At last, Thunderbird, the wonderful email manager from the Mozilla Foundation, comes in version 15 with a built-in XMPP/Jabber client!

Victory! It comes too late, but it’s another victory. Also it comes at the moment the development is handed over to the community.

Go in File > New > Chat account, there you can select XMPP of course for generic use of any public or private server, but also Gtalk and Facebook. There is also two handy choice: the venerable IRC and the ubiquitous Twitter.

With email, calendar, chat and microblogging, Thunderbird becomes a complete interpersonal communicator!

Kudos to developers!