Mozilla Thunderbird 6.0

By joining the rapid release cycle Thunderbird updates have become as frequently as those of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It is therefor no surprise that Mozilla Messaging has just released version 6.0 of the email client Thunderbird on the same day that Firefox 6.0 was officially released. With that release, the release cycle is running in sync with that of the Firefox web browser.

So what is new in Thunderbird 6.0? The release notes, which are up already on the official website, list the following items that have been updated, changed or added to the email client.

• Thunderbird is based on the new Mozilla Gecko 6 engine
• Several theme improvements for Windows 7
• Support for Windows 7 Jump lists
• Several fixes when importing email from Microsoft Outlook
• Default mail client check now works with newer Linux distributions
• Various other user interface fixes and improvements
• Numerous platform fixes that improve speed, performance, stability and security

The feature list, as you can see, is rather small, and offers barely any new features for users of the  email program. Windows 7 users benefit from jumplist support and theme improvements. Jumplists show up when a Windows user right-clicks on the icon in the taskbar. For now, Thunderbird users get links to their address book, writing a new message and the mailbox.

The update check from within the email client is already picking up the new version. This makes it possible to perform an in-program update to install the latest version of Thunderbird.

Users can do that with a click on Help > About Thunderbird.

The email client is also available for download at the official website for all supported operating systems and languages. Thunderbird users who want to take a closer look at the release notes of this particular release can do so here.

There they find troubleshooting tips and known issues, which are always worth checking out before upgrading or install a new version of the software.