Mozilla may be known for its Firefox web browser but these days, it has spread out its interests over many web-related aspects. For a while now, it has spun off its communications arm into Mozilla Messaging, which mostly handles Thunderbird, one of the earliest and most popular projects at Mozilla. The old-school desktop email client is getting ready for a big release with Thunderbird 3 but the organization is also looking ahead at the future of communications with the Raindrop project.

Thunderbird 3 is already a year late but Mozilla says it's very close to being launched, with the release candidate version coming next week. The four beta versions have provided all of the needed feedback and the team is now putting the finishing touches on the build that could prove to be the final release.

The biggest new feature is proper support for add-ons, which have greatly helped Firefox in becoming the second most popular browser on the planet. These should greatly expand the functionality of the email client especially now that email has become a lot more intertwined with a multitude of web services. For example, an add-on could integrate with Gmail and Yahoo's Calendar functions. An add-on that has been in the works almost as long as Thunderbird has aims to bring some advanced calendar functions to the email client to compete with Microsoft Outlook's similar offering.

Another focus in Thunderbird 3 has been on search, a very important component with the number of emails coming in every day. The biggest improvement is the fact that you can now search everywhere in Thunderbird in the same query as opposed to the folder-based search in Thunderbird 2. The search feature has several filters to make it easier to refine it to include only emails from a particular sender or from a specific time frame. Other features geared at making email easier to manage have also been introduced. One that has proved very popular in other clients is now making its way into Thunderbird, the archive, which allows users to easily discard read messages without having to move them to a specific folder. The interface has also gotten a major overhaul, for example, with the inclusion of tabs, which should also speed up work flow.


In the meantime, Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 for Windows is available for download here.