First, this isn’t really new news, the Thunderbird 2.0, Alpha 1 release has been out since July 27th. However, I been so busy testing, playing and but sadly NOT crashing FF 2.0, I’ve put Thunderbird on hold. Since I made Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 my default browser tonight (more on this soon), I decided to go ahead and get Thunderbird 2.0, Alpha 1 setup on my system.

So, what’s new with Alpha 1? I wondered that myself so I took a look over at the Rumbling Edge’s Notable Bug Fixes and notice there are a few items.The most notable though is the New Mail Alert Improvements. This has been adapted from Outlook and is one feature I have found lacking in Thunderbird. When activated, a slider will appear from the bottom right corner of the screen. Yes this is similar to before but, includes the senders name, the message subject as well the first couple lines of the e-mail. This is so nice if you are working else where and a new e-mail comes through, you will be able to see who it is from and what it is about without having to toggle over to Thunderbird.

The slider will remain displayed as long as you are hovering within it. Once you move your mouse out of the slider or click the link in the slider to take you into Thunderbird it will disappear. However, if the message is in an ‘unread’ status, the new mail icon will still appear in the Windows task tray. Simply clicking the icon will bring the slider back up.