The upcoming version of Ubuntu (“Natty Narwhal”) sports a shiny new interface called Unity, and it has some great new features that we’re working hard to integrate with Thunderbird.

This extension lets Thunderbird integrate with the Launcher, which is one of the primary features of Unity.

Release Notes

This is an experimental extension, and a work in progress. The extension currently only works in Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. There are a number of shortcomings and known bugs with this version:

• The context menu items (“Compose a New Message” and “Contacts”) are currently in English only, and will only appear once the Unity shell has been restarted.

This add-on is now bundled by default in Ubuntu Oneiric, and updates will be delivered via the Ubuntu update manager.

Launchpad page: launchpad.net/unitylauncher-extension
Issue tracker: bugs.launchpad.net/unitylauncher-extension
Feedback:  groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla-labs/a7n5or0Oalw/discussion
Add-on page: addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/unity-launcher-integration/