I have been waiting a very long time for this day - Thunderbird 2 is out!! I have been using it for about an hour and I am really impressed! I love the new look and layout, it’s much more user friendly - not that 1.5 was awkward but 2.0 is definitely a modern email client.

New Features

Directly from Mozilla:

  • Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
  • Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
  • Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
  • Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
  • Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
  • Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
  • Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
  • Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
  • Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
  • Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
  • Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
  • Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
  • New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
  • Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

    • First Impressions

    Like I said, it’s only been an hour, but the only “issue” that I’m having so far is the pretty new icons - I really do like the new look, it’s just going a day or two to get used to them!

    I also like the improved New Message warning. It’s wider then it was in v1.5 and you can see more information:
    Two New Messages!

    One cool thing I really like is that, after you see then New Message warning (above) and it goes away, the new message icon is displayed in the Task Tray (that’s not the new part). If you single-click the icon, then you get the New Message warning (the above image), double-click it and the Thunderbird window gets focus!

    New Message Icon

    As you can see, it’s late and I haven’t really dived deep into the program yet!