Note: Republishing from The FF Extension Guru’s Blog

One of the neat features of Thunderbird is the ability to customize the client with Extensions, Themes and Plug-Ins. But sometimes there are problems a theme does something funky to your browser. Or may be an extension goes haywire and gets corrupted. There are so many possibilities of what could be the problem. If you have a lot of extensions installed, it is hassle to list them all.

Whenever anyone posts on Go Firefox! a more advanced problem they are having the first thing I recommend they do is install the InfoLister extension. In a matter of seconds the extensions generates a report with loads of information:

* The build/version of Thunderbird and your OS
* Complete list and a total number of extensions (including enabled & disabled)
* Listing of all the themes installed and which one is currently in use
* Simplified listing (compared to about:plugins) of the all installed plug-ins

With this information it is very easy for me to see if the user is running an outdated extensions, a problematic theme, a troublesome (Yahoo!) or missing plug-in. Below is the results when I run InfoLister on this profile…

Thunderbird related news from the April 6th Mozilla Project Weekly Status meeting:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.22

• NO REPORT

TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder) – Status: In Progress

• 3.0b3 work continues

Back in the beginning of March, I wrote about the Signature Switch add-on in the TBird Signatures|Signature Switch post. It wasn’t until I went to post about this wonderful extension in Thunderbird Help, that I realized I didn’t include any screen-shots. So, here are some screen shots (click images for full-size view):

Switch between your list of signatures via the Signature button on the compose window

Signature Switch Options

Set/Edit Signature

Thunderbird related news from the March 30th Mozilla Project Weekly Status meeting:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.22

• NO REPORT

TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder) – Status: In Progress

• 3.0b3 schedule updated slightly; work continues

Just Released

• NONE

Schedule this Coming Week

• NONE

Future Release

• Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 - TBA
• Thunderbird 3 Beta 4/Release Candidate  1 - TBA

From the MozillaWiki:

Proposed Freezes ( All dates use time of 23:59 Pacific )

• Slushy String freeze date: 2009-04-24 (Friday)
• Slushy Code Freeze date: 2009-04-26 (Sunday)
• Firm String / Code freeze date: 2009-04-28 (Tuesday)
• l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 freeze date: 2009-04-30 (Thursday)
• Target Build Ship date: 2009-05-05 (Tuesday)

Not sure what’s after this if is going to be a Beta 4 or may be if we are lucky Release Candidate 1!

Thunderbird related news from the March 23rd Mozilla Project Weekly Status meeting:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.21

• Shipped last week
• Pages on mozillamessaging.com

TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder) – Status: In Progress

• Tb 3.0b3 schedule is up; minor modifications in the next day or two are expected.
• As an experimental attempt to reduce crash landings/feature misses at the end of the cycle, we’ve broken the remaining time up into 5 weekly milestones.

Awhile back I wrote about how to access Thunderbird’s about:config editor. A couple things have changed in regards to Thunderbird 3 developmental builds aka Shredder since that article was published. The warning message is no longer This gun is loaded!, but rather This might void your warranty!. Also the Options Screen has changed a bit as well:

Click for full-sized image

A member in my Thunderbird Help forum has posted this puzzling issue while running a portable U3 version of Thunderbird 2.0.0.18:

When I go to delete an email – maybe I’ve read that mail or maybe it’s spam, should make no difference; however, sometimes the mail won’t delete (but then copies to the trash folder) and sometimes two messages will delete when I only had one selected and intended for deletion. In neither case am I happy with such results. I don’t need multiple copies of mail I want to delete and I certainly don’t want to delete unread, non-spam messages before I have a chance to read them. Incidentally, these problems only occur on the Vista machine. I’m using the portable Firefox and Thunderbird from a U3 flash drive. On rare occasions, when I do email from my laptop (a Toshiba machine running Windows XP home) but still using the portable U3 versions of my Thunderbird and Firefox, I don’t have these problems… but heck, on rare occasions, Windows Vista even does what I want… so maybe it’s a Vista thing or maybe it’s Thunderbird, I just don’t know.

Mozilla Messaging has released Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 on March 18th. Users will be prompted for an automatic update within the next 72 hours.Those wishing to upgrade now can do so via the Help Menu, Check For Updates option or by downloading the latest release at getthunderbird.com. Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 contains many security fixes and the full details can be found in the Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 Release Notes.

For the past few months I’ve been following Thunderbird Bug 227305: Support drag-drop messages to desktop / file-system window (e.g. Explorer). Unlike MS Outlook, Thunderbird currently does not allow you to save an email message by dragging it to your desktop.  Not quite sure of the circumstances as to how I became aware of and started tracking this bug, likely a contact-us or a forum posting. This bug was filed back in December 2003 with Thunderbird 0.1 and for the most part over the past 5-years has laid dormant. There have been occasional comments/votes in BugZilla but not much else.

Since I voted for the bug a while back I’ve been getting update emails anytime the status changes. For the most part I would get an email once or twice a month if someone has made a comment on the bug. However in the last week I suddenly started getting multiple emails a day. On March 10th, comment #39 was added: “This is an assigned student-project from NUS for CS3108 08/09 Semester 2.”  So far it appears in the last day or so there is a preliminary patch that is being tested with some luck on Linux but not so much with Windows.

This is a great example of the benefits of Thunderbird being an open-source application as well as what can be done within the open-source community. Given this has been open for the past 5-years, this bug must be a low priority issue to the Thunderbird developers. But now some Thunderbird users has taken the initiative to get this feature in place.

Just Released

• NONE

Schedule this Coming Week

• Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 - March 18th, 2009

Future Release

• NONE

Thunderbird related news from the March 9th Mozilla Project Weekly Status meeting:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.21

• Beta this Wednesday
• Release in a week

TBird 3.0b3 (Shredder) – Status: In Progress

• 3.0b3 and 3.0 planning continuing
• Lots of heads-down coding work
• Thunderbird traffic from mozilla.com has been redirected to mozillamessaging.com.

Erin contacted The Guru with the below question. I tried doing a Google Search and checking the mozillaZine forums without much luck so may be someone else here can give us some advice:

Since we upgraded to Thunderbird version 2.0.0.19 it seems that not all HTML attachments are treated the same (when sent). Those with ^M are sent as “quoted-printable” text (results in a problem) and the same file without ^M is send encoded base64 (producing desired results). Is there a way to force Thunderbird to treat them all the same? Thanks.

Just Released

• NONE

Schedule this Coming Week

• NONE

Future Release

• Thunderbird 2.0.2.21 - March 17-18, 2009

While I have always covered Thunderbird in the Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog, the Thunderbird content tends to get deeply buried beneath all the Firefox and general Mozilla posts. Just searching by the Thunderbird category brings up 233 entries, however only 74 of those posts pertained exclusively to Thunderbird. All the Mozilla Project Weekly Status and Release Recap posts are under the Thunderbird category as well. So I have created the sister blog The Guru’s Thunderbird Blog. This blog contains the above mentioned 74 post ranging from June 1, 2006 up until March 1, 2009 have been re-posted on to this blog. Here a quick post guide:

• Thunderbird related posts on or prior to March 1st: cross-posted on both blogs
• Thunderbird related posts after March 1st: posted only on The Guru’s Thunderbird Blog
• Mozilla Project Weekly Status meeting notes: posted only on The Firefox Extension Guru’s Bog*
• Release Recaps prior to March 1st: posted only on The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog
• Release Recaps after to March 1st: cross-posted to both blogs

* Starting March 9th there will be a new synopsis post of any Thunderbird related business from the Mozilla Project Weekly Status meetings

For most up-to-date release information please visit
The Email Mafia

Firefox (Fx) Prior Releases
Thunderbird (TBird) Prior Releases

• TB 1.5.0.10 – RELEASED: March 1st 2007
• TB 1.5.0.12 – RELEASED: May 30th, 2007

• TB 2.0b2 – RELEASED: January 24th, 2007
• TB 2.0 (Final) – RELEASED: April 18th, 2007
• TB 2.0.0.4 – RELEASED: June 14th, 2007
• TB 2.0.0.5 – RELEASED: July 19th, 2007
• TB 2.0.0.6 – RELEASED: August 2nd, 2007
• TB 2.0.0.9 – RELEASED: November 14th, 2007
• TB 2.0.0.12 – RELEASED: February 26th, 2008
• TB 2.0.0.14 – RELEASED: May 1st, 2008
• TB 2.0.0.16 – RELEASED: July 23rd, 2008
• TB 2.0.0.17 - RELEASED: September 26th, 2008
• TB 2.0.0.18 – RELEASED: November 19th, 2008

• TB 3.0a1 – RELEASED: May 13th, 2008
• TB 3.0a2 – RELEASED: August 12th, 2008
• TB 3.0a3 – RELEASED: October 14th, 2008
• TB 3.0b1 – RELEASED: December 9th, 2008
• TB 3.0b2 – RELEASED: February 26, 2009
  

Mozilla Messaging has released Thunderbird 3 beta 2 today. Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality of the new features and platform changes that will be included in Thunderbird 3. For additional information about the new features, visit this blog post.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• New Activity Manager
• New ability to Archive email
• see the complete list of bugs fixed

Source: David Ascher

A bit of major announcement in regards to Lightning (Calendar) and the upcoming Thunderbird 3. From David Ascher’s (CEO, Mozilla Messaging) Blog:

For some time, we (the Thunderbird release-drivers) have been exploring how to best integrate calendar functionality into Thunderbird.  Time for an update.

The current plan is to work with the Lightning Add-on community to make a version of it available as an add-on to Thunderbird 3 after we ship later this year.  This is a change from our initial plan of integrating all of Lightning into Thunderbird by default.

While there are several reasons for this decision, these two standout the most:

1. we try to avoid feature changes in between major releases, and limit minor updates to security fixes.  This would mean that feature changes to Lightning would have to wait for the next major release of Thunderbird.
2. …we recognize that different users need different kinds of calendaring solutions.  Just as there are more and more messaging systems, there is a growing diversity in calendar usage models, such as web calendars, stand alone clients, and calendar and event applications on social networking platforms

To put #1 in perspective, consider if AdBlock Plus and NoScript (two of the most popular and frequently updated Firefox add-ons) were standard parts of Firefox. If this were the case, any feature changes to these add-ons would have to wait to be implemented into the next major release of Firefox. In regards to #2 I know some individuals who did not want to see Lightning to be an integrated part of Thunderbird 3, complaining it would make TBird too much like Microsoft Outlook.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 was released on December 30th, which was about a week earlier than scheduled. Users will be prompted for an automatic update within the next 72 hours.Those wishing to upgrade now can do so via the Help Menu, Check For Updates option or by downloading the latest release at getthunderbird.com. Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 contains many security fixes and the full details can be found in the Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 Release Notes.

Source: Mozilla Developer News

Mozilla Messaging has released Shredder (Thunderbird 3) Beta 1 today. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality of the new features and platform changes that will be included in Thunderbird 3. Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 includes new database technology that will make it possible to build fast new ways of navigating mail. For more background and for previews of experimental add-ons, visit this blog post.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Tab interface for Mail
• Improvements to IMAP for faster message viewing
• Improved message reader view
• New Add-ons Manager
• Improved Address Book interface
• Improved import of mail from other Mail clients
• Integration with Windows Vista search
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book

Source: David Ascher

Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 was released on November 19th. Users will be prompted for an automatic update within the next 72 hours.Those wishing to upgrade now can do so via the Help Menu, Check For Updates option or by downloading the latest release at getthunderbird.com. Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 contains many security fixes and the full details can be found in the Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 Release Notes.

Mozilla Messaging has released Shredder (Thunderbird 3) Alpha 3. Originally planed as Beta 1, the Thunderbird team reversed its decision as there’s still plenty of work to be done including the most expected integration with the Lightning extension to provide calendaring features.

What’s New in Shredder Alpha 3

There were over 250 changes in this release, many laying the groundwork for future changes. Some notable changes include:

User Experience Improvements

• Improved Message Reader View
  • This is the first stage of a series of improvements to refine the message reading experience; the first stage brings email controls closer to area in which the user is operating.
• Add/Edit Contacts from the Message Header
  • We now provide at-a-glance indication if someone is already in your address book, if they are not, you add them with one click. You can also edit contact details inline.
• Integrated Vista Search
  • Windows Vista users can now choose to see Thunderbird email and news messages in Windows search results. On first start Thunderbird will prompt to install its indexing system into Windows Vista.
• Birthday Field in Address Book
  • You can now enter the dates of your contacts birthdays into the address book.

Performance improvements

• Automatic Message Download for IMAP
  • Thunderbird will now download IMAP messages in the background to allow for faster message loading, and better off-line operation.
  • This feature can be enabled on an individual folder basis (via folder properties), or for all folders in an account, via Account Settings / Sync & Disk Space.

For a more detailed list of bug fixes, see the Rumbling Edge.

You can download Shredder in several localized builds from Mozilla Messaging.

Hunspell has replaced the old MySpell spell check engine in Thunderbird 3.  Hunspell also replaced MySpell in OpenOffice.org last year.  Good news is dictionaries that are already installed while for MySpell will work with the Hunspell engine.

Hunspell offers support for Asian languages, Unicode support, morphological analysis and support for complex compounds and agglutinative languages like Azeri, Basque, Estonian and Hungarian.

No word at this time when Hunspell will replace MySpell in Fx 2.0.0.X/3.X or TBird 2.

News Source: Mozilla Links