Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird 5.0
Developer(s)	Mozilla Foundation (formerly Mozilla Messaging)
Initial release	July 28, 2003 (2003-07-28)
Stable release	8.0  (November 8, 2011; 14 days ago (2011-11-08)) [+/−]
Preview release	9.0.1  (November 2011, 16; 6 days ago (16-11-2011)) [+/−]
Written in	C++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript, CSS
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	53 languages
Type	E-mail client, news client and feed reader
License	MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license[citation needed]
Website	mozilla.org/thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird /mɒˈzɪlə ˈθʌndərbɜrd/ is a free,^[1] open source, 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 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.^[2][3]

Features

Thunderbird aims to be a simple e-mail, newsgroup and news feed 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 e-mail, 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.^[4]

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 extentions. An example of a popular extention 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 atMozilla 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 and 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:^[5]

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS X
• OS/2 and eComStation ^[6]
• OpenSolaris

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

Internationalization and localization

Thunderbird does not yet support UTF8SMTP (RFC 5336) or Email Address Internationalization.

With contributors all over the world, the client is translated into at least 52 languages.^[7]

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.^[8]

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 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."^[9] 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.^[1][10]

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.^[11]

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".^[12]

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.^[13] As of 24 October 2011 (2011 -10-24)^[update], the current version is Thunderbird 7.0.1.^[14] Thunderbird 3 no longer supports versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000 (i.e., Windows 95, 98, ME and NT) and Mac OS X versions prior to 10.4 Tiger.^[15]

Similar to the release schedule of Firefox, corresponding development stages Beta, Aurora and Nightly of Firefox for Thunderbird is called Beta, Earlybird and Daily. The release dates and Gecko versions are exactly the same as Firefox, for example, Firefox 7 and Thunderbird 7 was both released on September 27, 2011 and was both based on Gecko 7.0.

Releases

Main article: History of Mozilla Thunderbird

System requirements

Thunderbird 2

Windows

Operating System: Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, XP, Server 2003, Vista
Minimum Hardware: 64 MB RAM

Mac

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.2 and later
Minimum Hardware: 128 MB RAM

Linux

Minimum Hardware: 64 MB RAM

Thunderbird 3

This Release no longer supports versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000 (e.g., Windows 95, 98, ME and NT) and Mac OS X versions prior to 10.4 Tiger.^[16]

Thunderbird 3.1

Windows

Operating system: Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7
Minimum Hardware: Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended: Pentium 500MHz or greater)
Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP: 768 MB RAM (Recommended: 1GB RAM or greater)
Windows 2000: 256 MB RAM (Recommended: 512 MB RAM or greater)
52 MB hard drive space

Mac

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6
Minimum Hardware: A Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
256 MB RAM (Recommended: 512 MB RAM or greater)
200 MB hard drive space

Linux

Software requirements:
Note: Linux distributors may provide packages for the respective distribution which have different requirements.
The following packages and libraries are required for Thunderbird to run:
- GTK+ 2.10 or higher
- Pango 1.14 or higher
- GLib 2.12 or higher
- X.Org 1.0 or higher

The following packages and libraries are recommended for optimal functionality:
- NetworkManager 0.7 or higher
- HAL 0.5.8 or higher
- DBus 1.0 or higher
- GNOME 2.16 or higher

Thunderbird 4

This version number was skipped in order to match the versioning number to Firefox for the combined release plan, wherein the new versions of both are released simultaneously.

Thunderbird 5 to Thunderbird 8

Windows

Operating system: Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7
Recommened Hardware: Pentium 4 or newer (with support for SSE2),
1GB RAM or greater
200 MB hard drive space

Mac

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6
Minimum Hardware: A Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 processor (PowerPC support was dropped in Thunderbird 5)
512 MB RAM
200 MB hard drive space

Linux

Software requirements:
Note: Linux distributors may provide packages for the respective distribution which have different requirements.
The following packages and libraries are required for Thunderbird to run:
- GTK+ 2.10 or higher
- Pango 1.14 or higher
- GLib 2.12 or higher
- X.Org 1.0 or higher (version 1.7 is recommended)

The following packages and libraries are recommended for optimal functionality:
- NetworkManager 0.7 or higher
- HAL 0.5.8 or higher
- DBus 1.0 or higher
- GNOME 2.16 or higher

See also

Free software portal

• Penelope (e-mail client)
• Mozilla Calendar Project
• Mozilla's Lightning Calendar Extension
• Mozilla Corporation software rebranded by the Debian project, including Icedove
• List of e-mail clients
• Comparison of e-mail clients
• List of news clients
• Comparison of feed aggregators

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Debian and Mozilla - a study in trademarks". LWN.net. http://lwn.net/Articles/118268/. Retrieved 18 September 2010. 
2. ^ thunderbird breaks half a million downloads in three days, Mozilla Weblog (2004-12-10)
3. ^ thunderbird 1.0 reaches 1,000,000 downloads in just 10 days!, Mozilla Weblog (2004-12-18)
4. ^ "Mozillazine Forums". Forums.mozillazine.org. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=367638&highlight=spamassassin. Retrieved 2009-06-18. 
5. ^ Thunderbird System Requirements. Mozillamessaging.com.
6. ^ WarpZilla - Mozilla for OS/2
7. ^ Download by language, retrieved on 2011-01-20
8. ^ Marcel Michelson (December 10, 2009). "French Military Donated Code to Mozilla Thunderbird". Reuters. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356958,00.asp. Retrieved 2011-04-24. 
9. ^ Qualcomm Press Release - QUALCOMM Launches Project in Collaboration with Mozilla Foundation to Develop Open Source Version of Eudora Email Program (2006-10-11)
10. ^ "Uses Mozilla Firefox trademark without permission - Debian Bug Tracker". Debian. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622. Retrieved 18 September 2010. 
11. ^ Claburn, Thomas (27 July 2007). "Mozilla Gives Thunderbird E-Mail The Boot". Internet section (InformationWeek). http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201201609. Retrieved 2007-07-31. 
12. ^ "Mozilla Launches Internet Mail and Communications Initiative". Mozilla.com. 2007-09-17. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2007-09-17.html. Retrieved 2009-06-18. 
13. ^ Paul, Ryan (5 April 2011). "Thunderbird returns to nest as Mozilla Messaging rejoins Mozilla". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/04/thunderbird-returns-to-nest-as-mozilla-messaging-rejoins-mozilla.ars. Retrieved 2011-04-05. 
14. ^ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/7.0.1/releasenotes/
15. ^ [1]
16. ^ "Thunderbird Release Notes". http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/3.0/releasenotes/. 

External links

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