Firebird and Thunderbird

Well, I've tried something new for a change. Netscape 7.01 (Mozilla 1.1 or something ancient like that) was getting a little obsolete for my tastes so I was looking at upgrading. As the wild rumors go, AOL is dropping support for Netscape, but Mozilla is still being supported by temporary sources, so I decided to go with Mozilla 1.4 instead of Netscape 7.1. And besides, Netscape does some annoying things to Mozilla by integrating AOL things into Netscape, like adding a watered-down, bug-ridden, integrated version of AIM (but at least it doesn't have ads). So anyway, I was surfing on the Mozilla site and was thinking about how big and slightly unwieldly Mozilla is when I came across something interesting. There is a project at Mozilla called Firebird, which is a standalone browser based off a redesigned version of the Mozilla browser component. I'm using it right now, and I must say that it seems much simpler and more usable than Mozilla, and perhaps even a hair faster. Someone did several tests of load times vs. several other browsers and Firebird seemed to be competitive with the speed of Safari. In addition, I am trying out a mail client by Mozilla that is designed along the lines of Firebird, called Thunderbird. It is a standalone redesign of the Mozilla mail component and is also simpler and a bit more elegant. So far I like both apps better than Mozilla and (of course!) better than the Microsoft alternatives. One of my favorite parts however is the install process. Once you download the zip archive off the web, you just unzip to your directory of choice and you're ready to go.

Firebird project page: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/
Thunderbird project page: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/