Mozilla Corp. on Thursday released the 1.5 version of its Thunderbird e-mail client, building and improving on automated spam and security control as well as offering easy access to podcasts.

Based on a year of feedback from its user base, Thunderbird said it has improved its updating procedures in the release for automatic downloading of some updates in background mode while prompting users when the updates are ready for installation.

The application also provides improved support for RSS and podcasting, giving users the ability to receive RSS feed updates as e-mail messages. They are filtered and organized and appear like e-mail messages.

"Thunderbird 1.5 also allows users to access podcasts via a dialog box that provides access to a 'helper' application such as a web browser or audio player," Mozilla's announcement stated.

Other improvements for the e-mail program include "spell check as you type" and "auto save as draft" mail composition. Attachments can be deleted from e-mail in another new feature.