There has not however been a way to integrate other Google services that are related to Gmail into Thunderbird. The Google Calendar Tab add-on for Thunderbird 3 changes this. It basically only displays the web interface of Google Calendar in a new tab in Thunderbird.

And since the extension uses the same account all information from that Google Calendar account are already available in Thunderbird. It is possible to view, edit and add events to Google Calendar which are then also visible on the Google Calendar website. If the calendar has been configured to show popups then they will be shown in Thunderbird as well.

The extension for the email client supports both Google Calendar and Calendar for Google Apps. Google Calendar Tab is an interesting add-on for Thunderbird that aids Google Calendar users who work with Thunderbird to integrate their calendar into the email client. There are other options to do that. IIRC it is possible to integrate Google Calendar into Lightning as well.

If you open Mozilla Thunderbird in the classic view you are looking at a window that is divided into two areas. The left sidebar contains the email folders while the right window the emails that are contained in the folders and the contents of the selected email.

Thunderbird displays the same icon in the header of the folder and email area to change email display options. The display options can be accessed by left-clicking on the icon which will reveal several display options that can be enabled or disabled with another left-click.

The folder pane offers the three additional display options unread, total and size. Unread will display the unread count of folders, total the total amount of emails in a folder and size the size of that folder on the computer’s hard drive. These options offer several new ways of working with Thunderbird. It is for example possible to see the largest folders or the folders with the highest unread email count on a glance.

The very same display option menu is available in the email list in the right pane. This one contains additional display options that will display the information in additional columns in the same window. This includes sizes, email accounts, recipients, tags and about a dozen more.

These options can again be used to display additional information providing options to display and sort emails by size, recipients or email accounts. The two email display options described in the paragraphs before can for example be used to discover and delete the biggest attachments or emails of a webmail account like Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Live Mail.

It was never more than a rumor that the Mozilla based email client would go commercial eventually. Now, with the announcement of beta 14 of Postbox came the confirmation that it will indeed be a commercial email client with no free version planned at this stage in time.

A single-user license for Postbox 1.0 will be sold at a regular price of $39.95 giving the user the option to install the email client on any computer that is personally used. Two add-on purchases are available. The first is a family pack for $19.95 which allows up to five family members in the same household to install Postbox with the same license on their computers. The second a lifetime upgrade option for $24.95 which guarantees that all Postbox upgrades will be free forever.

Prices are currently discounted by $10 with the exception of the lifetime upgrade option which can be purchased at a $5 discount. The most interesting question will obviously be how Postbox users and potential users react on the pricing announcement. Will they start looking for free alternatives or purchase a license for the desktop email client? What’s your opinion on the matter?