Thunderbird is a open-source, free cross-platform e-mail software for which Mozilla Messaging has been known. Mozilla Messaging has been known for the traditional view that a person’s PC is the center of their computing existence as in Thunderbird.

These days though the Mozilla Foundation subsidiary’s scope is expanding beyond the confines of the computer. And hence the Web is being integrated with the new Thunderbird 3. And as for future purpose, your inbox can be lifted all the way to the cloud by the Raindrop project.

The changing nature of computing reflects the change. Software such as Microsoft’s Outlook  was Thunderbird’s chief competition once. But priority is still given to Thunderbird. Though it has been nearly a year later, than had been planned its said that Thunderbird 3 is going to arrive next week in final form. But Mozilla Messaging is being positive by hoping the new version will be easier to use, faster and more versatile by the addition of third-party extensions.

Raindrop is something of a universal inbox or ultimate inbox in the company’s vision.It is a Web application in which we can have mails from other sites such as Facebook mail, Twitter, and instant messaging. It’s main objective is to overcome the difficulty in scanning throughout different sites to check respective inboxes. It also helps in prioritizing our mails. This helps us in reading the imp mails first!! I don’t think Mozilla will be offering Raindrop service. It will be more of a software which will run on others servers. Raindrop is chosen by the company as a server-based technology which will be accessible through a Web browser rather than a PC- based s/w.

Thunderbird 3 which has Firefox’s engine built-in which is used for displaying Web pages will integrate with the Web even without Raindrop. This shows that s/w can display web content. Thunderbird has got the ability of giving both the options of Google and Yahoo calendars in separate tabs. It is expected that more add-ons may bring it closer to the cloud. Thunderbird 3 is said to arrive in more than 40 languages.