Mozilla says Thunderbird podcasting is on its way

Developers of the Mozilla open source email client have added a podcasting feature to its arsenal and improved its defence against phishing attacks.

The changes were highlighted in an informal change-log of modifications to the software before its upcoming 1.1 release. They are not available in the current 1.0.2 release.

Podcasting is a recent internet phenomenon which takes its name from Apple's iPod digital audio player. Podcast creators publish sound files online which are then downloaded by interested parties. The technique utilises the RSS file format that allows simple forms of content such as blogs to be repetitively syndicated across the internet and has enabled many people to reach a global audience with self-published radio shows.

Thunderbird already supports RSS feeds as they are commonly utilised by blogs but a new patch will deal with Podcast-type content by opening a dialogue box through which the user can summon a helper application such as a web browser or audio player.

The anti-phishing feature attempts to detect and warn about incoming email-based scams which prompt users to enter information such as internet banking log-in details or credit card numbers. Since January the feature has detected dodgy internet address data but it will now also pick up any email that requires information to be entered via a HTML form.

Large web-based email sites such as GMail and Hotmail have recently implemented a similar feature.

Other key planned features for the 1.1 release include an improved spell-check engine which would operate as you type, the ability to automate the software updating process, and improved integration with antivirus applications for users of email boxes based on the POP3 standard.

A number of smaller changes will involve user interface changes, the ability to save space by deleting attachments from stored email, and an automatic 'save as draft' feature.

While the feature list of the email client is still a long way behind proprietary offerings such as Microsoft's Outlook and even other open source clients such as Evolution, there are long-term plans in place to improve it.

Developers list close collaboration with the Lightning Project - which aims to integrate the open source Sunbird calendaring solution into Thunderbird - as an agenda item for the far-off Thunderbird 2.0 release. They would also like to "solve the information overload problem" common to heavy email users by looking into implementing a tabbed solution similar to the one used by web browsers such as Firefox, Opera and some third-party Internet Explorer add-ons.

Renai LeMay writes for ZDNet Australia