Technology All The Way

Mozilla plans to step up development of its Thunderbird email client in the coming years. David Ascher, head of Mozilla Messaging, told The Register that he hopes for several releases in 2010 and in subsequent years. Even before releasing the final version of Thunderbird 3.0 (the second release candidate of which was released last week), he is already thinking about version 3.1.

Ascher has not disclosed new functions Thunderbird 3.1 is likely to contain, but does say that it's conceivable that new functions will, as in Firefox, be offered as add-ons before being incorporated into the software proper. Ideas developed for Mozilla's new Raindrop project, announced in October, could also be adopted in Thunderbird. Raindrop is planned as a "communications centre" product, not just for email, but also for RSS feeds and social networking content, which will be aggregated and filtered using open web technologies. It is currently available in source code form only.

Mozilla spun off development of Thunderbird in autumn 2007 and named David Ascher as head of the project. According to Ascher,  Mozilla has taken inspiration for Thunderbird 3 from the best functionality in other email clients. The feature he is most proud of is the new search function.