Mozilla releases Lightning 1.0 calendar, Thunderbid 8 email client, Firefox 8 browser

Mozilla Lightning, the Calendar plug-in for the Thunderbird email client, has finally reached the 1.0 release today, after years in development. The Thunderbird email client also had a release today, to version 8, as well as Firefox 8.

With Lightning's official 1.0 release, users can finally send and receive appointments tied to emails, like with other PIM solutions such as KDE's Kontact and MS Outlook. Lightning events/appointments are compatible with Google Apps calendar and with other existing calendar platforms, including MS Outlook 2000 SP3 and newer. The Lightning plugin can be installed on older Thunderbird releases, but the Thunderbird 8 release today should be a useful, suggested upgrade to anyone running Thunderbird.

Firefox 8 was also released today, as a part of Mozilla's increased-frequency release schedule. Improvements include better memory management, faster rendering, faster tab loading, and increased search options such as Twitter.

Congratulations to the Mozilla team on their new releases! Readers, any feedback on this software? Do you use Lightning and Thunderbird?