Surely more than one person, upon reading the title of this news item, was surprised to learn that Thunderbird does, indeed, still exist and, what’s more, it remains one of the most notable email clients in this market, which is more varied. and plentiful than many people think.
This is actually quite understandable, since with the rise of email services over the web, there are many people who, for years, no longer use an email client, but they connect directly to the website of the service they use (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) to check and send emails. And many others directly use the client that includes their operating system by default, be it desktop or mobile devices. Thus, the use of applications such as Thunderbird is limited, in these times, to people who want to take greater control of their communications.
Be that as it may, Mozilla Thunderbird has been a reference for many years now, but the truth is that it has barely evolved for a long time. So much so that even if we access its download page today, the most recent option of the Microsoft operating system that is shown in the selector is Windows 10, despite the fact that more than a year has passed since its successor, Windows 11, is now available to users.
This, of course, causes a feeling of apathy, abandonment, as if Mozilla had given up on it and therefore decided to leave Thunderbird to its own devices, which is the key many take the foundation to have acted on in 2012, when it announced that it Thunderbird would go on to be a community-driven model. However, and to the delight of the users of its desktop version, it seems that this will not be the case. Quite the contrary, Mozilla has very interesting plans for its mail client.
Thus, as you can see in the video, and expand in the post on the official blog, Mozilla will make some pretty deep changes to Thunderbird, with a new interface, but also with substantial modifications in its “guts”. In other words, when the mail client is about to turn 20 years old, they have considered doing it again from the beginning to, as they claim, guarantee that it will continue to be present for at least another twenty more.
Thus, and in an ambitious three-year work plan, the foundation considers the following three points:
Throughout the next 3 years, the Thunderbird project aims at these main objectives:
- Making the code base more agile and reliable, rewrite old codeEliminate technical debt.
- Rebuild the interface from scratch to create a consistent design system, as well as develop and maintain a highly customizable and adaptable user interface.
- change to a pmonthly publication program.
These are not small words, of course, and if the plans go well, it is more than likely that Thunderbird will emerge from the impoverishment in which, in many respects, it has been plunged for years. However, it will have to face the ballast of a public opinion that in many cases is unaware of its existence, and in others is aware of it, but associates it with the decadence it has experienced for many years now, so the challenge is great.
