I have added links for Thunderbird, Lighting and Provider for Google Calendar to a new ‘Downloads’ section on the side bar. This sections has links for both the current and developmental versions (note: the same version of Provider for Google Calendar works with both the release and developmental versions of Thunderbird and Lightning).
Developmental Builds
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It has only taken Mozilla 8 (well, no 7 as there was no Thunderbird 5) Thunderbird releases to catch up with the UI change made in Firefox 4. The Daily builds of Thunderbird 12 now have the tab bar at the top of the window. Presently though, there is not an option not to have the tabs on top. Thunderbird 12 is schedule for release on April 24, 2012.
Mozilla has merged Thunderbird 10 on the to the Beta developmental channel on December 23rd, 2011. Existing Thunderbird Beta users can update via Help > About Thunderbird. New users can get Thunderbird Beta from Mozilla’s Future of Thunderbird site. What’s New in Thunderbird Beta New ability to search the Web Improvements to searching email Create a new email account Several fixes when drafting email and several other platform fixes Thunderbird 10 is scheduled for release on January 31st, 2012. Lighting users: You will need to go here and get the version 1.2 of Mozilla Lightning.
Just Released None Coming Soon December 20th Thunderbird 9 Final Release Thunderbird 10 Beta (10.0b1)* Thunderbird 11 Earlybird (10.0a2)* Future Releases January 31st, 2012 Thunderbird 10 Final Release Thunderbird 11 Beta (11.0b1)* Thunderbird 12 Earlybird (12.0a2)* * As part of the new Rapid Release Schedule,dates listed for Earlybird and Beta builds reflect when the code merge is set to begin. The actual release to that particular channel may vary by several days. See the Wiki for more details.
There has been some confusion as to what is the most current version of Thunderbird. Thunderbird 8.0 released on November 8, 2011 is the most current version of Thunderbird. Mozilla did release an update for Firefox (8.0.1) on November 21st, 2011. However, the issues that were addressed in this update (older version of RoboForm caused browser to crash on start-up and crashing issues with JAVA heavy sites on Mac with Firefox 8.0) were related to Firefox only. Therefore Mozilla did not do a Thunderbird 8.0.1 update. At this time it does not appear there will be any other Thunderbird updates…
Much like Firefox, there are some unofficial 64-Bit builds for Thunderbird. They can be found here. However, at this time the most latest version is Thunderbird 7.0.0 (release is 8.0.0). As with any other developmental build, use at your own risk and ideally with a separate profile (this where ProfileMaanger can come in handy). Thanks to Bob Slim for the tip.