History of Mozilla Thunderbird

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Further information: Mozilla Thunderbird

Originally launched as Minotaur shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the Mozilla Firefox, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name of Thunderbird, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.

1 Early beginnings: A simple email and news client
2 Release history
3 Future development
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Early beginnings: A simple email and news client

Various logos used during the development of Thunderbird

Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, and will hopefully lead to more efficient and maintainable code, as well as allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives.

The original Thunderbird logo was just a modified Firebird logo: with a simple shifting of hue value from red to blue. In 2004, together with the change of Firefox's visual identity by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use was introduced.

Release history

Parts of this table are based on the Thunderbird roadmap.

Key:
Old Version	Current Version	Future Version

Gecko version	Version	Release date	Significant changes
1.5	0.1	July 28, 2003
	0.2	September 3, 2003
	0.3	October 15, 2003
1.6	0.4	December 5, 2003
1.6	0.5	February 9, 2004
1.7	0.6	May 3, 2004	Pinstripe theme for Mac OS X, Windows installer, better junk mail handling, IMAP IDLE and LDAP version 3 support.
	0.7	June 16, 2004	Smaller download size, improved IMAP support, updated extension and theme managers
	0.7.1	June 28, 2004	Bugfix release.
	0.7.2	July 8, 2004	Vulnerability patch (Windows only).
	0.7.3	August 4, 2004	Vulnerability patch.
	0.8	September 14, 2004	Improved Privacy Controls, Global Inbox, RSS/Atom Integration, Improved data migration. Improved spell checker support.
	0.9	November 3, 2004	More RSS integration. Favorite folders. Menu and dialog polish. Message list groups. Virtual folders.
	1.0 RC1	December 1, 2004	Bug fixing. Improved theme. Polish work.
	1.0	December 7, 2004	Official Version 1.0 release.
	1.0.2 ¹	March 21, 2005	Stability and security improvements.
	1.0.5 ²	July 13, 2005	Vulnerability patch.
	1.0.6	July 19, 2005	Fix for extension API regression.
	1.0.7	September 29, 2005	Vulnerability patch and regression fix.
	1.0.8	April 21, 2006	Vulnerability patch and regression fix. End-of-life of 1.0.x product line.
1.8	1.1 Alpha 1	June 2, 2005	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.1 Alpha 2	July 15, 2005	The second alpha (intended for testers) for upcoming 1.5 release.
	1.5 Beta 1	September 9, 2005	New update system (binary patch).
	1.5 Beta 2	October 7, 2005	Improvements to automated update system, website rendering and performance. Several security fixes.
	1.5 RC1	November 5, 2005	First release candidate.
	1.5 RC2	December 21, 2005	Second release candidate.
	1.5	January 11, 2006	Official Version 1.5 release. Identical to 1.5 RC2.
	1.5.0.2	April 21, 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.4 ³	June 1, 2006	Native support for Intel-based Macintosh computers, aka universal binary. Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.5	July 27, 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.7 ⁴	September 14, 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.8	November 8, 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.9	December 19, 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.10	March 1, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.12	May 30, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.13	August 23, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	1.5.0.14	December 19, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes. End-of-life of 1.5.0.x product line.
1.8.1	2.0 Alpha 1	July 28, 2006	Message Tags. Folder Views including favorite folders. Improved new mail notification alerts. New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System. Find As You Type in the message pane. New combined and improved Add-ons manager for extensions and themes. Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
	2.0 Beta 1	December 12, 2006	Improved theme. Session history navigation. Improved offline management. Folder summary popups. Improved performance in saved search folders. Improved filing tools.
	2.0 Beta 2	January 23, 2007	Feature complete beta
	2.0 RC1	April 6, 2007	Release Candidate (informally available since March 27, see Developers' announcement)
	2.0	April 18, 2007	Windows Vista support, message tags, new visual theme, improved extension support, improved new email notifications, folder summary pop-ups, find text in messages search tool, new Windows installer, easy access to popular email services, advanced folder views, session history navigation, and saved search folder performance. (Identical to 2.0 RC 1, and corresponding zipped nightly is dated 2007032620)
	2.0.0.4 ⁵	June 14, 2007	Korean locale was added, along with stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.5	July 19, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.6	August 1, 2007	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.9 ⁶	November 14, 2007	Hebrew locale was added, along with stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.12 ⁷	February 26, 2008	Afrikaans and Ukrainian locales were added, along with stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.14 ⁸	May 1, 2008	Stability improvement and security fixes.
	2.0.0.16 ⁹	July 15, 2008 (est)	Stability improvement and security fixes.
1.9	3.0 Alpha 1	May 13, 2008	First Alpha of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.
1.9	3.0	2008?

Note (1): Version 1.0.1 was planned but not shipped due to delay and discovery of issues that needed fixing in all three of Mozilla Foundation's products.

Note (2): There were no version 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 since the bugs/issues affected Firefox only.

Note (3): There was no version 1.5.0.3.

Note (4): There was no version 1.5.0.6.

Note (5): There were no versions 2.0.0.1, 2.0.0.2 and 2.0.0.3.

Note (6): There were no versions 2.0.0.7 and 2.0.0.8.

Note (7): There were no versions 2.0.0.10 and 2.0.0.11.

Note (8): There was no version 2.0.0.13

Note (9): There was no version 2.0.0.15

Future development

On December 23, 2004, the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is just a project name, but not a product name. Lightning 0.1 was released on March 14, 2006. The current version is 0.8, which was released on April 4, 2008.

Also on October 11, 2006, Qualcomm and the Mozilla Foundation announced that "future versions of Eudora will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email program." The project is code-named Penelope. An unofficial Eudora/Penelope forum is accessible via web or newsreader.

On July 26, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Thunderbird would be developed by an independent organization, because the Mozilla Corporation (the for profit portion of Mozilla) is focusing on Mozilla Firefox development. This change is being done in order to stimulate development in Thunderbird, which has been neglected during the Mozilla focus on Firefox.^[1]

On September 17, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced the funding of a new internet communications initiative with Dr. David Ascher of ActiveState. The purpose of this initiative is "to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand".

On February 19, 2008 Mozilla Messaging started operations as a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation responsible for the development of email and similar communications. Its initial focus is the upcoming version of Thunderbird 3.