Thunderbird is go: 128 now out with revamped 'Nebula' UI Following the new ESR version of Firefox, upon which it is based, the latest Thunderbird is out too – with a fresh new look. Thunderbird 128 is now available on Windows, macOS and Linux. It's based on the latest Mozilla Firefox, a release we covered last week. This is the latest extended support release of Firefox, meaning …
Yes, but on Linux at least it can be fixed in both Firefox and Thunderbird. For Thunderbird, go into the settings and click "Config Editor..." at the bottom of the "General" settings page. Then modify the following preferences:
widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled false
widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.allow-buttons true
widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size 1.0
widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 25
I think the last setting doesn't take into account HiDPI screens, so I suggest trying a few different sizes.
It doesn't seem to be accessible from the Settings menu in Firefox. Go to about:config instead.
There isn't much contrast between the slider an background on the scroll bar. It really needs a proper 3D setting to outline it but I suppose that's forbidden by the style police these days. I think I'll keep using Seamonkey as email and main browser until they break that (the calendar is already starting to rot).
Sorry, I should have mentioned that it's about:config in the address bar to access the properties in Firefox.
The other fixes I have to restore as much sanity as possible to scrollbars are to create a file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for GTK 2.x applications. That file contains:
style "myscrollbar"
{
GtkRange::stepper-size = 24
GtkRange::trough-under-steppers = 1
GtkScrollbar::has-backward-stepper = 1
GtkScrollbar::has-forward-stepper = 1
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 24
GtkScrollbar::trough-border = 2
}
class "GtkScrollbar" style "myscrollbar"
For GTK 3.x applications it's two files. The first is ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini:
[Settings]
gtk-primary-button-warps-slider=false
And the second is ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:
.scrollbar.vertical slider,
scrollbar.vertical slider {
min-width: 25px;
background-color: #2D6027;
}
.scrollbar.horizontal.slider,
scrollbar.horizontal slider {
min-height: 25px;
background-color: #2D6027;
}
.scrollbar.vertical.slider:hover,
scrollbar.vertical:hover slider {
min-width: 25px;
}
.scrollbar.horizontal.slider:hover,
scrollbar.horizontal:hover slider {
min-height: 25px;
}
scrollbar.vertical button.down {
-gtk-icon-source: -gtk-icontheme("pan-down-symbolic");
}
scrollbar.vertical button.up {
-gtk-icon-source: -gtk-icontheme("pan-up-symbolic");
}
scrollbar.horizontal button.down {
-gtk-icon-source: -gtk-icontheme("pan-end-symbolic");
}
scrollbar.horizontal button.up {
-gtk-icon-source: -gtk-icontheme("pan-start-symbolic");
}
.scrollbar,
scrollbar {
-GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: 1;
-GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: 1;
}
scrollbar button {
min-width: 25px;
min-height: 25px;
}
Man, this skinny scrollbar thing is getting boring. It's nit picking at this point...if my 76 year old daft old man with his Hubble telescope style glasses and arthritic fingers like a bunch of pornstars dicks can handle skinny scrollbars with no complaints, it's not actually a problem.
The actual problem with seniors and mouse movement is mouse acceleration curves. Turn those off and there is no longer a precision issue with folks that struggle, because the pointer doesn't overshoot or undershoot...mouse acceleration is way harder for people to get used to than skinny scroll bars.
The only interface design choice that has ever pissed off my old man is modern TV UIs...where you have menus that scroll horizontally. For most of his life, scrolling has been up and down to find things...horizontal is just alien to him, especially when there are no obvious cues to suggest that more stuff is available horizontally...a half rendered thumbnail isn't enough of a cue for some people it seems.
So you are suggesting the problems caused by dumb UI changes can be worked around by people fiddling with their mouse settings as opposed to fiddling around with config settings in Thunderbird.
Why make these sort of dumb UI changes in the first place? Maybe if someone is using Thunderbird on a mobile then narrow disappearing scrollbars are useful but for everyone else using a desktop monitor, the amount of screen space this saves is totally irrelevant and just makes the UI more hassle to use.
They haven't chosen to ignore it, they just don't use GTK as their GUI framework and the default theme doesn't follow system settings. There is an option under settings -> appearance that forces Firefox to use your system theme if you so desire. They can't enable it by default because there are tons of people out there that insist on using fucking ugly broken themes and it would cause the users of those themes to assume Firefox is broken, not the theme...some themes ship with a Firefox specific theme element, some don't...the myriad of 1337 vapourwave themes out there that are only designed to look good in a screenshot on /r/unixporn usually don't ship with any deep customisation or systemwide consideration.
They likely ship with this option off by default because it's nigh on impossible for them to test with every possible combination of themes out there and they can't guarantee compatibility with each and every theme out there...their goal is likely to ensure that Firefox looks the same on first install on everything first time and leave it to the user to break/customise it if they want to.
They're not imposing anything, because they leave the choice up to you, they're just trying to ensure that out of the box the look and feel is as standardised as possible.
That said, there are situations where Firefox will default to following the system settings...such as when you use the Adwaita theme on Gnome for example...if you're using PurpleX_Vaporwave_CatsArse_Kawaii_Anime_Compact_v2_Dark_Edition_Sweet_Candy_Elite_Rainbow_Theme_Extra_Dark on KDE it won't...because it is likely to be garbage.
No, I'm suggesting that the UI changes aren't that dumb at all, the problems arise because of decisions made elsewhere. Mouse acceleration makes it much harder for people to precisely control a pointer, if anything mouse acceleration by default is a dumb idea.
If people start complaining about the terminals on 9v batteries shocking their tongues, it's not the fault of the battery design, it's the fault of the person licking it.
I personally don't want to see scrollbars at all because it's clear to me which panes are scrollable and which aren't. Skinny scrollbars is the compromise between those that want them and those that don't.
Scrollbars are really annoying in a lot of modern apps because they expose the lazy imprecise design that has been done. For example, on a lot of responsive websites where the site just slighty exceeds the view port. Causing horizontal scrollbars to show when they really shouldn't.
We've also had scrollwheels now for decades, I firmly believe that people still clicking and dragging on scrollbars are in the minority here...I agree that there should be an option to turn them on that is easy to find if someone wants it, but thick scrollbars by default absolutely should not be a thing.
Hiding scrollbars has absolutely nothing to do with saving space either, it's about reducing the number superfluous visual cues in a given UI. As the old folks would say "making it less busy".
How about, instead of spending so much effort in changing the UI which gets media attention, Thunderbird works on fixing bugs?!!! Wouldn't that be an amazing feat!! How about fixing the years-long bugs of having problems cut and pasting quoted text from one place to another inside a reply and actually having the paste work?? How about fixing the bug where, if you type then erase on the first line of the reply, Thunderbird doesn't remove and reset the type style to Variable Width instead of the style that you actually have set as default??
And those are just a start. Wouldn't that be a better use of programmer's labours??!
Or the bug where typing an email becomes incredibly slow; resolved, IIRC, by whitelisting one of Thunderbird’s data files in Windows Defender’s exclusion list. You could argue that this is a Defender issue not a Thunderbird one, but no other email client that I’m aware of is similarly affected.
A minor gripe, though. I am despite appearances a Thunderbird fan, and will be giving this new version a spin.
[Author here]
> The point of the new UI is to reduce the maintenance burden by sharing code with Firefox.
[[Citation needed]]
AIUI much of the new code is being written in Rust to replace Javascript, but I specifically didn't mention this because I couldn't find hard numbers.
> All the people working on this are volunteers, so they get to decide for themselves what they want to do with their free time.
Are you sure about that?
Thunderbird is not some community project.
It's now under MZLA:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/30/mozilla_thunderbird_has_a_new_nest/
They have paid staff. It's not just a community effort.
[Author here]
> Thunderbird doesn't remove and reset the type style to Variable Width instead of the style that you actually have set as default??
Easy. Don't use formatting. I am 100% serious. I automatically deduct at least 50% credibility from anyone who sends me a rich-text email.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/23/email_like_a_pro/
Thunderbird defaults to "Automatic" creation of replies, deciding for itself in the use of HTML or plain text if no override is set.
A bug is a bug is a bug. If "Automatic" is the default for replies and Thunderbird selects HTML, then Thunderbird at least has a responsibility to actually properly handle the user experience whilst doing it.
Honestly I never bothered to search out Thunderbird's reply handling until now; since so many people use webmail interfaces nowadays I receive almost all rich text communications on this workstation. I have plaintext set as my personal default on my smartphone, tho.
[Author here]
> Thunderbird defaults to "Automatic" creation of replies, deciding for itself in the use of HTML or plain text if no override is set.
Sure. I have Plain Text set as default -- obvs -- but it still tries to reply to rich text messages in rich text.
The Shift key modifies the behaviour. If Ctrl+r gives me a formatted reply window, I hit Esc to cancel it and then Ctrl+R (i.e. Ctrl+Shift+R) to tell it I want the other kind.
(I presume this works for a plain-text email if I want a formatted reply, but as I have never *ever* wanted to do that, I haven't tried.)
P.S. T'bird correctly understands and renders *bold*, _underline_ and /italics/ in plain text replies, and it gets it correct, unlike Markdown. It is smart enough not to do this to embedded punctuation in URLs and so on.
Or the absurd default 'search' - it uses stemming so if you search for 'wedding' it will return any mail with Weds in it - that widely used short version of Wednesday.
Stemming can't be disabled.
So you have to use the "control shift f" search feature and enter a load of filters before it will do a search.
The date field in those filters defaults to "Date is" whereas 99.99% of real life searches you want "Date from".
Then it has a horrible way to remove a folder or sender from your search results, so it can easily take a dozen clicks to filter down to a usable list.
It's like nobody ever at Moz has used Thunderbird to do real emailing - any long term user will tell you the search is garbage.
People fiddle with UIs because they're visible.
I don't see why there's this obsession with changing things for the sake of changing things. It could just be a modern version of the vintage Flanders and Swan song "The Gasman Cometh".
( https://genius.com/Flanders-and-swann-the-gas-man-cometh-lyrics )
The most important thing you should know is that the upgrade is a one-way process: once you migrate your profile to "Nebula," the older version can no longer open it. If this is a critical app for you, best wait for at least the first point-release. ®
Oh crap. So I have one Mac on Mojave and one Mac on Catastrophe. I tried to download and install the latest v128 and found it didn't run on Mojave and it did on Catastrophe. Thanks to this article pointing to the Betterbird website which I wasn't aware of until now, I find out there that there's an IMAP message corruption bug in v128 but there's no way back now as the profile isn't compatible. So I guess I'm not going to touch Thunderbird v128 for a while.
I would lose the e-mail I've moved from the server to my local archive and I have no idea what's changed in the profile either.
So this release is just the usual kind of mediocrity we expect from modern software development. If this were me, this data loss bug which has apparently been hanging round for six months would be a blocker and this release wouldn't get out the door until it's fixed.
You should not have to. If they introduce a breaking change in data format they should automatically backup the old format so you can go backwards.
They pulled the same shit with 115 as well, and of course when its an automatic update and you don't (a) realise it will break things, and (b) don't realise bugs until a few days and/or don't have that much of a daily/hourly backup you are screwed. Oh for ZFS by default with every updated snapshotted first....
[Author here]
> You should not have to.
Well, no, you shouldn't, it's true.
But there is a workaround. I've tried it since I wrote this piece.
You can tell an older version of T'bird to open a profile from a newer version with a switch to the profile manager:
````
thunderbird -P --allow-downgrade
````
So, step 1: find how to invoke your binary directly and how to invoke the profile manager. Easy on Linux, harder on macOS and Windows. MacOS has an option under Help/Troubleshooting Information, or you can go to `about:profiles`.
Find the profile you want to load, and then use the command above to choose it.
It worked perfectly for me, and I was able to downgrade from the beta to 128.0esr without any issue.
How far backwards it will go I have not tested yet, though.
I agree. I do a nightly encrypted backup of /home. I have the last 14 available. If I leave where the computer is, for anything over a day, I take a copy of the last backup with me on a USB (encrypting the encrypted backup in case the USB is lost, I'm not paranoid...but I play one on TV).
Fortunately for me, my Mac doesn't know about the article author's alternative reality. So it runs Betterbird on Monterey quite happily.
I switched to Betterbird because Thunderbird became completely unresponsive due to the size of the mailbox; Betterbird works quite a bit better in that regard.
No, they broke the UI long before 91.13.1 and 91.13.1 was last version you could configure (with difficulty) to match the desktop style, like other sane desktop applications,
I do not like Firefox 128 UI. or any previous for years now, which totally ignores my desktop and looks like a worse version of hateful Chrome. Also what insanity is it that Mozilla removed "Primary password" on the mobile browser, or that zoom on mobile is like zooming PDF and no reflow like desktop Ctrl + or -?
Yet, still they have never fixed printing bugs, not that I print often.
The Thunderbird account creation got a bit broken when they decided on a Wizard, and has bugs if you use multiple addresses with one inbox.
Mozilla lost the plot when they broke UI, broke plug-ins / extensions etc on FF & Tbird and chasing Google. No wonder market share has collapsed.
> They lost the plot when they split browser and mail/news client apart
TBH, I liked that. My browser sessions often get _very_ big, sometimes with hundreds of tabs.
That made my email slow to a crawl.
And, occasionally, I had to kill the browser when it became unresponsive, and in the old Mozilla era, that took email with it.
I prefer to keep 'em separated.
Just a couple of days ago I gave Firefox a try on my nice new Samsung tablet. I thought it might be nice to have an adblocker, but the browser was so shitty that after trying it for an hour I uninstalled it and returned to Chrome.
> I gave up on Blunderbird a few years ago thanks to the copious bugs and poor performance.
When I started at my previous job, I tried _every single email client_ in the company's distro's repositories.
Many lasted under half an hour. A few lasted longer.
Evolution lasted days, but while the UI is better than it was, I don't like it. It is for Outlook fans.
Sylpheed has immense promise but CLAWS simply does more. They should merge.
Claws lasted 6 months, but every time it fetches mail, the whole program locks up. That drove me up the wall.
So in the end, I went back to T'bird and I've never left again. It is the best cross-platform FOSS email client there is, bar none.
There are good Windows clients, good MacOS clients, and perfectly decent Linux ones, but only one app bestrides them all.
I've been using Thunderbird for literally decades, and there are some annoyances that have never never been addressed, even though they've been in the bug list for 15+ years. The one that's annoyed me more than anything is the search rules lack of a simple "From or To" option. There's a From, and a To, and a From/To/CC/BCC, but there's not From/To.
Oh, you can have rule 1 be From X, and rule 2 be To X, and OR them, but that only works if those are the only two rules. If you want to see only the mails between you and person X over the past year, there's no way to define [[From X OR To X] AND [Age less than 1 year]].
I tried Betterbird last year, and the first thing I noticed is that they've implemented search groups, which is exactly what I've been wanting for 15+ years. There are a lot of other fixes as well, but that was the big one for me.
If Thunderbird has finally implemented something like that, I might consider switching back, but unless there is some security issue in Betterbird that isn't being patched, I don't see this new Thunderbird version as a reason to go back.
I'm happy to see the project moving forward, though.
Yes, that release announcement was a bit over the top, not to mention retentively inaccurate.
If one believes in the Big Bang theory (the actual physics one, not the telly show), supernovas do not create "building blocks of creation".
They merely regurgitate them.
Since they've got this theme running though, wonder if Big Bang will see the light of day, after which they'll just just start all over again?
That could really mess up the versioning system.
Having been on TB since before 1.0, will wait for my current Supernova (v115.13.0) to be self-upgradable rather than manually installing Nebula.
> I tested it in earlier version and it just doesn't work, like at all.
This is simply not true. It works fine and I have it connected to 6 email accounts, a dozen newsgroups and a Matrix account. It is fine.
Learn to adapt. It's not radically different. The changes are modest and not problematic.
Be a reed, not a tree: bend with the wind, because if you refuse, the wind will win and you will get broken.
I took a punt on 115 and am currently running 115.10.1 ok. Don't really see why the UI is seen as so bad.
Only thing I got hit by was there's a really old bug which when the bottom status bar is on sometimes slows the thing to a crawl (View>Toolbars>Status bar). TB are not quite sure what's causing this. It suddenly did this for me with moves of mails to folders, sometimes taking minutes to come back to life. Unusuable. Rolled back, reported the bug and during this found the workaround of turning the bottom status bar off and went back to 115. I liked some of the improvements so have stuck with it, but the IMAP corruptio problem with 128 has made me stop updates on it. So big thanks to this over-hyped article and resultant comments thread!
In terms of what TB should be concentrating on, difficult one. Yes, bug fixes are needed but is it best to do that in the old code or update the codebase first? What I would say is it's about ruddy time TB had inbuilt options for the Reply Header (e.g. basic Unix vs Outlook-style), instead of having to install an add-on to do this. The add-ons have been great, but seriously; "On <date> <person> said:" ???!!!
But I've been with TB since 19-x-de-x and currently have a mailbase of 9 GB (on a non-C: partition) and it's basically been pretty faultless.
I covered that at length last time around and linked to it.
Read this:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/26/new_betas_of_firefox_and_tbird/
Let's say you're on a free Gmail and you have 100,000 mails in there, and your diary, and your address book.
And one day, Google closes your account. Happened to multiple friends and clients of mine.
Webmail user? Tough. It's all gone. Say goodbye and start again.
Thunderbird user? No problem. You have a copy of everything locally. Open a new account somewhere else and you can just copy all your old mail into it, if you wish.
I DO have a LOCAL copy of every email I ever sent or received (ehhh... sans spam and near-spam) in my Thunderbird and its backup. I use Gmail but I wouldn't trust it to not arbitrarily lock me out one day as far as I can throw them - the utter fucks at GMX did just that, and never even bothered to explain. But for me it would matter not one bit, other than having to find a replacement...
Re: the subheading, I've always hated webmail, but I realise that nobody from Millennials onwards has even heard of the concept of an email client. This is the biggest hurdle that Thunderbird faces.
Over the years I've made my computing environment and workflow simpler and simpler, so for me even Thunderbird is too bloated, and I now use neomutt.
I realise I'm literally a dying breed, but that's fine by me. As long as I get to keep doing things the way I want to, for the few years I have left, what the technophobic consumer generation chooses to do thereafter is none of my concern.
I don't know about anyone else, but my own experience with this latest issue is, OMG what a pile of shit ! Wishing I had stayed with the previous version now...
First bloody annoying crap is the missing menus, all of them. No ! Not hidden ! Black font on a Black background. I eventually worked out how to change the colours back to their original config, only to have them change back again next time I opened the damned thing. Eventually I found the correct config panel, not the config panel I had used previously, there are two, possibly three config panels now.
Second complete waste of my fucking time:- The language has reverted to American English for spell check...........Sort that out,
Oh No ! The Menu language is still American English............. WTF ????
Repeat Config change: English English language.
Third:- I had set up a folder for SCUMBAG mail, you know the sort that claims to have film of me in potentially embarrassing activities..........GONE, no not the folder, the FUCKING COLOURED LABEL I use to identify such pieces of garbage.
FOURTH:- So there is apparently a filter for sifting out SPAM........... IT DOES NOT FUCKING WORK...... I am still receiving eMails from Steve Logo Mats after 10 frigging years......
As there isn't anything better and I have now spent umpteen hours reconfiguring it I might as well continue using so0ftware whicgh again falls well below par, especially as the latest DEVS have undone a lot of really usefuyl stuff that earlier DEVS spent umpteen hourts DEVING...
Does it never end ??????
ALF
I need a replacement cross-platform general purpose email client. It must do Windows 10, macOS 11 or later, any current Linux (but especially Ubuntu), and iPadOS 15 or later. T-bird can't, or won't, do iPadOS, any version. Go to the App Store. Type 'Thunderbird'. See multiple email clients, none of them Thunderbird. (MS Outlook is mentioned, as is Apple Mail, Zoho Mail, Edison Mail, even GMail app. Mozilla Firefox is mentioned, because 'Mozilla'. Mozilla VPN is mentioned. No Thunderbird. They're Not Interested in creating t-bird for iPadOS/iOS. They just don't care. I would like One Client To Rule Them All, One Client to Bring Them All, and in the Darkness Bind Them... instead I use a patchwork.
I use Firefox as my standard browser. I would use T-bird if only it worked on iPads. It doesn't. I want to support Mozilla. They don't care. It's annoying.
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