Brief Hands-On Report--Thunderbird 2.0rc1 is Out for Trial

The first release candidate of Mozilla's Thunderbird 2.0 stand-alone e-mail client was made available for download and testing recently--you can get it via MacUpdate.com.

Here are some of the new features in version 2.0rc1:

• Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing e-mail. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize e-mail.
  
• 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.

We use Thunderbird in situations where Apple Mail does not work, e.g. with a secure LDAP directory with a non-standard or custom security certificate. Thunderbird is also our backup e-mail client and we especially like its Vertical View layout option that places the preview pane in a separate column to the right of the inbox list rather than beneath it. One can use the Letterbox v0.16 mail bundle from Aaron Harnly to accomplish the same view with Apple Mail.

We downloaded and installed Thunderbird 2.0rc1 with no problem, a simple drag and drop into our Applications folder replacing version 1.5.10. We used version 2.0rc1 over the weekend and encountered no issues. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]