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Mozilla has [released][1] the first beta for version 2.0 of its popular email client, Thunderbird. The initial release is still a little rough around the edges, but it boosts a host of promising new features.
When is comes to beta software some offerings are really beta in name only while others are sloppy, bug-ridden nightmares better labeled alpha. The first beta release of Thunderbird falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Mozilla says beta 1 is intended for developer testing only, which is probably a good guideline since not all the new features are quite stable yet.
The final release of Thunderbird 2 is slated for early next year and if the initial beta is any indication a 2.0 should be impressive.
New features in the Thunderbird beta abound. The most immediately obvious change is the GUI and icons which have been redesigned and cleaned up considerably. Clearly the Thunderbird team has been working hard to improve usability and address design issues.
But the new features aren't all fluffy and eyecandy, there's some great new tools as well.
The beta release brings support for "tagging" mail messages as means of organization. Just select a message, add a tag and Thunderbird can recall your mail according to the tags you define. Tagging is even extended to saved searches which create "smart" mail folders based on your search criteria.
The smart folder concept will be familiar if you've ever used any of Apple's iApps, but the addition of tags makes it much more customizable and more powerful.
Other new features include back and forward buttons to move through your mail browsing history just as you would in a web browser. Curiously these two buttons were not in the default toolbar, I had to go digging to find them. Hopefully in the 2.0 release they'll be enabled by default because once you use them, you'll wonder how you got by without them.
There's also a number of small additions that refine the email experience but aren't immediately obvious. The most useful of these is what the release docs, call "folder summary popups." Summary popups act like link popups in a browser, mouseover a folder with unread messages and a small summary appears with sender, subject and body snippet. It's a handy way to get a quick synopsis of a new message when you're in another folder, without having to switch views.
Other nice touches include folder views in the folder pane. It's now possible to customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders and flip between them without effecting the other panes.
On the downside, IMAP performance in Thunderbird is still slow, though it is improved somewhat and in fairness there isn't really an email program on the market that has what I would call snappy IMAP performance. POP mail speed remains excellent and switching between folders, views and mailboxes is notable snappier.
Some of the performance boosts can probably be attributed to the beta being the first Universal Binary for Mac, I haven't tested Thunderbird on Windows or Linux.
So how beta is it? Too beta to use fulltime. There were a number of strange behaviors, lag times, hangs and crashes. However developers and others wanting to test the software and report bugs should go ahead and download a copy.
Be sure to see the [known issues list][3] on the Mozilla developer site.
The rest of us will just have to be patient, but by the looks of this early release, Thunderbird 2.0 will be worth the wait.
[1]: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/releases/2.0b1.html "Thunderbird 2.0 beta release notes"
[3]: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/releases/2.0b1.html#issues "Thunderbird 2.0 beta 1 known issues"
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