora will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email program." The project is code-named Penelope. An unoffical Eudora/Penelope forum is accessible via web or newsreader.

[edit] Features

Thunderbird aims to be a simple e-mail, newsgroup and news feed client. It is not a personal information manager. Additional features, if needed, are often available via extensions.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Junk filtering

Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin <ref>Mozillazine Forums</ref>

[edit] Extensions

Extensions allow the addition of features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation). One example is Enigmail, which uses OpenPGP for message encryption.[1]

Extensions and themes (below) available on the Mozilla Update site may be upgraded through the client.

[edit] Themes

Thunderbird supports a variety of themes for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and image files can be downloaded from the Mozilla Update web site.

[edit] Standards support

Thunderbird supports POP and IMAP. It also supports LDAP address completion. The built-in RSS/Atom reader can also be used as a simple news aggregator. Thunderbird supports the S/MIME standard and extensions like Enigmail add support for the OpenPGP standard.

[edit] Cross-platform support

Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems <ref>Thunderbird System Requirements. Mozilla.org.</ref>:

Microsoft Windows, including 98, 98SE, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Server 2003
Mac OS X
Unix-based operating systems

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 unofficially also available for many other systems.

[edit] 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. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string literals, part of the internationalization and localization job can be done easily by anyone without programming background, using simply a text editor.

[edit] Security

Thunderbird provides enterprise- and government-grade security features such as SSL/TLS connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. It also offers native support for S/MIME secure email (digital signing and message encryption using certificates). Any of these security features can take advantage of smartcards with the installation of additional extensions. Other security features can be added though extensions. For instance, Enigmail offers PGP signing, encryption, and decryption.

Optional security protections also include disabling loading of remote images within messages, enabling only specific media types (sanitizer), and disabling JavaScript.

[edit] Market adoption

As of April 2005, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences was making a customized version of Mozilla Thunderbird available to students and faculty. According to an article posted on May 9, 2005, New York University's Stern School of Business had also started using the open source e-mail client. Starting 2005 fall, the Networking Services and Information Technology department of University of Chicago will include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students. More recently, Saint Louis University's College of Arts & Science has adopted Thunderbird as its e-mail client of choice.

[edit] Portable versions

John T. Haller has developed Thunderbird Portable as one of the major offsprings of the Thunderbird project. Thunderbird Portable is a mobile version of Thunderbird that allows you to carry your whole e-mail client and all your contacts with you on an iPod, USB flash drive, Zip drive, portable hard drive, or any other portable media. You can plug it into any Windows computer and use it just like you would a locally-installed version. It retains nearly all of Thunderbird's functionality and includes a specialized launcher that allows extensions to be portable as well. It also uses UPX compression to reduce the overall footprint making Thunderbird Portable load quickly from a USB device. It is also available with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured for those that encrypt and sign their e-mail. There is also a portable version of Thunderbird for Mac OS X [2].

There is a distribution called the Mobility Email client that makes use of Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) code and aspects of the portable launcher code used in the now-defunct Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail (PTEG) maintained by John Urbanek. It supports the S/MIME and OpenPGP signing and encryption standards, as well as the forthcoming DSA2 and SHA224 technologies, and is backward compatible with TIGER192. It allows users to lock their passwords, mail, and account details with AES256 symmetrical encryption. It has pre-installed support for Webmail accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo!, and AOL. The Mobility Email client works on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003 PCs and GNU/Linux machines through the WINE API.

[edit] Criticisms

As with Firefox, the Mac OS X version is poorly integrated due to the use of deprecated Carbon widgets in the current version of Gecko. It is planned that support for Cocoa widgets will be introduced in Gecko 1.9. [3]

[edit] Possible deficiencies

Mozilla Thunderbird lacks a number of features that are found in other e-mail clients:

The ability to save multiple messages to one file
The ability to delete collapsed threads
The ability to use message filtering to forward messages to an e-mail group - only a list of individual e-mail addresses is supported
The ability to use message filtering to forward messages as bcc
The ability to update (not just search) an LDAP address book—that is, change, add or delete entries
The built-in, user-friendly ability to back up and restore user data and settings. Currently an external application such as Mozbackup is typically used
The ability to synchronize messages and address book entries with a Pocket PC (the latter is provided by FinchSync, a third-party Java program)
The ability to automatically detach and save attached files to a specified folder: This ability would be a security risk, but an extension exists that enables it.
A feature-rich address book (more fields, pictures, more dynamic schema, folders, good import/export ability, full vCard support, etc)
Support Maildir formatted local email folders.
The ability to remotely mass-update the application and all extensions on multiple machines (and for all users) in an enterprise setting.