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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.
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.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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.
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.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
This scares me.
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.
"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.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
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.