About 2.5 years ago, I wrote an article entitled Thunderbird 78: Change is in the air, but don’t panic!.

At that time, Tbird was in a state of flux as it moved from a Mozilla project to community-driven (more or less) and then into essentially its own company.

Well, fast forward to today: In July of this year, the Thunderbird team is supposed to take the wrap off of a whole new bird dubbed ‘Supernova’.

And if the blue bird’s design manager’s video is anything to go by, it’s gonna be pretty awesome!

No point reinventing the wheel…

So I’ll just repost Alex’s video here:

You can also read his article here.

Right, so…

IOW, there are very simple answers to many of my (rather smartass) comments in my article from 2.5 years ago.

For example, the version number of Thunderbird jumped because it was keeping up with Firefox, upon which Tbird is heavily based.

Another: Development was slow because the dozen Tbird coders often spent much of their day just fixing and patching things in order to keep their program working in light of crazy (and unending) changes in Firefox.

But going forward, it looks like we’re about to see a whole new mail client that once again will be worthy of its name.

I’m super-excited about this because – and let’s be brutally honest here – Thunderbird is really old and creaky. Sure, recent updates have made it look less old and creaky, but its underpinnings are obviously a bit of a mess.

What’s more, Firefox’s popularity is dropping off a cliff. So, it doesn’t even make sense to make a mail program that runs on top of Firefox anymore.

But, whatever!

As someone who despises webmail because I enjoy at least a TINY bit of privacy and security, and as someone who runs his own mail servers, I couldn’t be happier.

The fact is, there is no real dedicated mail client alternative to Thunderbird. Oh, I know, there are quite a few of them out there. I’ve tried most of them, and every time I come back to Tbird.

Plus, despite the prevalence of messaging apps and the like, the fact is that e-mail is still currently The #1 means of electronic communication. The doctor’s office doesn’t ask you for your Telegram or WhatsApp handle; they ask you for your e-mail addy.

So, rejoice! In just a few short months, hopefully we’ll be treated to a real show in the sky with the release of Supernova – aka Thunderbird 115!