Test Driving the new Thunderbird3 alpha2 (Shredder) on Linux

Feeling a little adventurous today? Want to get your hands dirty on something cool and really alpha. Here is something for you all.
The nice folks at mozilla spunoff Thunderbird into a separate project called Mozilla Messaging with a prime objective of developing Thunderbird3 (codenamed Shredder), the next generation open-source email/messaging client.

Some of the notable enhancements in Thunderbird 3 would be the integration of Lightening (a calendar extension), improved search and some configuration and user interface improvements.

A gentle warning, it is not meant for production environments. Let us start, shall we

1. Download the linux version of Shredder alpha2.

2. Extract the contents to a local folder (in my case Desktop).

3. Browse to the folder and Run the application by either from shell (as below) or by double clicking on a binary file called "thunderbird".



$ ~/Desktop/thunderbird/thunderbird


4. Thunderbird launches with a welcome screen, where you can configure your accounts (in my case, Gmail)


5. Like Thunderbird2, setting up Gmail accounts is a breeze. Enter your username and password, and you are done. Note: it sets up pop access.


6. You can specify all your account settings like before.



I wasn't expecting any new features as Shredder alpha2 is meant to test the transition to the latest gecko 1.9 engine, on which firefox3 is also based upon. Play around and if you do find bugs, report it back.
Well, that's it, happy alpha testing and keep supporting the mozilla foundation.