The Mozilla Foundation has an early birthday present for me, Thunderbird 2.0! I’ve actually been using the latest Release Candidate for the past week or so and have been pretty happy with it. There is nice collection of new features.
- Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
- Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
- Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
- Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
- Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
- Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
- Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
- Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
- Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
- Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
- Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
- Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
- New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
- Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.
Some of my favorites are the new message tags. I can keep things organized a bit more now. No more keeping a message marked as new to indicate I need to act on it. I can now tag things one way or another. I’m also pretty happy with the new search/filtering tools. They’re kind of along the same lines as the tagging, but I can now create a search folder that automatically fills with messages based on whatever search criteria I give it. All in all a big step in the right direction for this release.
Assuming you are on a Mac, why do you choose Thunderbird over Mail.app? I have been using Mail for awhile and like it, but am always open to suggestions.
I’ve been using a Mozilla e-mail app since it was with Netscape (before Mail.app was just a gleam in Steve Job’s eye). It’s more of a loyalty/familiarity thing. Plus, my primary e-mail machine is a windows box.
I agree w/ Mizidy. I have used Netscape Mail, Mozilla’s original mail client, and Thunderbird all before I had a Mac. Ever since I moved over to the Mac platform I tried out mail.app and I like it better then the Mozilla/netscape choices. Oh and I hate to mention it, but I did use outlook express for a period as well to check a hotmail account….