Thunderbird joins Firefox on the monthly treadmill Mozilla has lobbed out Firefox 138, and subsidiary MZLA's Thunderbird 138 isn't far behind. The venerable messaging client is picking up the pace and finally syncing its stride with the browser that spawned it. The new version of Firefox boasts some fresh features, but there's a catch. Mozilla decided on a phased rollout, or …
> email protocols haven’t changed in a long time
It is very simple.
Thunderbird is a load of extra functionality slapped on top of Firefox. The rendering engine is Firefox.
Security exploits for web content, especially Javascript web content, come along *all the time*.
It needs constant maintenance anyway.
Once you have the codebase under control and reasonably clean and consistent -- in other words, if you *can* -- then why not move to the basis of the constantly-changing version?
I keep telling people:
https://useplaintext.email/
If it's formatted, just reject it. Say no. Plain text or GTFO.
But they won't.
So, every email is a web page. Every web page is an attempted exploit.
The end.
Customer/consumer demand. They're used to constant updates and think you're falling behind if you don't have them.
Of course, a smart release manager can just bump the version number every week or two, and rebuild/release, without the pesky bit of making actual code changes.
> a smart release manager can just bump the version number every week or two, and rebuild/release
I think you have managed the neat trick of being right and wrong in the same post. Well done! :-D Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
On the one hand, yes, but you miss the really important bit here.
I suspect, but do not know, that after years of neglect, T-bird's codebase was a mess and clicking a button to "rebuild/rebase" was not possible. In part that was why they stuck to an annual release schedule.
But now, after MZLA has been working on it for a couple of years, they've cleaned it up to the point that this becomes possible.
So, if you're right, this isn't an indictment: it's a triumph, and something to be proud of.
Secondly, there's a list of bug fixes in each release, which is why I went to the trouble of linking to the release notes of all three versions since the change of tempo. That indicates that it wasn't a simple automated process.
Some of the driver there is from the mobile companies,I think.
They apparently get sniffy about software that is just there to be downloaded and expect constant refreshes. This is borne out by the Apple store, which has constant updates that haven't changed much if anything.
This seems to affect infect desktop versions too.
When is thunderbird going to include Exchange/ compatibility? I know there’s a paid-for client but there have been paid-for clients before that have come and gone. So many people use Microsoft 365 and so many people hate outlook. Especially as MS seems to be simultaneously pushing the buggy “new outlook” and nobbling the old Outlook.
It already exists. It's called the paid for OWL plugin.
A free client? You're having a laugh. If a commercial product can't make it, why do you think a free one will? Who will fund or code it?
I do wonder just how good OWL is - Exchange is more than just 'e-mail' - it does workflow and both Exchange and Outlook integrate to other applications when set up properly. Not to mention that in the past when I dealt with Exchange (this was admittedly no later than 2008) what was in the specification, and what Exchange actually did were two different things. As I found out when my application crashed upon a 'mandatory' field not existing. Error trapping added to check and work around even 'mandatory' fields not being present. Not to mention the joys of dealing with rich text and foreign mail systems.
Outlook is generally fine. As I mentioned below I've recently returned to Thunderbird after a long absence, and it really hasn't improved that much in the interim. On the other hand Outlook at work is largely trouble free, although I find its search facilities incredibly annoying[1]
[1] Outlook 365. Trying to get it to *only* search for full words is a huge pain, should be easy. I'd love to say Thunderbird is far better, but it clearly isn't - either its search is broken or the index is, because it won't find e-mails I know are there, whichever root cause it is isn't encouraging.
With respect, just how much more of a guarantee do you want than a product that has been maintained for at least six years? Exchange is a commercial product, pay money for third party products to support it. Also it's under a tenner per year, about the price of two (good) pints of beer, it is not a disaster if it fails.
I understand where you're coming from, but you can't have your cake and eat it. I unfortunately view this as excuses for a 'I want this for free' attitude from many people.
If you're relying on a legacy technology that will only decline in popularity it's a good idea to fund and look for open source alternatives because the commercial market will either not be able to make a sufficient return on investment to support it in the long term or will charge wallet wincingly high prices. SCA SCSI to SATA appears to currently be in this position - it jumped the shark by ACARD being taken over, ramping up prices to over a grand, and now it appears difficult to buy their products at all, no open source alternative exists (parallel SCSI to SD card products are readily available, not so LVD SCSI).
This is not even remotely similar to the position of Exchange. Regardless of Microsoft's push to move Exchange to be an Azure hosted solution only, it remains Microsoft's flagship and strategic e-mail product. The OWL plugin for Thunderbird has been in existence since at least 2019. The OWL plugin costs 9 quid a year for single users, on quantity it reduces (30 licences appear to be 7 quid each/year).
Do you seriously want to find developers to develop a competing product for free via funding or somehow convincing people to do it gratis (good lock with that), in the process fucking over a company that's been contributing to Thunderbird for years and charging an insultingly small license cost? The time to do that is when Exchange is no longer a maintained product, this is not that time.
I'm moving my e-mail from a completely free Gmail business product to a paid hosted e-mail solution because I'm fed up with Gmail's features, attitude, and Google's privacy viewpoint. I would also pay for a commercial FreeBSD compatible mail client. I do love open source, and an operating system not driven by commercial interests (which is why I try to use FreeBSD), but dear goodness would I prefer to just pay someone a moderate amount of money and not have to fanny around with Unix nerdery, bugs, lack of features, and workarounds much of the time, unless I'm specifically setting out to learn new skills.
> When is thunderbird going to include Exchange/ compatibility?
Like I said below.
It connects to Exchange Server out of the box _if the site admin turned on the options_. It's up to that Exchange server site. This is nothing to do with Thunderbird at all. It's up to whoever is running _that specific Exchange Server deployment_.
If the admin didn't turn it on, then there _already is_ a paid connector, but since the server costs _thousands_ I don't think €10 per annum is a bad price at all.
https://www.beonex.com/owl/
The most basic Exchange Server license is over $700.
$10 a year compared to that is pretty good IMHO.
I don't have it. I've never needed it. But it's there and it works.
As it is, I've used Thunderbird with Exchange Server all day every weekday for _years._ It works fine. IF THE ADMIN TURNED ON OWA.
> friendly, human-readable names
Yay! Why did this take so long?
> current profile is called 70tmx4ga.default
Lucky lucky person. Here I have j3d9exsq.default-1608609510343. I can't type that even from a printout! How many people will be using this 2015 machine, that I need a 30 character ID??
This is specially agrivating when recovering a crashed PC and guessing where the profiles are, which one the user was using, trying to copy fresh...
> they are there if you search.
Do I look like a Search Engine? Do I need Google/Bing to come into my PC and find stuff??
I wish you were paid to rationalise this settings system.
After over a decade of abandoning Thunderbird I've finally returned, as I'm moving off Gmail business[1] and migrating my e-mail elsewhere.
It's not going without incident. I've already got corruption in the database - it won't compact my e-mail. It often (under Wayland, labwc compositor) grabs focus when an e-mail arrives. Search, much though I hate to admit it, is much better under Gmail. It's difficult to know when IMAP folder rules are still firing - which is quite useful if you've imported 80,000 e-mails and are trying to rationalise them.
Any recommendation for an utterly solid and featureful e-mail client that runs under FreeBSD would be welcome. Doesn't have to be graphical, but does need to have a way of at least shelling out to display images, or HTML at times.
I know it's free, and I know I'm throwing a fair number of messages at it, and it's nice that it exists at all. However I'd be happy to pay for something really solid and functional.
[1] I have the legacy free offering, which is still valid as I'm not (currently) making money off my hosted domains. I wouldn't pay for it, though, with the annoying continually changing features and authentication foibles. When I set up a new account in *MY* domain, I do not want you to ask for a mobile number to 'verify' the account I have just set up, thank you..
This:-
When I set up a new account in *MY* domain, I do not want you to ask for a mobile number to 'verify' the account I have just set up, thank you..
Is a sad fact of life these days. That's why I have 512 extra email addresses on my domain. I use a new one them for this sort of crap. Helps you find out who has wonky security/leaks but this whole verification thing using mobiles is a PITA. Lose the phone (aka having it stolen) and you are in deep, deep shit as you try to recover your life. IMHO, using email on your phone only makes identity theft so much easier.
They have gradually made Thunderbird UI as bad as Firefox. Arrogance. Why not use the current OS theme instead of a dumb UI? Thunderbird 91.x was last that followed OS, and only if you edited hidden settings.
Each new install of Firefox is worse, with having to change more stupid defaults.
There should be updates when needed for security, which might be twice today and none for months. Only significant feature updates should change major version number.
Also far too much bloat.
Mozilla has lost the plot.
> Mozilla has lost the plot.
I glumly suspect you're largely right.
But T'bird is MZLA, and MZLA is owned but independent.
I would like to see more out of the box thinking in T'bird.
Mozilla was originally the codename for what became Netscape. There were 2 flavours of Netscape before Microsoft (and I quote from Microsoft internal discussion) "knifed it in the back":
* Netscape Navigator
* Netscape Communicator
Navigator was just a browser.
Communicator was a browser, email and newsgroup client, calendaring app, contacts manager, and WYSIWYG HTML editor.
Mozilla was the internal beta of Communicator.
After the collapse, Mozilla -- as in, all of the Communicator suite -- became the dominant Linux browser: the Mozilla Suite.
It was a big all-in-one app. Eventually, someone had the genuinely good idea of re-implementing Navigator. The result is Firefox and it's sustained Mozilla Inc for 20Y.
Let's see MZLA re-implement the rest of the Communicatgor _suite_ in T'bird. A WYSIWYG editor. A rich contacts client, network connected. I'd like dedupe and rich searching.
Grandfather in Libpurple. Make the Chat module Pidgin, but built in. I want to talk to Slack and Discord in my messaging client. I don't need them today but in the past I used Rocket.chat, Skype, and IRC in Pidgin. It's pretty good for that. Teams too.
I want rich RSS syndication.
And I want Mozilla Sync for Thunderbird, so I can move all my accounts and passwords from one instance to another, but _not the messages_.
I've used Firefox (occasionally others) and Thunderbird for over two decades because the alternatives are worse. Up till Jan 2017 on Windows. Trying Vivaldi on one box for a while.
I used to use Newsgroups (NTTP) and RSS, but not for years now. Due to NTTP servers closing, or not carrying the groups I wanted. Groups.io has I suppose replaced NTTP. It's so long I can't remember the last RSS feed I used.
Also "Aptisaction" of internet. People complaing this or that App not working when a browser even on a 5" phone for the same site is functional, Stupid "Mobile" and "Desktop" perversions of webpages when one properly designed web site will work. Do Developers run their browsers full screen and never in a window?
I used to develop SW (Desktop, drivers, embedded, websites etc) and wonder to these developers live in the real world. I have K9 mail on Android because the built-in email client seems like a Google terminal with all the server credentials used on a Google Server. Though K9 supports POP3, it doesn't delete downloaded email, so I have Thunderbird on Linux do that for those accounts after 20 days.
I don't care if Thunderbird has a monthly release or not. I would like to use it and used to. But there are so many issues with major email providers making it difficult to connect I gave up. Can it connect to Outlook mail again these days. Was broken last time I looked unless you turn somersaults, lots of advice on the net how to, none of which worked as old.
> Can it connect to Outlook mail again these days
There is no such thing as "Outlook mail".
Yes it connects to Office 365. Right out of the box. Mine is pulling my Hotmail every few minutes.
It connects to Exchange Server out of the box _if the site admin turned on the options_. It's up to that site.
If the admin didn't, there's a paid connector, but since the server costs _thousands_ I don't think €10 per annum is a bad price at all.
https://www.beonex.com/owl/
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