Mozilla Thunderbird is an open-source email and news client similar to Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook. While Thunderbird is branded under the Mozilla name (the same group responsible for Firefox), the Thunderbird project was split-off into a separate subsidiary in February 2008 (though announced in July 2007). The new division is called Mozilla Messaging.
I started using Thunderbird 1.0 when it was released in January 2005. As with Internet Explorer, I was fed up with the temperamental behavior of Microsoft Outlook.
In January 2006, Thunderbird 1.5 was released and I upgrade to this version. Finally, in September 2006 I started working with the Thunderbird 2 builds up through the final release in April 2007.
In June 2007 I attempted to try out a pre-Alpha version of Thunderbird 3 aka Shredder only to find it was too buggy and unstable. Over a year later, in August 2008 I tried again with Thunderbird 3/Shredder, this time a pre-Beta version. I did find this version was much more stable. I had not planned on using it full time, but due to a system crash (unrelated to Thunderbird or Firefox) in late August I ended up installing and using the nightly builds of Shredder instead of then current version of Thunderbird 2.
I really don’t do as much experiment with extensions and themes in Thunderbird as I do in Firefox. While there are still many extensions available in Thunderbird I have found a large majority do not offer me any benefits I would find useful. Presently I am running 8 extensions, 4 of which are needed for testing purposes. The remaining four include a signature switcher, media player controller, additional toolbar buttons and hyper link handler.
In 2009 my goal was to do more to promote Thunderbird. Part of working on this goal was migrating Thunderbird related content off my Firefox blog onto a new Thunderbird Blog in March 2009. Also I created a Thunderbird Help forum on Delphi Forums.
I was running Shredder version 3 pre. Thunderbird Beta 3 was released in July 2009 and Beta 4 which implemented what would be many of the final features of Thunderbird 3 was released in September 2009. Release Candidate 1 came late November 2009 followed by Release Candidate 2 in early December. The final release of Thunderbird 3 occurred on December 9, 2009.
On March 16, 2010 Mozilla release Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 the first update on the Thunderbird 2 branch in almost 7 months. More importantly, Thunderbird 2.0.0,24 was the final release on the Thunderbird 2 branch.
Thunderbird 3.1 code named Lanikai made debut with the Alpha 1 release on February 3, 2010. The first Beta release was on March 11, 2010 and officially rolled out in June 2010.
In November 2010, the first Alpha of Miramar (Thunderbird 3.3) was released. A second Alpha was released in January. So far the most significant change is in the user interface. This is discussed in my review, First Glance: Miramar Alpha 2 (TBird 3.3)
In April 2011 came news Thunderbird was ‘returning to the nest’ as development would now be handled by Mozilla Labs. May 2011, came news Mozilla wants to have Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey on the same release cycle/version numbers. Miramar was renumbered from 3.3 for the Alpha builds to 5.0 for the Beat builds. Very reminiscent of Firefox 3.7/4.0 numbering change last year. There would not be Thunderbird 4.0 because Firefox 4 is already out and as of June 21st, 2011 no longer supported with the release of Firefox 5.
