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This does not mean that the developers of the free email client have been idle. The alpha 1 with the trust-inspiring code name of "Shredder" has been available for downloading since mid May 2008.

Project leader David Ascher has announced in his blog that the project is looking for brave Linux users prepared to install Shredder on their disks. Although there are enough Mac and Windows testers, said Ascher, Linux testers are still wanted. They must fulfill four conditions: access to a – fairly average – Linux machine, experience with Thunderbird and Linux, and ideally a Bugzilla account, and a couple of hours of spare time. If you fit the bill, you can mail Ascher directly; his email address is listed on his blog site.

Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 is based on the Gecko 1.9 platform – like Firefox 3 – and includes a new add-on manager that gives users the ability to download and install plugins. Searches against message texts produce less false positives and are also more accurate I multi-lingual environments. After some work on the Javascript engine Thunderbird 3 is now faster than before. For more details on changes and improvements, see the changelog.

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