One thing many people have complained about in regards to Mozilla Thunderbird is unlike Outlook, it does not have a calendar. Today on CyberNet News I came across this entry: Mozilla Sunbird And Lightning 0.3 RC1 Available. Mozilla Sunbird is a standalone calendar application where as Lightning is a Thunderbird Extension.

While I have not yet had a chance to a look at Sunbird, I have installed and started briefly using Lightning. Here are some of the features:

• Adds a ‘Calendar’ Menu option which allows you to view your calendar in your message and preview panes.
• Adds Lightning pane in the Preferences or Options dialog (go here to setup your time zone)
• Calendar can be displayed as daily, weekly or monthly
• Adds a small monthly calendar under your folders list along with a ‘task manager’
• Create multiple calendars (home, work, kids, etc.)
• Export and Import Calendars

There a lot of features and options I have not yet had a chance to play with. There are currently three different versions of Lightning available for download:

• Thunderbird 1.5 or 1.5.0.* builds
• Mozilla 1.8 branch Nightly Builds for Thunderbird 1.5.0.* and 2.0
• Thunderbird 3.0 Trunk Build

A word of warning from the developer’s site about the versions in red: the use of nightly developer builds has some risks associated with it. Don’t use them with production data.