The Thunderbird e-mail client doesnt get half the attention that its big brother, the Firefox browser, gets, but the Mozilla Foundation has finally gotten around to lavishing some love on it, and the first beta of version 2 is now out.
If you think theres nothing more that can be added to an e-mail client–except for the fabled seek-out-and-destroy-spam option–prepare to be pleasantly surprised. The new Thunderbird comes with numerous new features.
Bloggers, who have discovered the joy of using tags to keep track of their stories, will be pleased to find that theyll now be able to create and use their own tags for organizing their e-mail. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize e-mail.
Folders have also been improved. With Thunderbird 2.0, you can also customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread, or recent folders. In addition, you can mouse over a folder with new messages and youll see a summary of that folders new messages.
When youre reading messages, you can also use the programs new session history navigation. With this, you can use back and forward buttons to walk your way through a messages thread history.