See: Thunderbird’s Future for background info. Currently, Mitchell (Baker) has made some additional posts in Mitchell’s Blog in response to the comments left on her Email Call to Action from July 25th. Some of the ‘themes’ she is has/going to respond to include: Google is involved somehow Thunderbird and the Mozilla mission Feature thoughts about Thunderbird Why can’t Thunderbird and Firefox both prosper inside the Mozilla Corporation? Is Mozilla exclusively focused on Firefox? Revenue is the determining factor. I will update this post when she posts on ‘themes’ 5 and 6, plus any additional she may add.

Granted I don’t talk as much about Thunderbird in here as I do Firefox. Part of that is because their isn’t as much news or anything to talk about with Thunderbird. On Wednesday Mozilla’s, Chief Lizard Wrangler (CEO) Mitchell Baker posted in her blog that Mozilla has come to a point where they to decided what they want to do with Thunderbird. “We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.” Mozilla has come up with three possible options: Option 1. Create a new…

Here are the details of today’s Weekly Update meeting: Fx/TBird 2.0.0.5 – Updates released last week. Fx 2.0.05 released on Tuesday, July 17th and TBird 2.0.05 released on Thursday, July 19th. TBird 1.5.0.13/Fx 2.0.0.6 – Meeting to be held later Monday to discuss scope and schedule Fx3: Larry, (the passport dude) should land by freeze new location bar display Protocol/content handling protocol handling new dialog should make M7 content-handling is not going to make Fx3 Password manager Numerous regression fixes non-modal save password prototype together, hopefully will land by freeze Places Sync working with http auth/webdav Heavy focus on UI…

From Mozilla Developer News: If you already have Thunderbird 2.0.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu starting later today. For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 Release Notes. The security vulnerabilities addressed in Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 do not affect Thunderbird 1.5.0.x users, therefore, there is no update required for Thunderbird 1.5.0.x series users.

Here are the details of today’s Weekly Update meeting: Fx/TBird 2.0.0.5 – Firedrill Release due a critical security bug (cross browser scripting). Also a regression was found in Fx 2.0.0.5RC1 resulting in a re-spin. Currently testing Fx 2.0.0.5RC2, updates available soon for testing. Possible release this Thursday (07/19) but TBird could be released Friday or following week. Fx3: Places team focused on UI (details) Download manager spec complete Ongoing design discussions in d-a-f AddOns specs in progress, Madhava and Rob Strong leading that work More plans to be posted this week about visual refresh M7 freeze next week, m8 is…

This week’s meeting has brought a lot of big news and not just the usual Firefox/Thunderbird. Firefox/Thunderbird Builds TBird 1.5.0.13/Fx 2.0.0.5 – Code freeze scheduled for this Friday (07/13) with a targeted release date of 07/31. TBird 3 – Begin phasing out the old Talkback on this weeks trunk builds. Will be replaced with Breakpad Fx 3.0 – Alpha 6 released on July 2nd [Release Notes]. First Beta release on the Fx 3 branch was slated for 07/31. However there is now going to be an Alpha 7. Code freeze is scheduled for 07/25 with ship date of 7/31. See…

In the Installing Add-ons in TBird entry, I put together a very comprehensive step-by-step list to install add-ons. All along I was think ‘there has to be a simpler way to do this.’  Well, there is according to this comment from CHR: As far as I know, one could still drag & drop the extension from firefox to the thunderbird add-ons manager window to install the extensions right away. Okay it cain’t be that simple, can it? Well I decided I would test this out and install Lightning (which I am still having trouble saving events/to-do tasks) via this method….

Currently, Thunderbird does not have the automatic XPI installs like Firefox does for add-ons. This presents a problem to many Thunderbird users who have grown accustom to the simple install process in Firefox. Clicking the Install Now button/link will cause Firefox to attempt to install the add-on in itself. This is not a good thing, especially if the add-on is not designed for Firefox. I have been hearing that the future (late 2007/early 2008) Thunderbird 3 is going to make installing add-ons simpler. Until then you will need to follow a few steps. These steps may seem a bit complicated…

This has to be by far the best extension I have seen for Thunderbird yet! I really hope this becomes a standard feature in TBird 3 as this makes viewing links in e-mail so, so easy! The extension installs a min-browser in the preview pane. When you are viewing e-mails the preview pane behaves as normal displaying the e-mail’s content. However, click on a link in the e-mail and it will load up the page right there in Thunderbird. Click image for full-size version Preview pane while viewing an e-mail Click image for full-size version Preview pane in ‘ThunderBrowser’ mode…