14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox has always been Mozilla's shining star, but Thunderbird is used and loved by millions of people. Lately, the project seems to have gained some energy and things are moving a bit faster. It may have something to do with the adoption of the rapid release cycle that Mozilla has mandated.
But email, widespread as it is, is not exactly on the cutting edge of innovation. There's not much happening in the space and, what's more, web clients are beginning to replace desktop clients.
While, initially, this was due to less friction, it's easier to go to Gmail.com than it is to download and install Thunderbird and then configure it so it can retrieve your Gmail messages.
But now, web clients are sometimes faster and incorporate more features. So Mozilla is thinking about new functionality to add to Thunderbird.
It's been working on a Calendar feature for quite a while now, but it's still only available as an add-on rather than being incorporated into Thunderbird.
Now, it seems that Mozilla is thinking about bolting on yet another feature that most web clients already have, instant messaging.
Don't get too excited, for now, the feature is in the planning stages. And it's not the first time Mozilla has talked about this.
But Mozilla knows that an instant messenger can be a great companion to email and anyone that has ever used Gmail knows this.
At this point, Mozilla is thinking at several ways it can move forward. One obvious move would be to simply integrate with existing instant messaging clients.
If users already have them installs, just make it easy to start a conversation from Thunderbird in their IM client of choice.
But there are a few caveats to this approach, it may not be possible to integrate with all of the clients. And there's problem of trusting a third-party app.
Mozilla seems to be favoring the second approach, which is to build an IM client inside Thunderbird.
There's nothing to see yet, but Mozilla seems determined to move forward this time. The initial goals are to build the UI and the components necessary to support instant messaging communications and add support for some protocols, the open XMPP and perhaps IRC and even Twitter.
You can check out more details on Mozilla's wiki page dedicated to the feature, it may be a while before IM is built into Thunderbird, but if there is enough interest Mozilla may move fast.
Mozilla Thunderbird for Windows is available for download here. Mozilla Thunderbird for Mac is available for download here. Mozilla Thunderbird for Linux is available for download here.