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|Feature non-goals=* Turn Thunderbird into an IM client for people who don't want to use it for their emails.
* Support as many IM protocols as possible: For a first version with IM features included, we want to focus first on a good UI integration between email and IM features. Support for more protocols can come later.
|Feature functional spec=IM networks/protocol support
* Thunderbird will support by default only a few IM protocols
** XMPP is a good first candidate:
*** it's an open standard
*** it gives access to some quite popular IM networks (Google Talk, Facebook Chat).
** IRC and Twitter are also interesting candidates:
*** they are open (or at least documented)
*** they are widely used in the Mozilla comunity
*** the user interactions are significantly different from those with XMPP, which will force us to iron out some UI integration issues that may be unoticed with XMPP.
* A plugin system should let users add support for more protocols (even closed protocols) with add-ons.
IM accounts management
* While setting up an email account, Thunderbird will attempt to detect if an IM account is likely associated with the email account (@gmail.com address? Existance of DNS SRV records pointing to an XMPP server for the domain?).
** If an IM account is found, the default action would be to configure Thunderbird to use it.
** It should be possible to opt-out from this behavior (checkbox "also use this account for instant messaging", checked-by default?)
* The 'Add Other Account...' wizard should offer a way to set up an IM account manually.
* The 'Account Settings...' dialog should let users configure settings of their IM accounts.
Address book integration
* Address book cards will support multiple IM contact info for each contact.
* Whenever possible, IM contacts will be associated with email contacts automatically.
* Users will also be able to add associations between IM and email contacts by hand.
General IM UI
* IM features shouldn't get in the way of users interacting with their emails.
** It should be easy to change one's IM status or even to sign off from all IM accounts, to avoid interruptions / revealing presence.
** Ongoing IM conversations should have visible indicators in the primary Thunderbird UI but they shouldn't hinder the user's ability to focus on his current task (reading an email / composing a reply / ...)
*** More specifically, new unread messages should be notified unobtrusively to the user.
* IM features should be tightly integrated into the Thunderbird UI, so that they don't feel like something added after the fact.
Archives
* IM conversations should be stored, so that the user can use the transcripts for future references
* Stored conversations should be indexed in a way that makes searching both the email and IM archives at once efficient.
* The search results should show IMs alongside emails.
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