Mozilla releases Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 2

The Mozilla developers have released the second beta for what will become version 3.1 of their popular open source Thunderbird email and news client, code named "Lanikai". According to the developers, the development release is aimed at discovering "possible problems caused by the changes in the underlying platform".

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 2 is based on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform and addresses a number of bugs found in the previous release. New features coming in version 3.1 include an updated migration assistant, a quick filter toolbar and improved Personas support. Other notable changes include interface design changes, stability and memory improvements and several fixes to improve upgrading from version 2.x of Thunderbird.

A release candidate is expected to be available on the 25th of May. Assuming a second release candidate is not required, the final version 3.1 release of Thunderbird is scheduled for the 1st of June. As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing beta 2 are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes. Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 2 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Thunderbird binaries are released under the Mozilla Thunderbird End-User Software License Agreement and the source code is released under disjunctive tri-licensing that includes the Mozilla Public Licence, GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The latest stable release is Thunderbird 3.0.4 from the end of March.

See also:

• Mozilla releases Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1, a report from The H.
• Mozilla updates Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and older Firefox browsers, a report from The H.

(crve)