While Mozilla is best known for their web browser FireFox they also develop the Thunderbird email client with the catchy slogan “Reclaim your inbox”. A few days ago Mozilla launched a new beta version of Thunderbird. Today I took it out for a spin. I haven’t used Thunderbird in quite a while, so a lot of things are new to me, but I’ll try to focus on the new features in this release.
First impression
My first impression of this new version of Thunderbird is that it is a major improvement over the 2.0 series. While 2.0 felt old and bulky, the new version feels much more modern and light. As far as design goes, Apple Mail is still ahead of Thunderbird. Yet, if features are more important than looks, Thunderbird is probably a winner already.
In my test, I configured Thunderbird to use my Gmail account. I was was surprised to find a ‘Gmail IMAP’ option in the first step. Yes, I do know the IMAP settings for Gmail by heart, but it is still nice not to have to enter them myself.
After setting up the account, I immediately noticed the native support for Growl, something missing from Apple Mail. Kudos to the Thunderbird team for including this as a native feature.
The new features
There is a host of new features in this release since the previous beta.
More powerful search
The improved search feature includes more filter options. For instance, you can now search messages based on tags and attachment status. This version also adds autocompletion based on your address book. This is such a common feature in modern software that it is a little surprising to see it as a ‘new’ feature in Thunderbird 3.
While not new to version 3 beta 4, a strong search feature is that you can create your own custom search filter based on the message header.
Improved wizard
I was surprised by how easy it was to add a new account in this version. Turns out that the Thunderbird team has made quite a few improvements in this area. The improved wizard comes with a database of known e-mail providers and settings to make it easier for a user to add an account. While I don’t know how extensive the database is, the feature is definitely a great improvement in usability.
Tabbed Email Messages
A new feature in this version is called ‘tabbed email messages.’ When you double click on a message it opens up in a new tab. It feels like a fairly natural development considering that this is also the default behavior (I believe) in Firefox. Unfortunately the implementation does not seem fully thought through. If you want to look at several messages simultaneously, tabs don’t work well and I couldn’t find an easy way to work around it. In Firefox, you can drag a tab out of the window to open it up in a separate window. This is not supported in this version of Thunderbird. Hopefully it will be just a matter of time before they add it.
Smart folders
Just like Apple Mail, Thunderbird now features ‘Smart Folders.’ I personally like this feature as I have many different email accounts and like to be able to keep track of my ‘flagged’ messages. In Apple Mail I can simply create a ‘Smart Folder’ with the condition ‘Flagged.’ It does not seem to be possible to do the exact thing in Thunderbird. Instead, the software relies on a feature called ‘Tags.’
…a side-note on ‘Tags’
The tags are great as they are more expressive than just flagging a messages. A tag could be “Important”, “Personal” or “To Do”. While there is no official support in IMAP for ‘tags’ Thunderbird works around this with special headers so that your tags show up even on different computers. There is an interesting article here that talks about Tags and how they are implemented in Thunderbird.
New archive system
Another new feature is called ‘archive.’ Just click on a message and select ‘archive.’ If you’re using Gmail/Google Apps, the message will be archived in the ‘All Mail’ folder. Since I tested this using Gmail, I’m not sure where the messages would end up otherwise.
After a quick Google query, I found this post in the Knowledge base on the topic of ‘archiving.’ Unfortunately I do not think that this relates to the new archiving feature, but rather older versions of Thunderbird.
Improved Address Book
The new version adds an interesting feature when viewing email based on the address book. If a sender is in the address book, the sender’s name will have a blue star next to it. I’m not sure how useful this is as you do not see the star until you actually open up the message. Perhaps it would have been more useful if it was displayed in the actually message listing.
Growl support (Mac only)
As mentioned earlier, the Mac OS X version of Thunderbird features native Growl support. It is used to briefly display a short description of each incoming email in a corner of your screen, as the message arrives. This is very useful and I wish more applications used it. A Growl message is so much more useful than a ‘pling’-sound notifying you about a new message.
Improved Gmail Integration
Gmail’s IMAP implementation and structure are poorly designed. The lack of Namespace support means that the email client can’t know if the root of your email is called [Gmail] or [Google Mail], which makes it hard to automatically find the standard folders such as Sent and Trash. Luckily, Thunderbird detects this and uses Gmail’s Sent and Trash. It also uses ‘All Mail’ for archiving as previously mentioned.
IMAP Folder synchronization
There is not a whole lot to say about this feature. You can configure Thunderbird to keep your IMAP folder synced with your local computer for easy offline access.
Other things worth mentioning
Retention policy
I’m not sure when this feature was added, but I did find a great retention feature. Simply define the number of messages you want to keep or the number of days you want to keep the messages. Thunderbird will then automatically delete messages to match your rules.
Great search tool
Thunderbird 3 features a powerful search tool. Instead of searching through messages in the traditional fashion (basically filtering the message list), Thunderbird takes a whole new ’search engine’-like approach. This feature makes it much easier to find messages, as it not only provides the basic search tool, but it also allows you to filter the hits. I really like this feature.
The battle between power and usability
While Apple Mail might be the most user friendly email client on the market, it does lack some features. Thunderbird is not as user friendly or pretty, but it does provide you with a ton of cool features. Unfortunately those cool features usually comes at the price of reduced usability. I feel that this latest beta is a great step in the right direction of finding an equilibrium between power and usability. That said, creating a lightweight tool with user friendly power-features is not easy.
I’ve been using Apple Mail as my primary email client for a few years now. Last time I tried Thunderbird it felt like I was time travelling 5 years back in time. With the 3.0-branch, the Thunderbird team proved they have what it takes. When the 3.0-branch is stable, I might very well ditch Apple Mail in favor for it.
Thunderbird 3 beta 4 is available for Mac/Linux/Windows and can be downloaded here.
[...] Gmail/Google Apps in Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 Email Service Guide took the new beta out for a test run a few day back. Their conclusion is that it is a major step in [...]