Software Update: Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 Beta 3

The Mozilla Foundation released the third beta of Thunderbird 3 on Tuesday. Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source and cross platform mail and newsgroup client with features such as support for multiple mail and news accounts, a junk mail filter, spell checker and a customizable look and feel. Of course, the functionality can be further expanded with the help of so-called extensions. The developers have made the following changes in the new beta:

Developer Improvements

• Thread Pane and Tab Refactoring
  See Thread Pane UI refactoring discussion for additional details.
• Fixes For Extension Developers
  See Thunderbird Extensions and Thunderbird HowTos for developer documentation.

User Experience Improvements

• Tabbed Email Messages
  Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a New Tab window. Middle-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a Tab in the background. When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a new Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between Tabs.
• New Message Summary View
  Selecting multiple messages will give you a summary view of the emails you have selected.
• Column Headings
  The column headings that are displayed and the order in which they are displayed can now be set on a per-folder basis.
• Smart Folders
  The folder pane offers a Smart Folders mode which combines special mailboxes (eg Inbox) from multiple accounts together.
• Improved Gmail Integration
  Better recognition and integration of Gmail’s special folders such as Sent and Trash including non-English versions of Gmail. Thunderbird also uses All Mail as the Archives folder.