Mozilla releases latest Thunderbird beta

Mozilla has released the first beta of the next version of its Thunderbird email client, codenamed Lanikai Beta 1.

The company warned that the new software is aimed at testers, extension developers and "curious" early adopters.

Lanikai is an extension to Thunderbird 3, and includes a range of additional features and bug fixes for the Gecko engine.

"Lanikai Beta 1, available now for download, is built on top of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform. While this milestone is considered to be stable, it is intended for evaluation and feedback," said Mozilla.

"Users of this latest alpha version of Thunderbird should not expect all of their add-ons to work properly. The main goal of this release is to find out about possible problems caused by the changes in the underlying platform."

The update includes fixes to the auto-complete, tabs and activity manager functions, as well as a number of design, stability and memory improvements.

Known issues include the likelihood of losing passwords when switching between versions of Thunderbird, and problems with the Kaspersky Anti-Spam Extension, which will be disabled.

The release notes also mention an email issue. "When working offline, if you compose an email and select 'Send Later', your message may not be sent if you reconnect automatically to the internet. You will need to manually resend the email from your Drafts folder," the firm said.

Bugzilla has a full list of known issues with the release, and The Rumbling Edge has a list of fixes.