Mozilla Messaging to work on Thunderbird 3, the future of communication

by Brad Linder Feb 19th 2008

A few months back, Mozilla announced plans to create a new organization responsible for development of the Thunderbird e-mail client. While Mozilla's Firefox web browser has been getting a lot of attention in recent years from both developers and the general public, Thunderbird has sort of been living in the shadow of its big, more popular sibling.

Today David Ascher announced that the new Thunderbird project has a new name: Mozilla Messaging. He also outlined a bit of what we can expect to see in Thunderbird 3:

An integrated calendar (right now you have to install the Lightning add-on to get calendar functions in Thunderbird)
Improved search
Easier configuration

In the long term, Ascher says the team will also have to think more generally about internet communication. Many people use instant messaging, IRC, blogs, and VoIP to communicate and not just e-mail. It's unlikely that we'll see all of those services built into Thunderbird anytime soon. But perhaps one or two of them will creep in, or maybe we'll see development of chat add-ons in the future.

[via Mozilla Links]

Tags: chat, communication, messaging, mozilla-messaging, thunderbird

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jaymez said 11:50AM on 2-19-2008

So they want to bloat the system just like Outlook? The more stripped the app, the better, IMO. Otherwise, I'd just run Outlook.

Doug Weglarz said 11:55AM on 2-19-2008

This will be interesting...hope they keep the Thunderbird name .

yabun said 1:31PM on 2-19-2008

This is awesome.
It's possible to add abilities without making it heavy and convoluted like Outlook. As internet communication evolves with IM, webmail, VoIP, and social sites, all messaging clients need to stay nimble and keep options open.

Outlook and Exchange are deeply rooted in a lot of corporations. If Thunderbird wants to be more than a home email POP/IMAP client it needs to grow. It needs easy corporate deployment and mass-manageability. It needs a good flexible server platform that supports email, calendars, scheduling, shared calendars, and shared email folders with a maintainable security model.

quanta said 1:34PM on 2-19-2008

Hopefully this subsidiary will bring magic to Thunderbird the way the restructured Mozilla Corporation+Foundation has brought success to Firefox. Thunderbird is a good email program, but clearly can go to even higher heights.

Seriously improving the Sunbird calendar to give it some PIM-like capabilities is a good start. I don't consider it bloat.

peegee said 9:01PM on 2-19-2008

The only time I use a desktop client now (Outlook) is at work. The fact that I can access web mail from anywhere has made me a hard-core user of Yahoo!. So why do we need another desktop client?

dan.zimmerli said 11:11PM on 2-19-2008

There already is a cool chat addon available for Thunderbird. SamePlace. http://www.sameplace.cc

Rassendyl said 4:30AM on 2-20-2008

This is interesting. Mozilla people are doing great job.

sth said 9:35AM on 2-26-2008

I have to agree somewhat with Jaymez. The beauty of Mozilla products is their customization.
Not all users want calendar functions or IM and chat so the ability to add user specific plugins has to stay a key feature of Thunderbird. Having said that, I use the Lightning plugin and Sameplace so would welcome development of both calendar and IM capabilities.

Also with the development of Google Apps as a viable business email / PIM server it will be interesting to see if M$ loses some of its grip in the corporate sector over the coming years. I hope so.

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