Thunderbird 3 (beta 1)

The email/messaging/contacts management counterpart to Firefox, Thunderbird had just reached the beta 1 milestone, almost 2 years behind firefox. I guess the spinoff to Mozilla Messaging had really gotten things moving again, after the neglect shown to it.

New features include:

• Tab interface for Mail
• Improvements to IMAP for faster message viewing
• Improved message reader view
• New Add-ons Manager
• Improved Address Book interface
• Improved import of mail from other Mail clients
• Integration with Windows Vista search
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book

The tab interface will be my favourite feature out of the list. Finally I can open a few mails open in tabs for later viewing while skimming through the various newsletters that I get daily. This is much more convenient for me since i don't have to locate the mails again after I've finished processing the whole inbox...

The integration with Mac OS X  Address Book is also nice since I don't have to keep separate address books for 2 different programs. And hey, since my phone also syncs with the Address Book as well, I can always be sure that the contacts stays identical across my devices.

The Growl integration is a very very nice feature as well... Now I get all notifications coming from just one system wide notification software.

The next thing on my wish list will be integration with Quicksilver... It will be awesome when I can manipulate my mails anytime and anywhere in the system by using a simple keyboard command ;)

I'll be testing this program over the few days, though a bit unwillingly. This is because I've lost my appetite for beta programs while still learning about a completely new platform :P

Before I log off, I would like to complement Mozilla Messaging for that very nice looking page as displayed at the beginning of this post.

cheers people

seehua