Mozilla hopes to finish Thunderbird 3.1 in April
Mozilla Messaging hopes to release Thunderbird 3.1 in early April, a date that reflects a new frequent-release strategy adopted from the better-known Firefox effort at Mozilla. Dan Mosedale, a programmer for the open-source e-mail software, published the date in a Thunderbird schedule draft he announced Thursday.
"If we're lucky, we relabel 3.1RC1 [release candidate 1] as final and ship it on Tuesday, April 6. Otherwise, there's an RC2," Mosedale said in the planning document. The new version is due to get an updated Web browser engine. Using the same Gecko project that Firefox is built atop means Thunderbird messages can integrate with Web activity such as Google Calendar.
Another possibility for 3.1 is a revamp of the Thunderbird start page, Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher said Friday. That redesign, which Ascher described in May, could show more useful information than the present splash screen--for example, information about what activity people has been up to help pick up where they left off.
