Over the last several months using Zimbra Desktop, I’ve become very dependent on having my Zimbra email available offline, and now we’re happy to announce in the latest version Zimbra calendar is available offline too.

For those less familiar with Zimbra Desktop, it’s among the next generation of messaging clients- you get all the benefits of a rich AJAX email application in the browser (fast search, mash-ups, client-like UI, etc) offline and none of the downside associated with traditional clients (platform dependence, stagnant innovation, storage woes). Since its inception, Zimbra Desktop has been a big hit.

Starting today you can download the lasted version here for Linux, Mac, and Windows desktops (existing Desktop users note you must re-sync).

Current Zimbra Desktop users will also notice some other nice improvements such as expandable/collapsible conversation threads,
highlighted messages in the preview pane, and there are also more skins available than the previous version.

On the technical side there was also some additional backend performance tuning; most notably changes have been made to the database schema. 5.0 Beta users will experience some additional enhancements such as batch message syncing (improves initial sync speed) and server push (any
mailbox changes on the server side are pushed immediately to Zimbra Desktop and exposed in the UI).

Check out the Zimbra Desktop page and release notes for details.

J.J. Zhuang and Kevin Henrikson also spoke about Zimbra Desktop this week. See this blog post for more information.

As always we encourage everyone to try Zimbra Desktop and please provide any feedback in the Zimbra Forums. Find a bug? Report it in our bugzilla.