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name = Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a Free , Cross-platform E-mail and News Client developed by the Mozilla Foundation . The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox , a project aimed at creating a smaller and faster Web Browser . Just as Firefox aims to redefine the web browser, Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface. On December 7 , 2004 , version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release (and 1,000,000 in 10 days). HISTORY See Also: History of 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 latter, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team. 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. Although this statement has since been retracted, the Mozilla Suite will continue to be released as one application while Firefox and Thunderbird are alternatives, it has continued to grow. The original Thunderbird logo is 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 in version 0.6. On December 23 , 2004 , the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating Calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is a project name, not a product name. FEATURES Thunderbird aims to be a simple e-mail, newsgroup and news feed client. It is not a Personal Information Manager . Additional features, if needed, are often available via Extension s. Message management Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels can help manage and find messages. On Linux -based systems, system mail ( Movemail ) accounts are supported. Junk filtering Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian Spam filter, a Whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin Extensions Extension s allow the addition of extra features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation). One example is Enigmail , which uses OpenPGP for message encryption. {Link without Title} Extensions and themes (below) available on the Mozilla Update site may be upgraded through a Web browser. Themes Thunderbird supports a variety of Theme s for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and Image files can be downloaded from the Mozilla Update web site. Standards support Thunderbird supports POP and IMAP . It also supports LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML e-mails are supported. The built-in RSS / Atom reader can also be used as a simple News Aggregator . Cross-platform support Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems :
Since the source code is available, it can also be compiled and run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. Thus, Thunderbird is also available for many other systems. Internationalization and localization With contributors all over the world, the client is translated into at least 36 languages/locales, covering some of the least supported locales, such as Chichewa . Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the String Literals , part of the Internationalization And Localization job can be done easily by anyone without programming background, using simply a Text Editor . Security Thunderbird provides enterprise- and government-grade security features such as S/MIME , Digital Signing , message Encryption , support for Certificate s and security devices—although some of these require the installation of additional extensions. For instance, the Enigmail extension is required for PGP signing, encryption, and decryption. Optional security protections also include disabling loading of remote images within messages and disabling JavaScript . MARKET ADOPTION As of April 2005, the will include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students. More recently, Saint Louis University College of Arts & Science have adopted Thunderbird as their e-mail client of choice. Portable Versions of Thunderbird John T. Haller has developed Portable Thunderbird as one of the major offsprings of the Thunderbird project. Portable Thunderbird is a mobile version of Thunderbird which allows you to carry your whole e-mail client and all your contacts with you on an IPod , USB Flash Drive , Zip Drive , portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it into any Windows computer and use it just like you would a locally-installed version. It retains nearly all of Thunderbird's functionality and includes a specialized launcher that allows extensions to be portable as well. It also uses UPX compression to reduce the overall footprint making Portable Thunderbird load quickly from a USB device. It is also available with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured for those that encrypt and sign their e-mail. There is even a portable version of Thunderbird for Mac OS X that can be found here . A spinoff product based on Portable Thunderbird called Mobility Email has also been released by Opendawn Ltd. It uses the Portable Thunderbird launcher and techniques with some enhancements by John Urbanek as a part of his Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail and GPG (PTEG) project. Mobility preloads several extensions to provide OpenPGP encryption and signing, access to Hotmail , Yahoo! , Lycos and MailDotCom e-mail accounts, and a simple way to quickly access the contact list. CRITICISMS Possible deficiencies Mozilla Thunderbird lacks a number of features that are found in other e-mail clients:
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