Firefox 2.0 RC1 & Status

As of late last night, the Mozilla Developers Calendar for Firefox 2.0, still shows RC1 to be shipped/released tomorrow (Sept 26th). No other dates have been added for future release candidates or the final build. But, the last ‘Bon Echo Status Meeting’ is still scheduled for October 24th, which is still the tentative final release date of Firefox 2.0.

However at this point in Firefox 2.0’s development, everything now hangs on what happens once RC1 comes out. Remember, Release Candidates (RC) are essentially the finished product feature wise, but may still have some minor bugs that need to be fixed. RC’s typically have more folks testing as they are much stabler/safer builds then say Alpha or Beta builds. Typically I have seen around 2 to 3 RC’s before the final build is released.

With a little under a month left for the current estimated final release date, there should be more than enough time to work out any minor bugs. Nonetheless, given the number of delays just getting beta 2 out and the fact the project is now about a month behind the original schedule, I am not making any bets for an October 24th release date.  I will say this though, at least Firefox 2.0’s release schedule hasn’t deviated as badly as that of Windows Vista!

No Tabs For Thunderbird 2.0

One of the new features that is still on the Thunderbird 2.0 Road Map is ‘Tabbed Messages’.  The way this feature was suppose to work was allow you to open/view multiple messages in the preview pane switching between tabs.  Presently, each message when opened, opens in its own window. Take a look at this screen-shot from bugzilla bug 297379 to get an idea of how this would work.  There is another screen-shot showing an interesting idea on how to use tabs on the compose screen.  Unlike the first screen-shot,  the second one is from Sylpheed-Claws, which is an open-source mail client based on GTK+.  It UI is a bit more advanced than Thunderbird’s and does provide some inspiration for integrating tabs into Thunderbird.

Now, looking back through Bug 297379 one notices it was started back in June 2005 by Myk Melez.  Digging through the comments in the bug report we learn in comment #52 Myk was had been assigned away from the Thunderbird 2.0 project.  He had hoped someone would pick-up where he had left off on this idea/bug, but it appears no one has.

For those wondering looks like Thunderbird 2.0 is going to be coming out after Firefox 2.0.  The release schedule on the Roadmap shows late November or early December.  Not surprising since Thunderbird is still officially (as per milestones) only in the Alpha stage.  Although they did release Pre-Beta 1 builds over the past two weekends those are only nightlies and not milestone releases.