Any Mozilla fans out there? Firefox, anyone? I’m a huge fan of the ever-popular and secure internet browser, Firefox 2, and definitely looking forward to the release of Firefox 3 this year. Well, Mozilla is hard at work on the next version of its popular email client, Thunderbird … code name: Shredder. Shredder alpha 1 was released on May 13, 2008.

Any application called Shredder has to be good, right? The underlying engine that runs Thunderbird 3, Gecko 1.9, touts more than 10,000 updates related to improved performance and stability and more.

One of the cool aspects of Mozilla products is the ability to customize the user experience by using what they call Add-ons. Thunderbird 3 will make it even easier to customize the application using the new Add-ons Manager.

I’m particularly excited about the update that lets you run Thunderbird 3 natively on Macs and integrate with the Mac OS X system Address Book.

Read more about this Alpha 1 release: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/3.0a1/releasenotes/