So the release date for Thunderbird 3.0b3 the last beta of Thunderbird 3.0 is approaching. This means that features are landing, and that we need to make sure that everything works correctly. To do so two things need to happen, first the new features needs to be tested on a broader scale than the development team can do (more hardware combination, servers combination, more extensions etc ... ) and at the same time nothing else should regress.
To achieve the first task - we have organized a Testday. It's a day where we invite everybody to test the new features recently added to Thunderbird. Why do we do it on a specific day ? It's easy to gather people on one day. It's easier to give people interested in joining the test effort information on what's new, how to test the new features and describe them. It's also a great way to have different people testing the same part to talk to one another. We traditionally do that on irc on #bugday. I think the communication while testing is important for at least two things - it helps you get the help of other people if you are having some issues while testing. It might help you file your first bug - if you are unsure of things just ask some people will be glad to help. As a way to communicate more efficiently, mozillamessaging as setup a web base chat, if you don't want to use irc just point you browser to chat.mozillamessaging.com and talk to us there.
Thursday April the 23rd 2009 is the day where the new features are going to be tested. Information on what will be theres to be tested is visible here.
To make sure that Thunderbird 3.0b3 will be of the highest quality available we will also run a series of tests, that have been run for alpha1 and for beta2. We don't organize an event for that - because it takes much more time to do regression testing than testing the new features. To participate to this testing you will need an account on litmus, some time, and a build dated from the 28th of April 2009. To test you need to point your browser here, and decide which of the tests you want to run, read the instructions to run the test and report the results from your run. If the test is not clear - say so , so we can try to make the test clearer. If the test does not pass, meaning you have found a bug, please make sure to create a bug in bugzilla. Not creating the issue in bugzilla means that the testing you have done is going to be lost .
Thanks in advance for the time you are going to spend to make Thunderbird a great quality product.
The Thunderbird quality assurance team is most of the time available on irc, so if you have question just come and ask. As stated above the web based chat is an experiment.
I use to work with Firefox on windows xp where i never tried with Thunderbird but my new collage computer lab is equipped with linux and Thunderbird actually working on linux ubuntu is not that bad experience but even not that easy for windows addicted person well for Thunderbird i found this 3.0 new version simple and easy extensions similar to Firefox where interface is much improved there is five reason to try Thunderbird check here for details http://www.techarena.in/guide/19023-five-reasons-move-thunderbird-3.htm