Mozilla releases Thunderbird 3.1 RC1

The Mozilla developers have issued a first release candidate for version 3.1 of their open source Thunderbird email and news client, code named "Lanikai". According to the developers, the development preview is considered to be stable, addressing 57 bugs from the previous beta, and is "intended for developers and members of our testing community to use for early evaluation and feedback."

Thunderbird 3.1, the next major release of the popular cross-platform email client, will be based on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform and feature a new quick filter toolbar and an updated migration assistant. Other notable changes include a new Saved Files Manager, improved Personas theme support, interface design changes and stability and memory improvements. Upgrading from version 2.x of Thunderbird has also been improved.

Assuming a second release candidate is not required, the final version 3.1 release of Thunderbird is scheduled for "around mid-June". As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the release can be found in the release candidate. Thunderbird 3.1 RC1 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 updates Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and older Firefox browsers, a report from The H.

(crve)