Mozilla Thunderbird

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Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird 17.0 on Ubuntu
Developer(s)	Mozilla Foundation (formerly Mozilla Messaging)
Initial release	July 28, 2003
Stable release	17.0.7 (June 26, 2013; 19 days ago) [±][1]
Preview release	23.0b1 (July 3, 2013; 12 days ago) [±]
Written in	C/C++, JavaScript,[2] CSS,[3][4] XUL, XBL
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	53 languages
Type	Email client, news client and feed reader
License	MPL[5]
Website	mozilla.org/thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free,^[6] open source, cross-platform email, news and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
The project strategy was modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser. 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.^[7][8]
On July 6, 2012, Mozilla announced the company was dropping the priority of Thunderbird development because the continuous effort to extend Thunderbird's feature set was mostly fruitless. The new development model is based on Mozilla offering only "Extended Support Releases", which deliver security and maintenance updates, while allowing community to take over the development of new features.^[9][10]

Contents 1 Features 1.1 Message management 1.2 Junk filtering 1.3 Extensions and themes 1.4 Standards support 1.5 File formats supported 1.6 Cross-platform support 1.7 Internationalization and localization 1.8 32/64-bit support 1.9 Security 2 History 2.1 Releases 3 References 4 External links

Features

Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client. The vanilla version is not a personal information manager, although the Mozilla Lightning extension adds PIM functionality. Additional features, if needed, are often available via other extensions.

Message management

Thunderbird can manage multiple email, newsgroup and news feed accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. On Linux-based systems, system mail (movemail) accounts are supported. A still unsolved problem regards the possibility to archive email messages on disk. When exporting a message, by saving or dragging and dropping, the timestamp of the exported file given by Thunderbird is that of the moment in which the file was exported. For archiving reasons it would be necessary that exported file had the timestamp corresponding to the moment in which it was sent or received.

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.^[11]

Extensions and themes

Extensions allow the addition of features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation) via the add-ons website which also features an update functionality to update the extensions. An example of a popular extension is Lightning, which adds calendar functionality to Thunderbird.
Thunderbird supports a variety of themes for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and image files can be downloaded via the add-ons website at Mozilla Add-ons.

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, extensions such as Enigmail add support for the OpenPGP standard.
List of supported IMAP extensions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Supported_IMAP_extensions

File formats supported

• mbox – Unix mailbox format
• Mork – used for internal database
• SQLite – also used for internal database (since version 3)

Cross-platform support

Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems:^[12]

• Windows
• Linux
• OS X
• OpenSolaris
• FreeBSD ^[13]

• OS/2 and eComStation ^[14][15]

The source code is freely available and can be compiled to be run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems.

Internationalization and localization

Thunderbird does not yet support SMTPUTF8 (RFC 6531) or Email Address Internationalization.
With contributors all over the world, the client is translated into at least 52 languages, but client's addresses are currently limited to ASCII local parts.^[16]

32/64-bit support

Operating System	32-bit support	64-bit support
Windows	Yes	No
OS X	Yes	Yes
Linux	Yes	Yes

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 through 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.
The French military uses Thunderbird and contributes to its security features, which are claimed to match the requirements for NATO's closed messaging system.^[17]

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 of Thunderbird, 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, allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives. The original Mozilla Suite continues to be developed as SeaMonkey.
On December 23, 2004, Project Lightning was announced which tightly integrated calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird, and which is now available as a downloadable 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."^[18] The project is code-named Penelope.
In late 2006, Debian rebranded Thunderbird as Icedove due to trademark and copyright reasons. This was the second product to be rebranded.^[6][19]
On July 26, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Thunderbird would be developed by an independent organization, because the Mozilla Corporation (a subsidiary of the foundation) was focusing on Mozilla Firefox development.^[20]
On September 17, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced the funding of a new internet communications initiative with Dr. David Ascher of ActiveState. The purpose of this initiative was "to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand".^[21]
On February 19, 2008, Mozilla Messaging started operations as a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation responsible for the development of email and similar communications. Its initial focus was on the then upcoming version of Thunderbird 3. Alpha Preview releases of Thunderbird 3 were codenamed "Shredder".
On April 4, 2011, Mozilla Messaging was merged into the Mozilla Labs group of the Mozilla Foundation.^[22]
On July 6, 2012, a confidential memo from Jb Piacentino, the Thunderbird Managing Director at Mozilla, was leaked and published to TechCrunch.^[23] The memo indicated that Mozilla would be moving some of the team off the project and further development of new features would be left up to the community. The memo was slated for release on July 9, 2012. A subsequent article by the Mozilla Foundation Chair, Mitchell Baker, stated Mozilla's decision to transition Thunderbird to a new release and governance model.^[9][10]

Releases

Thunderbird development releases occur in three stages, called Beta, Earlybird and Daily, which correspond to Firefox's Beta, Aurora and Nightly stages. The release dates and Gecko versions are exactly the same as Firefox; for example, Firefox 7 and Thunderbird 7 were both released on September 27, 2011, and were both based on Gecko 7.0.

References

1. ^ Release Notes, mozilla.org, May 14, 2013
2. ^ "Firefox's addons are written in JavaScript". Rietta. Retrieved December 19, 2009.
3. ^ "Firefox uses an "html.css" stylesheet for default rendering styles". David Walsh. Retrieved December 19, 2009.
4. ^ "The Firefox addon, Stylish takes advantage of Firefox's CSS rendering to change the appearance of Firefox". userstyles.org. Retrieved December 19, 2009.
5. ^ Mozilla Licensing Policies, mozilla.org, retrieved January 5, 2012
6. ^ ^{a b} "Debian and Mozilla - a study in trademarks". LWN.net. Retrieved September 18, 2010.
7. ^ "thunderbird breaks half a million downloads in three days". Asa Dotzler's Blog. December 10, 2004. Retrieved February 9, 2013.
8. ^ "thunderbird 1.0 reaches 1,000,000 downloads in just 10 days!". Asa Dotzler's Blog. December 18, 2004, 2004. Retrieved February 9, 2013.
9. ^ ^{a b} "Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation". Mitchell's Blog. July 6, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
10. ^ ^{a b} "Thunderbird/Proposal: New Release and Governance Model". MozillaWiki. Retrieved February 9, 2013.
11. ^ "Mozillazine Forums". Forums.mozillazine.org. Retrieved June 18, 2009.
12. ^ Thunderbird System Requirements. Mozillamessaging.com.
13. ^ "mail/thunderbird". FreshPorts. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
14. ^ WarpZilla
15. ^ WarpZilla - Mozilla for OS/2
16. ^ Download by language, retrieved on January 20, 2011
17. ^ Marcel Michelson (December 10, 2009). "French Military Donated Code to Mozilla Thunderbird". Reuters. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
18. ^ Qualcomm Press Release - QUALCOMM Launches Project in Collaboration with Mozilla Foundation to Develop Open Source Version of Eudora Email Program (October 11, 2006)
19. ^ "Uses Mozilla Firefox trademark without permission - Debian Bug Tracker". Debian. Retrieved September 18, 2010.
20. ^ Claburn, Thomas (July 27, 2007). "Mozilla Gives Thunderbird E-Mail The Boot". Internet section (InformationWeek). Retrieved July 31, 2007.
21. ^ "Mozilla Launches Internet Mail and Communications Initiative". Mozilla.com. September 17, 2007. Retrieved June 18, 2009.
22. ^ Paul, Ryan (April 5, 2011). "Thunderbird returns to nest as Mozilla Messaging rejoins Mozilla". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 5, 2011.
23. ^ Sarah Perez (July 6, 2012). "So, That’s It For Thunderbird". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 18, 2012.

External links

• Mozilla Thunderbird homepage
• Mozilla Thunderbird project page — For developers.
• Rumbling Edge - Tracking developments in Mozilla Thunderbird builds — For developers.