Thunderbird for email

[John F]

For years I've been using a Mozilla email program called Thunderbird. Unlike email on the web, for which you use your browser, an email "client" like Thunderbird downloads incoming email to the hard drive and dispatches your emails directly to the provider's server. The most obvious advantage is that you automatically have an archive of emails that will last indefinitely until you choose to delete them. Also, you read and write your emails offline, reducing the time you spend on the Internet; if your Internet service is metered, and you pay for your connect time beyond a specified number of hours, a program like Thunderbird can save you money.

I'm writing this because Thunderbird is in the process of separation from Mozilla, the makers of Firefox. Some years ago, Mozilla announced that it was ceasing development of improvements to Thunderbird and would only maintain it, fixing security problems and bugs. This has allowed them to focus entirely on Firefox, which has made some pretty sensational progress in speed and capability. However, Thunderbird has millions of users, and some of them have created a Thunderbird Foundation to take over the program's development and distribution. The most obvious sign of this is their new web site, thunderbird.net. A blog explaining all this is here:

https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/20 ... ture-home/

As for the program itself, Thunderbird 60 has many improvements and new features that make it still more useful, especially compared with webmail. It's here:

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

[jbuck919]

I use Thunderbird. Thanks for the info. (I was afraid it was going to be bade news.)

[John F]

I'm not sure it's good news. A startup, developing a pretty old program when email clients seem to be on the way out? Let's hope they can make a go of it.

Meanwhile, version 6.0 has been responding erratically to passwords, sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting them. Of course that could be Spectrum, not Thunderbird...

[Holden Fourth]

I've been using Apple's proprietary software for mail on my iMac and I'm not very impressed with it. My biggest issue is that it won't store my sent mail. Now that's not a problem if someone replies to an e-mail using the reply button but if they don't it's gone for good and can't find out how to make it keep them.

So this thread has reminded me that there are other e-mail clients out there. I've used Thunderbird in the past on PCs and it became my mainstay. I wonder what the Mac version is like?

[John F]

As you know, Tbird does store the emails you send, and also the draft of an email you haven't sent if you have to leave it for a while. This program has been rather neglected in recent years after Mozilla announced that there would be no major development of its features and looks. Now that they've cast free of Mozilla, it looks like they're trying to catch up in a hurry. Version 60 (yes, nearly every update gets a full version number) has a very long list of new stuff, changes, and fixes, here:

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thund ... easenotes/

They treat the Windows and Mac versions as essentially the same, none of the changes are Windows-only.