14 DAY TRIAL // Along with Firefox 9, new versions of the projects that rely on the Gecko 9 engine, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird, have also been made available. Mozilla Thunderbird 9 comes with several new features along with the performance and under-the-hood improvements that are inherent to Gecko 9.
"Mozilla... released new versions of Mozilla Thunderbird, its free and open source email application, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux," Mozilla announced.
"The new Thunderbird, available in 51 different languages, is based on the Mozilla Gecko 9 engine and includes improvements to Personas, better keyboard support for handling attachments, several user interface enhancements, and a new opt-in system to send performance and usability data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Thunderbird," Mozilla listed some of the changes and improvements.
As always, any improvements to Gecko are felt across all of the products that use it. In the case of the latest update, it's the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine that sees a performance boost thanks to the adoption of type inference. However, the benefits for Thunderbird users are slim.
Thunderbird specific changes include better Personas support. The lightweight scheming engine is now used for the compose and the address book windows, ensuring that more parts of the email client use the custom graphics.
Thunderbird 9 also includes a method of helping Mozilla by sending performance and usability reports automatically, a new feature introduced in Firefox 8 initially.
This enables Mozilla to have first-hand data to spot problems early on but also to improve its products based on how people actually use them in a real environment as opposed to usability tests.
The latest Thunderbird adds better keyboard control for managing attachments. The menu bar can be hidden for Windows users, it becomes visible when pressing the "Alt" key, as is the norm for Windows 7 software that actually integrates with the operating system.