Thunderbird Will Phase Out Legacy Add-Ons, Will Support WebExtensions (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Mozilla announced last week plans to modernize Thunderbird's codebase, plans that include fixing some "technical debt" by incorporating the recent changes in the Mozilla engine into Thunderbird, adding a new user interface (UI), and phasing out old legacy add-ons that are built on the XUL and XPCOM APIs. The changes are part of Mozilla's new plan for Thunderbird development, a project that it left for dead in 2012, but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016.

Comments

"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

Hah. Every point release in the past two years has reduced functionality. If there were a reasonable (Claws isn't) Linux substitute, then I'd switch in a minute.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx? If the webpage does not work with Lynx, then it's probably not accessible to people with limited vision or who use text->speech synthesizers. It's also probably poorly laid out and requires unnecessary, bandwidth consuming features.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[jellomizer]

I guess more to the point.
1. What are the better alternative to Thunderbird
2. What features do people really want and what they don't

I am willing to bet when you ask these features, you might realize it is impossible to make a perfect client, unless you make one for yourself.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

Despite all the moans and bitches by text-mode purist (who need to accept the fact that the "we must use text to save bandwidth!" argument died a decade ago), I like Outlook because it handles tables (pasting spreadsheet segments) and text formatting (using RTF) really well. Much better than T-bird. I never use it's calendar for my own needs, but it's great for scheduling meetings.

I don't know how it handles IMAP or multiple accounts (which T-bird does well), since I only use it on my work laptop, integrated with Exchange.

Thus, I want a bottom-posting Outlook that cleanly handles multiple accounts.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, why isn't Claws reasonable?

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Anonymous Coward]

Seamonkey.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[tirnacopu]

Bottom-posting is a lost battle, maybe useful for the Usenet era when attachments were appended inline. The Gmail-style of seeing a relevant summary on one line is very useful, for me at least.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

The option should be there for old-school mailing lists.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx? If the webpage does not work with Lynx, then it's probably not accessible to people with limited vision or who use text->speech synthesizers. It's also probably poorly laid out and requires unnecessary, bandwidth consuming features.

We're talking about thunderbird, you dumbass.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[theweatherelectric]

Every point release in the past two years has reduced functionality.

What functionality has been reduced?

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

Small things like table handling. (Paste a section of spreadsheet into T-bird, and all the fonts go tiny. Before around 51.0, you could type Ctrl-End, and they'd be restored.)

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[theweatherelectric]

Works fine for me in HTML and plain text mode using Thunderbird 52.5 and Microsoft Excel on Windows 10. Maybe it's a Linux specific issue or perhaps specific to the spreadsheet application you're using.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

Our use-cases might be different, as might our definitions of "fine".

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[theweatherelectric]

Impossible to know. You don't include enough detail in your comments.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Nutria]

This is /., not a bug report.

Re:"but later decided to reinvigorate in 2016"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can link to your bug report so we can read the details there?

RIP Mozilla's Final Decent Product

[Anonymous Coward]

There is 0 reason to deball Thunderbird and Mozilla is doing it anyways. Great job guys!

Mission Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

"To crater market share of Thunderbird in similar fashion as Firefox."

Re:APK MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

[Anonymous Coward]

No use of boldface detected. Fake APK.

hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[iggymanz]

I've been using it for 10+ years and appreciate the lack of needless feature churning and meaningless version bumping, it's a mature product. Hope the morons jerking their browser around don't fuck it up.

Re:hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[Ol Olsoc]

I've been using it for 10+ years and appreciate the lack of needless feature churning and meaningless version bumping, it's a mature product. Hope the morons jerking their browser around don't fuck it up.

I suspect that they will though. The nannies at Mozilla need to get their fingers on everything.

Re:hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[nine-times]

I'm not sure what features there really are to add to a simple IMAP/POP client.

And that's the thing, I really think that a project like Thunderbird should pick a lane and stick in it. Do you want to be a IMAP/POP client? Cool. Be that. Keep it simple, and make it robust, secure, and fast.

Or else, be ambitious and try to be Outlook. That's fine. You can be a groupware client. But that also needs a server side to be really practical. You can't just perpetually dump half-assed features into the client end and think that's a path forward.

I'd love to see a real competitor to the Outlook/Exchange ecosystem with open source and open standards, and if someone were ambitious enough to make a real play for that, I'd applaud them. It seems like everyone is abandoning the whole idea, though, in favor of cloud hosted solutions (either O365 or G Suite), so I don't see that happening. Failing that, I think they should probably just quit faffing about and make a nice, rock-solid, no-nonsense POP/IMAP client.

Re:hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[sheramil]

I'm not sure what features there really are to add to a simple IMAP/POP client.

Another calendar. A Task / event manager (which is the same thing). A social media integrator. Another chat client that requires you to log in and complains when you don't. An activity manager. A developer toolbox. An pseudo-AI emoji insertion tool that forces the damn things into your messages and which takes half an hour figure out how to turn off. A whole bunch of things that should be optional but which are now built in, take up screen or menu real estate and which you never use.

What they won't include is a simple tool for saving your settings and restoring them, which, the last time I had to do - about two months ago - required locating the cache file, copying the contents, installing the client on a new machine, locating the new cache directory and copying the old contents over the top of the new ones and hoping this Dr. Benway style of brain surgery actually worked. Yes, you can export your settings - but it will only export them to other mail program formats, and can only import from those.

Re:hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[digitect]

Hear, hear. My list of Thunderbird desirables WITHOUT extensions:

+ Export/import Thunderbird settings (accounts, layouts, etc.)
+ To/From/CC/BCC columns (currently in ColumnsWizard extension)
+ Auto-archive (currently in deprecated Awesome Auto Archive extension)
+ Read-only stand-alone (not in profile) MBOX files
+ Read PST files (currently by third party apps)
+ One-click HTML-plain text email reading
+ One-click HTML-plain text email authoring
+ Multiple signatures
+ Better lock file stability for real-time syncing while open
+ Simplification of "Extension", "Plugins", "Add-on", "Appearance", and "Theme" concepts

Re:hope they dont ruin it, good for 10+ years

[Anonymous Coward]

How about remembering my localisation settings for spell-check and not resetting back to retarded en-us on EVERY SHITCOCKING UPDATE.

That's right, I'm mad enough to break out the capslock.

Hmm

[thegreatbob]

Well, are they going to roll EWS support into their main codebase (currently functional through a plugin)? It's almost like they strongly desire these products to die. They seem to have forgetten that the market they need to be directly pandering to isn't necessarily their bulk consumer base... it's the people that recommend/support (tense is probably wrong at this point) the use of their products.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that, but those people have done nothing to help their products remain relevant, despite those people constantly crying that they're the ONLY reason those products are relevant. Sure, they might plop out an EWS addon and claim that's the most important thing of all, but they almost never bother to help with the core product, and then cry when that has to change drastically or only be relevant to a few people needing addons. It's always someone else's fault to those people.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did the core product have to change drastically? What could more "help with the core product" have done to prevent this?

Re:Hmm

[thegreatbob]

This is sadly (at least partially) true, and I really wish it wasn't the case. It also doesn't help that large projects are not very agile, but I'll accept that the current codebase probably has them, a bit cornered... how many original developers are still with the project? Regarding extensions/plugins, some sort of middle ground needs to be had: XUL was perhaps too flexible, but WebExtensions is quite a big step down in terms of extensibility (and I dread the thought of bringing it to a mail client as the sole means of extensibility).

Also not suggesting that the EWS plugin I references is somehow the end of the world to lose easy use of, but don't fall victim to the mentality of 'oh, it's just .1%(or smaller) of our userbase' when that tiny percentage represents thousands (or when you're, e.g. Microsoft, millions) of people. As with (i suspect, i haven't counted) many people, even approaching a large OSS project is intimidating due to the tendency for such projects to categorically ignore stuff coming from outsiders.

I do, however, respect the notion of avoiding a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' or 'too many chiefs' type of situation; we can't all have what we want, but we're talking about gutting functionality that has been available for... a long time, so I'm going to maintain my stance that trying to do this to one of the last high-featured, semi-actively developed, non-proprietary mail clients is a bit of a boneheaded move. We're not talking about something like DDE, which MS is only recently getting around to (partially) killing off, but more like if Microsoft decided to dump GDI+ and/or Win32 API and forced WPF/.Net upon us all in some future Win10 update. Bad analogy is bad, but I feel that it is at least a somewhat decent representation of such a grand change at a different scale.

Re:Hmm

[thegreatbob]

Also, you may have read too deeply into one of my statements: I was not attempting to insinuate that the power users (who i define here from a perspective of need more than capability) I loosely describe are the only people who actively recommend/support the use of their products. OSS seems, to me, to work best when propagated via word-of-mouth. They simply don't have the money to burn on marketing campaigns that appeal to the more fickle among us, so finding ways to leverage your existing userbase is something to strongly consider. However, I will suggest these power users have disproportionate sway compared to the average user, so probably best to appease (or at least not completely drive them off) them where it is reasonable to do so.

Regarding help, what are we to even do, especially those of us without the requisite skills to engage such a large project? How much resistance to their overall vision for the product will they allow? If WebExtensions are their way forward, at least for the front-end of the software, what options remain for the back-end service interaction protocols? If they've actually thought this through, which I hold no shortage of hope for, perhaps it is not as bad as I make it out to be.

Re:Hmm

[JohnFen]

You say that, but those people have done nothing to help their products remain relevant

Baloney. I admit, I stopped promoting Firefox and communicating to Mozilla about it about five or six years ago. But that's because Mozilla stopped giving a shit and were determined to ensure that each successive release of Firefox was a little worse than the one that came before.

That's not "doing nothing to help the product remain relevant". That's an organization deciding that they don't want the likes of me as a customer anymore.

"adding a new user interface"

[DaveM753]

...adding a new user interface...

This scares me.

Re:"adding a new user interface"

[Ol Olsoc]

...adding a new user interface...

This scares me.

They'll probably decide what mail you are or aren't allowed to see, just like Firefox does now. Which I've uninstalled from my machine. I don't need a nanny.

Re: "adding a new user interface"

[bradley13]

No shit. When was the last time that a new UI actually improved a product? Pro tip to UIX folk: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Re: "adding a new user interface"

[Anonymous Coward]

We are currently attempting to create a new UI. It will ask less questions than the previous one, because it can calculate some of the values automatically. It will also give much more errors than the previous one, as it will actually validate the input unlike the old version, creating less corrupted data.

The question of course is, is the old UI broken or not if it allows creation of corrupt data and if it asks questions that it doesn't necessarily need to ask.

Re:"adding a new user interface"

[thegreatbob]

As well it should. It's like there's this ongoing competition to see who can crank out the flattest UI, with the least visible boundaries between text (excluding whitespace) and the fewest meaningful features exposed through it.

Re:"adding a new user interface"

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Your fears are totally warranted as the new UI looks like modern shit we are already forced to consume in other OS'es like Windows 10.

Hopefully the new Thunderbird will be themeable but I wouldn't hold my breath considering that theming was essentially killed in Firefox (we can only apply a background image to its bars - that's it).

Re: "adding a new user interface"

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit. When was the last time that a new UI actually improved a product? Pro tip to UIX folk: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

With Mozilla I think it's, "If it ain't broke, break it."

Re:"adding a new user interface"

[theweatherelectric]

Your fears are totally warranted

Meh. Doesn't look much different to the current UI. His fears are overblown.

Re: "adding a new user interface"

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

No shit. When was the last time that a new UI actually improved a product? Pro tip to UIX folk: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

As much as I worry the update will be worse, the current UI is pretty hateful. Take "Message Filters" for example... it is *really* not a well designed interface.

Re:"adding a new user interface"

[JohnFen]

It should. The odds are excellent that the new UI will be like the new Firefox UI.

Re: "adding a new user interface"

[JohnFen]

True, the current Thunderbird UI is pretty bad. My fear is that the new one will be worse.

Is Google Pressuring Mozilla to Stop Thunderbid?

[BrendaEM]

Something is not right here.

Re:APK MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad. APK has a distinctive way of writing; you are not APK (not that it isn't obvious, just making sure you know that people notice). I know you think you're being cute, or possibly doing /. some sort of service by harassing/mimicking APK, but you're just making the AC noise problem worse than it has to be.

"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[BrendaEM]

The user interface changes for Firefox are a study in bad user interface design.

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[Fly Swatter]

They're just trying to keep up with everyone else!

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[squiggleslash]

To be more specific, the Mozilla team based their UI ideas on Chrome, GNOME 3, Windows 8, and other studies in bad user interface design, it's more of a conclusions of a set of studies in bad user interface design than a study in bad user interface design.

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[sasparillascott]

I do have to say, it could have been worse for the Firefox UI (I definitely prefer the old UI) - but you're right, they took Firefox right out to the Windows Phone / Windows 8 / Windows 10 woodshed and did a job on it.

Doing this with Thunderbird makes little sense - except from the ivory tower view of trying to maintain a single code base (except I doubt this will save them much money) cause most of those plugin authors (a good chunk of which is for encyption) are barely alive and not wanting to recreate their plugins.

Maybe Mozilla management, after its fresh privacy and user respect victory of rolling out a unannounced Mr. Robot / E Corp marketing campaign plugin into Firefox (if you had "..allow studies" checked in privacy...studies doesn't sound like marketing does it - very Facebook doublespeak there) - is ready to move on to the stubborn Thunderbird user base who keep using the e-mail client (myself included).

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It just proves what noobs these chuckleheads are.
The Photon UI was what QNX called their almost 20 years ago.

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[Anonymous Coward]

> took Firefox right out to the Windows Phone / Windows 8 / Windows 10 woodshed and did a job on it.

And that critter squealed like a pig!

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It just proves what noobs these chuckleheads are.
The Photon UI was what QNX called their almost 20 years ago.

Two things:

1) QNX Photon UI didn't look like total shit.
2) These developers are probably barely over 20 themselves.

Re:"Photon UI?" WTF, it has a Name!?

[Anonymous Coward]

These developers are probably barely over 20 themselves.

In both age and IQ.

Re: APK MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

[Anonymous Coward]

APK has a long history of harassing users. There's no need for him to spam every story for a day about his dispute with another user, yet this has happened multiple times. I'm trying to show APK just how vile he is, in hopes that he will stop. Yes, it's probably a fool's errand.

Mozilla need to be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know how they fucked the fox and now they are fucking the bird too. XUL is a powerful technology and needs to be preserved. Basilisk, Pale Moon and Waterfox is preserving XUL in the browser and now we need one for Mail.

Re:Mozilla need to be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

the palemoon devs already said if mozilla removes xul they'll fork thunderbird

Re:Mozilla need to be stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please be true!

Re:Mozilla need to be stopped.

[theweatherelectric]

Basilisk, Pale Moon and Waterfox is preserving XUL in the browser

Only in the short term. They're all dependent on Firefox's upstream development so in the long term they'll become like Firefox is now or they'll stagnate and die.

Re:Mozilla need to be stopped.

[knorthern knight]

>> Basilisk, Pale Moon and Waterfox is preserving XUL in the browser

> Only in the short term. They're all dependent on Firefox's upstream development
> so in the long term they'll become like Firefox is now or they'll stagnate and die.

I can't mod down and post in the same story, so I chose to to reply Why do you think Pale Moon depends on Firefox? Pale Moon says they are not now and never will be Firefox again. They did not follow with the Australis GUI or Hello or Webextensions. By merely *NOT* following Firefox, Pale Moon is pulling away from Firefox... which is quite sad.

Re:Mozilla need to be stopped.

[theweatherelectric]

Why do you think Pale Moon depends on Firefox?

Basilisk, Pale Moon, and WaterFox all depend on Firefox because their development teams are far too small to keep up the development of a fully-fledged browser. They're going to have to rebase on the latest Firefox code eventually. No doing so will mean the browsers stagnate and fall even further behind.

Additionally, the XUL based add-ons will need developers to maintain them. No one is going to be interested in doing that in the long term because the user base is too small. NoScript is a good example of this. Giorgio Maone has committed to maintaining the old XUL based version of NoScript until June, 2018 after which he'll just focus on the current WebExtensions version.

Concur

[Excelcia]

It was better when it was left for dead. At least then it was left alone. Everything that Mozilla has touched since 2012 has turned to ashes. Actually, it was 2011 when they adopted Google's rapid release and versioning methodology on a project that it was neither technically nor culturally suited for. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Now they are set to do it again with Thunderbird. They are just hell bent on shedding any technical merit or usability they have in favour of cramming UI changes and

The've been doing this since 2011. Mozilla has been quite content to shed any technical merit they had for almost any reason at all. It all started when they saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate Google's development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning method on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Then they went all hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases. It reminds me of one of my country's more famous (and intensely divisive) prime ministers who, when he realized he'd alienated half my country, proceeded to give them the finger from his seat on a train as he was passing through their area. That's Mozilla. They go out of their way to alienate users, and then the ones who have stayed loyal they give the finger to with decisions like this.

All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. This is important so I'm going to say it again. Mozilla cannot copy Google and be better than Google. All they did with Firefox was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was. And now they are running headlong into inevitability again. See here for details.

The PaleMoon project has done for the browser what Mozilla should have done. It was originally a patch on an earlier FF ESR, they have since essentially departed from Firefox, though they still borrow some bits when it makes sense to do so. It's what Firefox should have been if they hadn't taken the detour into crazy six years ago. Maybe they can be convinced to do the same for Thunderbird.

Re:Concur

[Z00L00K]

When it comes to Thunderbird the need/use for plugins isn't really there, it works pretty well standalone.

Re:Concur

[Anonymous Coward]

Enigmail + PGP + TorBirdy.

Re: Concur

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FireTray on Linux. There is no built in way to keep it running in the background on Linux (not even sure about Windows). FireTray provides this.

Also Lightning. Some distros include it with their builds, but its still an extension.

Re: Concur

[Monster_user]

Lightning is no longer an extension. As of Thunderbird 57, which is based on the Firefox/Gecko 57 ESR code base, Lightning is integrated into Thunderbird itself.

Re:Concur

[Anonymous Coward]

I "need" Virtual Identity and MoreFunctionsForAddressBook, and CompactHeader and Select Inbox are welcome additions as well. For my mom I setup some Google Contacts Sync (or something) addon, in the past I also used Sogo Connector(?) for CardDAV sync.

Re:Concur

[erice]

When it comes to Thunderbird the need/use for plugins isn't really there, it works pretty well standalone.

If use more than a handful of addresses, Virtual Identity is absolutely essential.

Re:Concur

[roca]

It's unclear what you think of as "copying Google" in terms of paths Mozilla should not follow.

If you mean "make a fast browser" then you're wrong. For long-term survival, Mozilla absolutely needs Firefox to be as fast or faster than Chrome, and that is achievable, and has been partially achieved; many people have switched to Firefox 57 from Chrome because they feel Firefox is faster.

If you mean "secure the browser using content process sandboxing" then that's wrong too. Without that Firefox has been running a long-term security deficit compared to Chrome, and that is neither sustainable nor responsible. That gap has now been mostly closed.

However, those goals required abandoning the XUL extensions model. Feel free to keep using Pale Moon, but its performance and security will fall further and further behind.

Also you're completely wrong about the development model. Doing a big-bang release once or twice a year was a terrible way to ship a browser. It meant we were unable to react quickly to changes on the Web, changes made by competitors, or changes in underlying operating systems. It created huge pressure for half-baked features to ship before they're ready, since if you missed the deadline that meant 6+ months of delay.

Re:Concur

[fahrbot-bot]

When it comes to Thunderbird the need/use for plugins isn't really there, it works pretty well standalone.

True for me; I only use two add-ons in Thunderbird: CompactHeader and Disable "You".

Re:Concur

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Thunderbird just works, while recent Moz/FFox does not play YOUTUBE video. Best Moz keeps its grubby SJW paws off Thunderbird.

Re:Concur

[AmiMoJo]

Plugins are needed for GPG. That's the only reason I have thunderbird installed.

Re:Concur

[coliva]

Agreed. I have many e-mail addresses and Virtual Identity is an excellent tool for handling them all from a single account.

Re:Concur

[Excelcia]

For long-term survival, Mozilla absolutely needs Firefox to be as fast or faster than Chrome

This is wrong. And it's not just a wrong state to be in but it's indicative (indicting really) of the completely skewed thought chain leading up to that conclusion.

First of all, when is the last time your browser's rendering efficiency was the rate limiting step to how fast a page displayed for you? Browser speed for 99.9% of the user base is a metric that is only even relevant insomuch as it is published as a benchmark. It's relevant because my number is better than their number, so download my browser.

You are looking at the front runner and playing catch up rather than innovating. Your whole benchmark for success is "am I faster than Chrome", "have I implemented the same security features as Chrome", "is my UI like Chrome". Those aren't the questions you need to ask. You need to ask "am I fast enough for my user base", "am I secure", "do I have the UI that my users want", "what features will be a net improvement", and "what is the goodwill cost of implementing this". That last one is a doozer. Mozilla has zero goodwill, and it's not coming back. You cannot win back lost goodwill by zooming in and focusing on the ass of the competitor ahead of you. That's the competitor the audience is watching too.

It created huge pressure for half-baked features to ship before they're ready

I'm not sure I even know how to respond to that. Incredulity doesn't begin to describe my reaction. Did you honestly not see the travesty of less than half baked changes that happened for the first, oh, let's say ten "rapid" releases. There were a lot of things that had to change inside the browser, and also inside the development model before Mozilla went to a rapid release system. If you had to go to that system, make the changes that allow that to work and do those changes first. Really, you should have had a skeleton crew on a LTS for the browser while the main team either completely refactored or started fresh. The browser was not ready for what Mozilla did when it was done. It wasn't readily technically. The codebase was not clean enough. The project management was not in place for it. Changes that needed a major release to accomplish were haphazardly implemented in whatever little chunks happened to be ready at the time, and they were often not compatible one release to the next. The user experience broke on back to back to back releases. First rule of fight club, you don't break prod. Stop arguing that it was a good thing to do.

Re:Concur

[roca]

I'm not talking about page-load speed specifically. It's all about how people perceive the performance of the browser. A lot of people switch browsers in response to that, from Firefox to Chrome, and lately from Chrome to Firefox.

Your speculation about Mozilla's goal-setting is wrong. Success is simple: get more people using Firefox, which means making Firefox superior to the competition in the ways most people care about. Those things don't change much over time: performance, Web sites working properly, maybe security if someone credible tells them a product is more secure, in some cases UI features or ad blocking. Mozilla has no choice but to compete in those areas to remain viable long-term. It would make no sense to stop working on something people care about just because "Chrome did it first". There is no reason why Firefox can't match or surpass Chrome in those areas and win users because of that.

Of course it makes sense to *also* introduce innovative new features, though it's hard to come up with features Google can't easily copy if they prove successful. But Tracking Protection is one such feature.

The "goodwill" you go on about, which I presume is the goodwill of people who wanted nothing to change in the Firefox UI or addons ecosystem, is neither necessary nor sufficient for Mozilla to be successful. (For any proposed change to the Firefox UI, there is a set of die-hard Firefox users who loudly oppose it, even the change *back* to square tabs.) Mozilla has made a completely correct decision to keep improving Firefox for the mass market and refuse to be paralyzed by the demands of do-nothingism.

Re: Concur

[Miamicanes]

Unless you use adhoc aliases (Google it). Then you NEED an extension.

Example: suppose your email address is "foo@bar.net".

You use a unique address for each correspondent, like "foo-potentialspammer@bar.net" (or if you want to be REALLY clever, "foo-potentialspammer$xxxxxxxxxxxx@bar.net", where "xxxxxxxxxxxx" is a 63-bit base36-encoded signature that confirms YOU created the address).

Your mail server sees the "-", matches everything up to it to determine the mailbox, applies any user-defined rules to everything between "-" and "@", then delivers the message if those rules haven't blackholed it.

That way, if some site extorts an email address from you, you can register one like "foo-likelyspammer69@bar.net". If you start getting spam addressed to foo-likelyspammer69@bar.net, you create a rule to nuke email sent to that address and move on.

Ditto, if some otherwise-responsible contact gets his/her addressbook harvested by malware. Nuke the old contact-specific address, and tell them to use a new one going forward. It's a lot easier to say, "dad, you got pwn3d... from now on, email me at foo-fromdad2@bar.net" than it is to change your "real" address and notify everyone you ever converse with.

Anyway, if you do this, you need an extension, because Thunderbird itself doesn't allow you to send email with arbitrary, recipient-specific email addresses (Outlook has never supported it either).

I've been using adhoc aliases for ~15 years. It's the ONLY robust anti-spam tactic capable of effectively dealing with address-harvesting attacks.

Re:Concur

[JohnFen]

I think every point you've made here is either weak or incorrect, especially about the development model.

Rolling release is a pox on the industry.

Re:Concur

[JohnFen]

If Firefox was producing something that was actually better than Chrome, I might agree. But they're not. They're producing Chrome.

Re:Concur

[JohnFen]

Actually, it was 2011 when they adopted Google's rapid release and versioning methodology

I don't have enough information to know if this was the cause, or if the two shared a mutual cause, but the timing certainly is suspicious.

Re:Concur

[therealbev]

+1,000,000...

If it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla's credo is if it ain't broke, we damn well will fix it until it is.

Email is a mature technology. Thunderbird does not need a new UI. It does not need changes to keep up with email technology. The only useful change would be to make encrypted email easy to do and the norm.

The fly in this ointment is that TB needs to pull content from the web for various visual elements in email. Uh, and for tracking, of course. It would probably be best to do that with plugins, not turning it into firefox.

Re:If it ain't broke...

[Lirodon]

Actually the "new UI" looks just like the old one but with the Photon design elements latched on. Doesn't look really different.

Re: If it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

A useful change would be to fix outstanding bugs insyead of pissing away man hours on useless shit. There's a couple of bugs I'd really like fixed that have been outstanding for more than 7 years with no resolution.

Re:If it ain't broke...

[sheramil]

Email is a mature technology. Thunderbird does not need a new UI. It does not need changes to keep up with email technology.

I concur. What they do need changes for is to demonstrate that the coders are earning their pay. This is what has forced the Australian government's Centrelink website to evolve into the hideous, bloated, creeping-featuritis-ised animated icon jangling ipad-optimised pachinko parlor of a video game, rather than, you know, a government website. It looks like it was designed by eight-year-olds on a sugar high.

Re: If it ain't broke...

[Anonymous Coward]

A useful change would be to fix outstanding bugs insyead of pissing away man hours on useless shit.

(whiny child's voice) awwww, that's BORING! let's add another chat client! make it look like discord! so they can send selfies!

My Add-ons

[msc.buff]

I use several add-ons in my daily Thunderbird usage:

1. CompactHeader
2. ConfigDate
3. DKIM Verifier
4. Enigmail
5. Header Tools Lite
6. LookOut
7. Manually sort folders
8. Nostalgy
9. PrintingTools
10. Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)
11. Spamness

I wouldn't mind if some add-ons were integrated (Enigmail, Nostalgy) but don't mess too much with the cored T-Bird.

Re:My Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

You have access to the source code, have fun.

Re:My Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

None of these will work as "WebExtensions", and none of these will be integrated.

Re:My Add-ons

[sasparillascott]

That's the real problem that the Mozilla execs won't care about - all these plugins will need to be rewritten...how many of those authors will do that (i.e. how many of these are already dead but function just fine on the existing Thunderbird codebase)

The program (at least WRT plugins) would have been much better off if it had been kicked out from underneath Mozilla senior executive "good decisions".

Re:My Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why the hell aren't all of you doing something about it? Fork the damn product now. I'm sure you're all ten times more competent than Mozilla here on Slashdot, based on what you're all saying. But something tells me all of this high and mighty talk is just the usual calculated excuse to not do anything and be able to blame someone else when things inevitably go badly for the product you use and "love".

Re:My Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG you are so screwed.

Re:My Add-ons

[DaTrueDave]

Then why the hell aren't all of you doing something about it? Fork the damn product now. I'm sure you're all ten times more competent than Mozilla here on Slashdot, based on what you're all saying. But something tells me all of this high and mighty talk is just the usual calculated excuse to not do anything and be able to blame someone else when things inevitably go badly for the product you use and "love".

Ah, the actual problem, illustrated beautifully: developers/coders don't know how to listen to end-users. They may know how to write code, but their listening skills are almost non-existent. Is it because they live in a bubble, surrounded by other coders? Is it because their skillset just doesn't extend in that direction? Is it because they're guided by priorities (revenue?) other than what their users want/need?

Telling end-users to write code is asinine. You don't hear chefs telling restaurant critics to cook something better their own damn self. You don't see film directors telling movie critics to create their own movie. And you don't see book authors telling book reviewers to write their own novel. But every single time this comes up, you'll see some code writer (or defender of same) pipe up with the advice that if users don't like it, that they're free to fork the project and write their own software. Absolutely ridiculous.

Thunderbird doesn't work

[loufoque]

I stopped using Thunderbird ages ago when they started incorporating sqlite and smart search. It made it completely unable to cope with the amount of emails I have.

It's like they don't understand some people have dozens of gigs of plain text email and are subscribed to a hundred high-volume NNTP groups.

Re:Thunderbird doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my email searches NEVER complete in Thunderbird. I have a lot of email (2GB). But I also have 2x8GB of fast ram, and 512GB of ssd, and 4GHz Ryzen ... the search has enough hardware horsepower to complete. It's just crap software.

Re:Is Google Pressuring Mozilla to Stop Thunderbid

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird competes with gmail...

"teh missing add-on awakens"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ill make this short.
THanks for keeping thunderbird around. i cannot, for the love of god, wrap my head around gmails threading 0_o
please, please(?) can we get a postfix replacement? a "plug-in" that receives and sends emails that can sit on a Qnap, synologic or some low-power always on atom.
the problem of identity persistence is solved with onion addresses.
postfix is everything and the kitchen-sink; mostly because in the old dark ages, there was only one "server" that was running
all the time and from which a whole department (in the morning amred with coffee) was getting its emails.
getting a email was once: "oh please dear joe, you know the admin and you know he likes heather and heather is in my so-and-so class on Wednesday and i can introduce him to her" or such.
seriously, the postfix replement wouldn't need a everything and the kitchen sink (just pop3 and smtp?). please?
yours, honestly thunderbird_user@12345678.onion

Re:"teh missing add-on awakens"

[ahodgson]

Postfix doesn't do POP or IMAP. It doesn't do a lot it doesn't need to do to send and receive SMTP, though, not sure how much more minimal you want. OpenSMTPD, maybe?

Re:"teh missing add-on awakens"

[Anonymous Coward]

thx. as far as i can tell the postfix sends emails to another postfix. the email is then mostly in the local-system users /home directory or /var/spool or something. the pop3 and imap is so the user can access this from a remote (second) computer, which is cool. the thunderbird then is the GUI to this data (fetched via op or imap or whatnot).
the problem is that most users dont have a fixed ip or domain name. w/ a onion domain the problem of reoccurring payment for something that should be build-in when having a internet connection is solved.
the problem of identity persistence (in a good way, like a phone number or living address) is the lynch pin of email.
as it is now, a paid internet connection all by itself doesn't give you identity persistence, unless it is forced onto you via cookies, super cookies and advertisement ID tied to your device MAC or SIM or such. all of these are so more money can be made of your "identity" but are for the most part not something you can use or manage much (opt-out, delete cookie, yes or no).
one would assume that having just a internet connection, without a fixed ip or paid domain should allow for some smart way to get a persistent identity which is governed decentralized or for free in anyway. the idea of a always-on internet connection and thus a always-on device is not meet by rolling-eyes, like in the 56k-dialup times anymore? always-on NAS w/ virtual machine capable processors are not that rare either?
thus the idea, that a own email server located at your own premises is ... too far fetched?
maybe the idea that a sent email can go DIRECTLY to a receiver without having to rot and catch mold in some massive datacenter email bucket is just a toy idea and not really useful?
captcha: sentinel : )

Re:Is Google Pressuring Mozilla to Stop Thunderbid

[Anonymous Coward]

Google does not need to "pressure" anyone. They can pretty much erase it from existence with no second thought. I think you're terribly underestimating the power supercorporations like Google wield.

TBird is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I quit using it five years ago. Basic bugs got ignored and as of yesterday I got several emails asking if I was still having issues. it is a dumpster fire.

What about Lighting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking only for myself, I could almost certainly get along without all the thunderbird extensions except Lighting. I suspect there are a lot of other people out there who are the same way. I don’t want to use sunbird or some separate app. I may as well use the bundled calendar app for Windows 10 if I’m going to do that.

The second Microsoft adds a unified inbox to their desktop client, I’m switching from thunderbird.

Re:What about Lighting?

[HiThere]

The only ThunderBird extension I use is also Lightning. But I'm one of those who wouldn't touch any software from MS.

So.... has kmail gotten any better? Last time I tried it, it crashed after a couple of months, apparently from an overloaded mail box. That *was* a few years ago, however.

Re:What about Lighting?

[ahodgson]

I had to abandon Kmail, the update to work with KDE 5 made it not work at all. I abandoned KDE completely, in fact.

I've been using Evolution for 6 months, it's not as good as Kmail used to be, but it's the next best thing.

Re:What about Lighting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kmail (and KDE) of the version 4 series is excellent. I use Kmail 4.14.10 and haven't ever had a crash or something funny happening.

Stay away from KDE 5 for a few more years though.

Re:What about Lighting?

[JohnFen]

So.... has kmail gotten any better? Last time I tried it, it crashed after a couple of months

You managed to make it work right for a couple of months??

That beats my record.

Mozilla is beholden to Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. Gmail is a mail provider; Thunderbird is a mail client.

Mozilla now gets nearly ALL of its revenue from Google, which is why its anti-Google rhetoric is so obviously disingenuous. Mozilla will never seriously challenge Google lest it be cut off and dry up into nothing.

If you want to challenge Google, use Brave and DuckDuckGo.

Fkd if they do, fkd if they dont

[Anonymous Coward]

The TB-planning mailing list makes for somber reading.. The TB maintainers clearly know they have been royally screwed.

In a nutshell FF have got 1000s of programmers creating new bugs in the underlying browser engine each week and they stop supporting old builds with security updates after only a year. TB have almost no full time staff to take over security patching so TB have no choice but to upgrade to the latest FF engine when ESR reaches EOL.

Forking is the right thing to do but TB don't have the money to fork.

Luckily TB has its own donation page now

Re: APK MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

[Anonymous Coward]

Send him a postcard.

This can't be good...

[QuietLagoon]

...adding a new user interface

Mozilla has shown their ignorance regarding the UI that the users want. Combine that with Mozilla being too arrogant to learn from their mistakes. A UI change cannot be a change for the better.

Re:This can't be good...

[QuietLagoon]

Troll? Have the Mozilla fanbois taken over the site? I expressed an opinion about Mozilla, and it's a troll? 'Tis a shame Mozilla has become so thin-skinned that they need to be held in adulation, and cannot handle even mild criticism.

Re:This can't be good...

[Anonymous Coward]

You say others have a think skin, yet you can't stand it when others point out that you're offering nothing but non constructive, thinly veiled antagonism? Wow. No one expects quality discussions here when Mozilla is the topic, and this is exactly why. What a bunch of do-nothing crybabies we've all become, that we honestly think anyone gives two shits what we think about them enough to come here and mod down a random opinion as a troll.

Re: This can't be good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot. Enjoy your stay. Make sure to ignore APK and Creimer while you are visiting.

Re:This can't be good...

[Anonymous Coward]

...adding a new user interface

Mozilla has shown their ignorance regarding the UI that the users want. Combine that with Mozilla being too arrogant to learn from their mistakes. A UI change cannot be a change for the better.

Somebody already posted screenshots, and it's exactly what you fear.

Palemoon community

[TheOuterLinux]

Now needs to fork Thunderbird. We could call it Palehorse since it still uses Native American labeling and horses were used for mail delivery.

Re:Palemoon community

[erice]

Now needs to fork Thunderbird. We could call it Palehorse since it still uses Native American labeling and horses were used for mail delivery.

There was one: FossaMail but it looks like it was discontinued.

Re:Palemoon community

[TheOuterLinux]

Well that sucks :(

Re:Uh-Oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I am guessing all the usefulness of the Add-in's and themes will no longer work, and the interface will begin to look exactly like GMail. Or worse, an Outlook clone.

Nope. They'll mimic AOL!

Re:Is Google Pressuring Mozilla to Stop Thunderbid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Google give a shit about an email client, Brenda? It's more likely that the ACTUAL programmers working at Mozilla were substituted with feminists who CAN'T FUCKING COPE.

Goodbye enigmail, lightning, usability!

[Anonymous Coward]

Without enigmail, lightning, and the current UI, there's no reason for me not to just xfreerdp into a Windows VM to use Outlook. Do they *want* to kill thunderbird?

Re:Goodbye enigmail, lightning, usability!

[JohnFen]

Well, except that then you'd have to use Outlook.

Re:Is Google Pressuring Mozilla to Stop Thunderbid

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is not right here.

You're right. It's the gratuitous <tt> </tt> tags

seamonkey is next....

[Anonymous Coward]

seamonkey will be next to switch, sometime soon after firefox esr catches up with the changeover.

thunderbird changing will have hardly any impact... far fewer people use it than firefox.. and of those that do, an even smaller percentage actually use an addon in it.

Great communication, guys

[EndlessNameless]

"Mozilla engineers have already started work on adding support for WebExtensions in Thunderbird, albeit there's no concrete deadline when this feature will land in a stable release, nor when Thunderbird will stop supporting legacy add-ons."

Adding to this, they will shift away from C++/Javascript/XUL to "web technologies". Now I can't find a language spec for "web technologies", so it sounds like neither one of us knows exactly where they're headed.

Taking all of this into consideration, their press release boils down to: We don't know what we're doing or when, but it's going to be great.

Re:Great communication, guys

[tepples]

I can't find a language spec for "web technologies"

In the context of browser extensions, the relevant specs are ECMA-262, CSS, HTML Living Standard, and WebExtensions API.

Thanks

[OpenSourced]

That's why I keep coming to /., even when the quality of the articles keep going down. It's not very verbose and you get the important alerts.

This alert has allowed me to disable automatic updates in Thunderbird, because apparently some people cannot left good enough alone.

Less's Law

[Anne Thwacks]

It is part of a master plan to phase out usefulness from the Internet. And, in the long term, not just from the Internet but from all software.

It is entirely feasible, that within a matter of a few short years, the entire Internet will become completely unusable.

Based on the current rate of progress, sometimes described as Less's Law, I would say it gets about 1/2 as useful every 18 months.

thunderbird

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont use any plugin and use it pretty much planejane. Its simple and easy to use mail program. DONT mess it up trying to make it be an all in one do everything tool.

Rusty trombones all around!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rusty crusty buttholes!!! Woooooooooo!

Now for some credit where I feel it due...

[thegreatbob]

... to a possibly surprising recipient: Despite being a crusty/unreliable piece of crap, Outlook has no shortage of features, and exposes them in not-particularly-difficult-to-find ways. The UI is probably the least 'afflicted' by the ribbon of the various Office products I've used in recent history, as the ribbon winds up getting used more like a conventional menu. While we are not expecting Thunderbird to be a full-featured Outlook knock-off, the current set of features (while missing a few) is still quite good; any reduction thereof means they're taking a step back, and no longer see themselves as a viable competitor to the old behemoth (regardless of if it is true or not.

Closing statements, directed towards The Mozilla Foundation:

I will continue to use Thunderbird, even older versions, until it becomes a security liability and/or no longer does what I need it to do.
I will have little choice but to return to Outlook for work purposes, if WebExtensions is to be ramrodded down our collective gullets.
Thunderbird may very well be your last opportunity to prove to the world that you have not completely lost your way; don't blow it.

Re:Now for some credit where I feel it due...

[thegreatbob]

Also, in this context, the concept of fixing 'technical debt' reads to me like 'defaulting on a loan'.

Re:Now for some credit where I feel it due...

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook forgot how to do threaded email several versions ago. Sure there's "conversation view", but that's utter shit and has nothing to do with threading.

Re: APK MARATHON THIS WEEKEND

[Anonymous Coward]

L-dubs indahouse.

Re: Impersonating me again = weak

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard Creimer ran your Host File engine thru a hex editor and replaced every instance of APK with Creimer. Then repackaged it. He is now spamming Creimers Host File engine on YouTube and slashdot.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a die-hard Mozilla fan, until they deliberately broke their software. Thankfully I saw the writing on the wall and switched to Mutt right after learning about Firefox WebExtensions. I knew they'd be hitting Tbird next. The most important add-on for me was Enigmail (for PGP-enabled features), and that level of integration simply isn't possible with WebExtensions.

Once you tweak it to your liking, mutt is pretty fantastic.

Impossible (or not likely/not easy to do)

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: In order to do it you'd need more than hexedits as my program checks itself vs. alteration (to do so would need a SERIOUS 'custom hack job' & reassembly after disassembly) & why do you all "ride" creimer for?

* I haven't seen him do anything wrong or act the troll either.

APK

P.S.=> Only thing I can figure is he got the best of "your kind", the UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous troll OR that he IS doing something that adversely affects YOUR AGENDA & he's doing it well (the only reason anyone gets attacked that way + so much IS that - which I actually welcome @ times as you often make me look GOOD proving my points vs. your bs, others not - but, it proves I'm doing a great job helping others & 'paying it forward' (1 of my goals) in APK Hosts File Engine 10++ 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/ )... apk

Re: Impossible (or not likely/not easy to do)

[Anonymous Coward]

The original post never claimed to be APK. Nobody has impersonated you on this thread. Facts are facts. Time to get busy on using machine learning to detect your posts. I seriously will donate the code to Slashdot and I suspect they'll be happy to implement it to filter your posts. If so, your days of spamming this website are numbered.

Re: Impossible (or not likely/not easy to do)

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post is unidentifiable anonymous "ne'er-do-wells" Apk defeated before who are butthurt and do this out of self caused butthurt in them losing technical debates to him. We all see it you know. Do you honestly feel you are deceiving anyone but yourself?

Re:Impossible (or not likely/not easy to do)

[tepples]

Is the manual for this application posted online? I searched Google for "apk hosts file engine" manual (and documentation) but didn't see anything relevant.

Who are you trying to fool? Yourself??

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Your kind (unidentifiable ac"ne'er-do-well" trolls) = result of YOU starting w/ me 1st everytime & you don't ue your MANY FAKES NAME registered 'luser' sockpuppets vs. me anyone!

Why?

I have numerous accounts of you doing so starting trouble w/ myself - so now, you're REDUCED TO STALKING ME BY YOUR UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS posts - THIS VERY THREAD IS THE PROOF IN & OF ITSELF starting here https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11531969&cid=55809503/

* Your problems is you THINK people here are stupid - they're not THAT stupid!

APK

P.S.=> Nobody's THAT dumb as you seem to think & they are telling you so they know you attack 1st & keep doing it, even attempting to "impersonate" me... apk

Re: Who are you trying to fool? Yourself??

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the worst kind of person. You can't handle when your own behavior is turned against you. You happily dish it out to others but can't handle when others do it to you. That leaves you with two choices: 1) stop your offensive behavior or 2) get over yourself and accept that things like this are the cost of your vile actions.

By the way, the original post never claimed to be APK. It never once said it was APK, but merely made predictions about what he will do this weekend.

Re: Impersonating me again = weak

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no clue who is responsible for the posts you dislike. You've harassed so many users and made so many personal attacks that you can't even come close to keeping track of all of the enemies you've made. Regardless, a good first step might be an apology to as many users as possible that you've harassed. Follow that up with a sincere pledge to reform your behavior.

Your problem isn't that you've debated with people. The problem is that you've turned to personal attacks and made a lot of enemies. Even so, you can't let it go and proceed to either follow them around with nasty replies to their posts or simply spamming lots of articles with links to your arguments. You can't seem to figure out that this isn't normal behavior, and that it's the reason you have so many enemies.

You start w/ me 1st & I finish it + you

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I know what you are exactly & so does anyone else: BUTTHURT unidentifiable ac "ne'er-do-well" trolls! You prove it w/ every post you do projecting in fact!

You cause your OWN butthurt & tried to "take me on" in tech & lost & you not using your many sockpuppets anymore is the direct result of YOU starting w/ me 1st everytime & you don't ue your MANY FAKES NAME registered 'luser' sockpuppets vs. me anyone!

Why?

I have numerous accounts of you doing so starting trouble w/ myself - so now, you're REDUCED TO STALKING ME BY YOUR UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS posts - THIS VERY THREAD IS THE PROOF IN & OF ITSELF starting here https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11531969&cid=55809503/

APK

P.S.=> I don't have ANY PROBLEM wiping you clean out. I have no problem. You do obviously (you're butthurt & caused it for yourself)... apk

Re: You start w/ me 1st & I finish it + you

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I said, you're incapable of acknowledging your own wrongdoing and admitting why others find your behavior so offensive. Your reply has simply proved my point. You need to take some time to reflect on your own behavior and how you've crossed so many lines. I hope that someday you have a change of heart and decide it's time for some serious reforms. Contrition would be to your benefit as it might start to repair your reputation. People here associate 'APK' with awful behavior toward others rather than the security software you write. I'm not sure that's the reputation you want for yourself, yet it's precisely how others and I view you. By the way, if you come back with the same kind of attacks, you'll once again prove my point that I'm making about you. I don't take solace in being right about that, because I sincerely hope you'll admit that you've been nasty to people and need to reform your behavior.

Re: You start w/ me 1st & I finish it + you

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk is correct. You are deluding yourself and projecting. You start this and everyone knows you attack him constantly first as you did here since you are butthurt he always got the best of you.

Re: You start w/ me 1st & I finish it + you

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post was made by APK. This is another example of his childish behavior and why users find his behavior so reprehensible. Nobody is fooled by this tactic, APK. Once again, you've shown how awful your behavior is and why you've made so many enemies. Have you ever considered why other users don't have as many enemies as you do? I assure you, it's not because you're right and they're all wrong. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen you admit to being wrong. You simply double down and attack more. Perhaps you ought to go reflect on your behavior.

Re: You start w/ me 1st & I finish it + you

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are deluded thinking anyone believes that but yourself in you also projecting your own methods and attempts at projecting your horrible behaviour onto apk.

No, I handled you perfectly... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: You got to yourself causing your reprehensible unidentifiable ac trolling butthurt by starting w/ me & losing vs. me every single time. You prove it starting this bs here & not using your "registered 'lusernames'" many sockpuppets you keep for your FAKE LIVES & instead impersonating me or stalking me or spreading lies about me online via your unidentifiable ac posts (pitiful, like you).

* ... & you KNOW that too (or you have serious issues DELUDING YOURSELF).

APK

P.S.=> Amazing how total "LOON" you've gone over it - you must be some SPOILED little PETULANT CHILD who always "got his way w/ mommy & daddy" Well - I'm not them (well then again? QUESTION: "Who's YO DADDY boy?" ANSWER = ME, lol)... apk

Re: No, I handled you perfectly... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to practice up on my machine learning skills. It's easy to determine which posts you've made and which ones you haven't. I'm going to develop a tool to determine whether a post was made by you or someone else. Once I effectively train the system to identify your posts, I'm going donate it to Slashdot so they can effectively screen out the remainder of your posts. It'll be a good exercise to practice my machine learning skills.

Is it fork time?

[Cognitive Dissident]

This sounds like they are about to start the mindless updating for the sake of updating that has ruined Firefox. Can some other group be persuaded to fork the current Thunderbird? Wouldn't an integrated email client be a good addition to the Libre Office suite, for example?

What do you use instead for lots of email?

[Paul Fernhout]

Just curious... I want to build better tools myself for that use case, but maybe something better is out there already?

BTW, you can also turn off some of the indexing functionality in TB -- I think I had to do that myself a few years ago for performance reasons.

Re: What do you use instead for lots of email?

[loufoque]

I moved everything to GMail.
Not ideal, but it can deal with the data, and has other advantages to.

Re: What do you use instead for lots of email?

[Paul Fernhout]

Thanks. For myself, I just could not see handing over all my correspondence to Google -- although of course they probably have most of it considering how many people anyone corresponds with these days use gmail.

Will stop updates then

[oregonjohn]

Thunderbird works great in our small office. The only extension we use that is critical is InsertLinkToLocalFile. The chances of that getting re-written are zero, unless I do it and I won't. We have separate accounts for inter-office emails where we can share links to client folders and keep track of the emails as threads.

Tepples its in 2 places

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & In the distro (.txt files) that extract to the folder you create for its portable .exe & .exe itself (resource strings embedded into a "READ ME" tab control's embedded memo field).

* All of which covers use of hosts, what their benefits are or can be in full, troubleshooting, installation & more (as well as a pretty damn comprehensive text on hosts themselves in that READ ME tab memo field which is summoned by the HELP menu's "General Help" submenu too as well as accessing it directly onscreen).

Tepples you also know I am "BIG ON" self-contained single part .exe with no dependencies on external moving parts that may be faulty (libs/frameworks etc.) so WHY would I use external documentation that's not local too then?

THINK ABOUT IT!

(Lastly - You know, of ALL people, I would've thought YOU checked it out by now & tried it - oh well - I can't be RIGHT about EVERYTHING (lol, though I usually am for what? 99.999++% of most things?? LOL!))

APK

P.S.=> The SFX winrar installer (locked vs. alteration internally via options winrar has for it to protect OR rebuild a corrupted one) initial screen also lends some on how to install & use it too... apk

Based on Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

"plans that include fixing some "technical debt" by incorporating the recent changes in the Mozilla engine into Thunderbird"

Most Firefox devs don't care about Thunderbird and management has demonstrated they have other priorities. Why continue to base TB on code that's driven by Firefox development? That's one thing that keeps me from wanting to contribute to Thunderbird.

Leaves Me Wondering...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have been using it for 10+ years in one computer. My only extensions are Lightning and Enigmail - both are Must Haves and no new version is acceptable without them. So if Mozilla is thinking about throwing out non-WebExtensions and those 2 can't make the cut, it's over and I'm moving to Windows Mail aka lobotomized Outlook.

It is unlikely to matter at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

There already are very few Thunderbird extensions. I tried to search for one that puts number of unread emails in some visible place and there is no one compatible with current version. Even freaking web-mail clients do a better work by updating tab title.

Re:It is unlikely to matter at all.

[thegreatbob]

I was able to get FireTray (assuming you want an unread count in your system tray) working by changing the supported version flag in the .xpi file (which is just a ZIP file).

Re:It is unlikely to matter at all.

[thegreatbob]

For clarity, one must edit install.rdf and change the 38.0 to some much higher number.

best cross platform opensource

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is one of the best cross platform opensource mail clients out there. I've been using it in my small company for over 10 years. In my opinion lack of major changes in the development is a pro not a con. It is the better product from the two witch mozzila delivers (firefox, thunderbird). I ditched firefox long ago.

FUCK

[MrL0G1C]

So they're basically going to mutilate the UI, hide the menus and replace that with meaningless icons and hard to find settings that take more clicks to get to. What the hell is it with these fucking morons, they're everywhere fucking up UIs, changing them from meaningful words that name the actions they fulfill to stupidly laid out icons in fucking weird places and layouts where you can't discern where one section begins and another ends. Because progress, because some fucking idiots think everything has to look new all the time, can we create a fucking virus to wipe out these fucking brainless sheeple, the planet is overpopulated anyhow. /rant over... for now.

Re:FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that any and all changes they make are to justify their continued work. Without changes there is nothing for them to do.

Re: Mozilla is a bunch of shitbag SJWs!!!

[megamind]

What happened to phasing out Thunderbird?

I'm lucky

[JohnFen]

Although I have depended heavily on Thunderbird for many years, I only use it as an email reader, and I only read emails in plain text.

So, as sad (and unexpected) as it is to see this shift to WebExtensions, at least I am escaping unscathed from this particular change. If you don't use extensions, the change is irrelevant to you.

This is a world of difference from when they did it to Firefox, which has ended up meaning that I have to use a fork.

Re:I'm lucky

[JohnFen]

Except that I'm not lucky in that they're changing the UI. If the changes resemble the changes made for Firefox, that will be a bitter pill to swallow.

still using 1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using Thunderbird 1.5.0.14. Works like a champ. I didn't even know it had add-ons. Why "upgrade" something if it still does its job years later? It's for email. If I want "something" to another task I get that "something". My tracfone does talk and text. My camera takes pictures and video. My TV isn't on the internet. My computer is. Quit trying to make one thing be every thing.

Worst idea ever: Webextension without a complete A

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be 100% faithful to Firefox beginning when it's name was firebird.
When I realised most of my favorite extensions (download them all, add to search, etc) were just thrown to garbage in Quantum and no f### way to rewrite them using Webextension api, I found myself thinking to switch to Chrome for the first time ever.
I mean, yeah, webextension is a good idea to write cross-browser extensions but why, why stop supporting legacy, specific Extensions. The API is so limiting, Firefox just stopped to be a good platform for experimentation