Thunderbird 17 ALPHA 2 receives new "cog"-like Australis button

Months ago, Mozilla developers announced Australis, a new theme that is to be adopted in the near future by Firefox and Thunderbird, theme containing exciting new fancy visual enhancements with rounded corners, monochrome icons, refreshed "blocks", etc.

At the moment, Australis is partially implemented in Thunderbird, Ubuntu's default email client, that has gained rounded tabs in its top area, addition expressed as part of the upcoming Australis.

Thunderbird 17 ALPHA 2 introduces a new Australis bit, pushing the menus into a top-right 3-lines monochrome icon, similar in functionality to the widely used "cog" icon (housing application menus).

Clicking on the 3-lines icon, summons the menus via an interesting visual approach, in the sense of categorizing the menus into a divided panel that, while retaining a small size, allows the user to access all of the available menus (such as New Message, Save As, File, View, etc).

Hovering the mouse pointer over a menu entry (such as New Message), highlights the entry by separating the text (New Message) from the arrow, thus creating a subtle yet interesting "effect".