The Mozilla Foundation has unveiled the most complete
preview version yet of its standalone e-mail
application.
The release comes only weeks after the launch of its Firefox
browser version 1.0, and is part of the open-source software
project's continuing efforts to chip away market share from
Microsoft's dominate Internet Explorer (IE).
The release candidate of Thunderbird 1.0 e-mail management
software is being positioned as similar to Microsoft's free
end-user application Outlook Express but without the user hassles
of dealing with advertisements and spam.
Before the official release of Thunderbird 1.0, slated for 7
December, the group is offering the preview version of the free
client for lastminute testing. Based on the Mozilla codebase,
Thunderbird 1.0 works with most operating systems including
Windows, Linux and Macintosh, the group said.
The Mozilla Foundation has said in the past that it aims to
capture between 10% and 12% of the web browser market by the end of
next year. It has already been able to eke out a 3% share through
its preview versions of Firefox, though Microsoft's IE continues to
hoard as much as 95% of the market, according to figures from
WebSideStory.
Thunderbird is part of that overall effort, although Outlook
Express is far from Mozilla's only competition among e-mail
clients, with Yahoo (Yahoo Mail), Google (Gmail) and Microsoft
(Hotmail) all offering popular and free web-based e-mail
services.
Mozilla believes it can woo users over to Thunderbird with
features such as the ability to choose between three message views
and to customise toolbar buttons, an integrated Usenet newsgroup
reader and security features such as not allowing scripts to run by
default.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organisation created in
July 2003 to support the Mozilla open-source software project.
Mozilla was originally created at Netscape Communications in 1998,
which was since acquired by media conglomerate Time Warner.
The new Thunderbird release candidate can be downloaded at
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/1.0rc/
Laura Rohde writes for IDG News Service