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Thunderbird 102 Released (thunderbird.net) 35

slack_justyb writes: Thunderbird 102 has been released with some new UI improvements and new features. There has been a change in the icons, the layout of the address book has been upgraded to feature a more modern UI, and a new UI feature known as the spaces toolbar to get around Thunderbird. New features include an updated import and export wizard, a UI for editing the email header settings, and Matrix client support within Thunderbird, which is a messaging system using HTTPS that is similar to Discord if you've used that.

Finally, the Thunderbird Twitter account released the first screenshot of the new UI that is being targeted for the 114 release. For those wondering what the Thunderbird team has done and is doing, you can always head over to the planning section of the developer site. The roadmap are things they're working on the current release and the backlog are the things they are working towards.

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Thunderbird 102 Released

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  • No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01, 2022 @04:45PM (#62666686)

    the address book has been upgraded to feature a more modern UI

    Oh fuck. That's never a good thing.

    • It's more of a refinement to 91.x than some massive overhaul. Some revamped icons, colors are more pastel, a Vivaldi style sidebar to switch between major functions, and the Lightning side panel looks a bit better with slightly larger (and more pastel colored) bars for all-day events. Personally, I like it.

      • BTW, if you don't need the sidebar, you can hide it--there's a left-pointing arrow down at the bottom. (I just hid mine.)

        I view sidebars and such like as yet another move away from the logical olde menu system. Outlook is definitely the worst; it has all kinds of mostly indecipherable icons scattered randomly around the outside edges of the app. It only means that when I need one of those capabilities, I have to search all over the place for where they stuck it this time around. Whereas menus (usually)

        • I hope you're not being sarcastic because I 100% agree with you. At least they don't insist on dark theme yet.

    • by UPi ( 137083 )
      It is a good thing sometimes, however... This reaction of yours, is typical of people who are getting old and any changes in the user interface interfere with your motor memory. The cognitive overhead of adjusting is uncomfortable to you, and therefore the annoyance of having to change your patterns outweighs any benefits the UI update might bring to you.

      This is common both with websites and applications. A change is introduced, for better or for worse, and there is a chorus of users going "why did you chan
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @04:59PM (#62666710)

    ... and Matrix client support within Thunderbird, which is a messaging system using HTTPS that is similar to Discord if you've used that.

    Another something I don't need/want. Hopefully it can be easily disabled, either by continuing to disable chat all together (mail.chat.enabled = false) or, less optimally, something more specific, like (chat.prpls.prpl-matrix.disable = true) ...

    • Re:Sigh ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday July 01, 2022 @05:08PM (#62666732) Homepage Journal

      Yep, they just keep cramming more shit in there that should be an extension.

      Firefox is like a reverse Phoenix. It's always collapsing back into ashes.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        There's only one huge feature I want, and I already know it isn't there: Less spam. Preferably none.

        I'm crazy to dream, but the scamming spammers are crazier? I keep imagining that some email system could become extremely attractive by being the least attractive for spam. "Live and let spam" is NOT the solution approach you are looking for (with the usual apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi). Proof of Concept: All of the pump-and-dump stock-scam spam you no longer receive. Sometimes the money can be removed and it

        • Yes, the spam filter in Thunderbird is broadly ineffectual, though it is a hard problem. But it seems to me like it behaves far more poorly than it used to in general, and the UI is worse. I am in Windows right now so I can't look at my Thunderbird, but I've been having trouble finding junk mail controls menu options that used to exist.

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            My thinking has evolved over the decades, but I now believe fighting spam should be based on cutting off the money. Most of the spam is coming from rational criminals who must be making a profit, as demonstrated by the PoC example I cited.

            When you look at it this way, the numbers look very different. Yes, the marginal cost of spewing another million spam messages still looks small, but the critical bottleneck is on the side of finding suckers, and that's a relatively small number, near zero compared to the

      • That reminds me how Firefox got its name [wikipedia.org]
    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      I'm left wondering what it's similar to if you haven't used Discord, and how do they know?
  • Finally, the Thunderbird Twitter account released the first screenshot [twitter.com] of the new UI that is being targeted for the 114 release.

    Subsequent replies indicate that the current/classic Thunderbird UI will be available.

    • I don't suppose that screenshot is anywhere else, is it? For those of us who don't have Twitter accounts. I mean me, since I'm probably the only person on Earth without such an account. When I go to the link, the screenshot is barely visible behind Twitter's login prompt, and Vivaldi's reader view doesn't seem to work there.

      • I don't have a twit'r account either and the link opens fine for me in Firefox. I click on the picture and it expands to full screen for easy reading.

      • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        LOL! Just click on login, then cancel, the you can access the whole page.

  • by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @05:18PM (#62666758)
    I recently switched to Thunderbird because Google no longer supports my older version of Outlook and I really have no need to upgrade Microsoft Office from 2007. Thunderbird works, and it was very easy to switch my email accounts over to IMAP. Thunderbird feels clunky though and hard to navigate. It needs improvements to work flow more than it needs UI improvements.
    • by McLoud ( 92118 )

      Can't you just create an application password and use old-school account settings in outlook?

  • sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird
    sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en
    sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en-gb
    sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en-us

    • sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird

      sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en

      sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en-gb

      sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird-locale-en-us

      It was released today, but will take about 2 months to appear in the normal update channel. As it is based on Firefox LTS 102, it has an ~8 week testing and qualification time windows.

      • sudo apt-mark hold thunderbird
        ...

        It was released today, but will take about 2 months to appear in the normal update channel. As it is based on Firefox LTS 102, it has an ~8 week testing and qualification time windows.

        Perhaps for Linux, but v102 showed up under "Help->About Thunderbird" on my 91.11.0 Windows 10 install today 7/3. I backed up my config folder and upgraded. Everything seems to be working as expected. The only caveat is the menu spacing seems a bit too much, even using the "View->Density->Compact" setting, but these "userChrome.css" settings from Firefox seem to work here too.

        /* Tighten up drop-down/context/popup menu spacing */
        menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu {/
        min-height: unset !important;/
        padding-block: 2px !important;/
        }/
        :root {/
        min-height: unset !important;/
        --arrowpanel-menuitem-padding-block: 2px !important;/
        }/

    • For what it's worth, I am on MacOS 12.4 (the latest) and just upgraded Thunderbird a few minutes ago. I have used Thunderbird for over a decade and at the moment I have a couple Gmails, several self-hosted accounts some IMAP some POP, one work-related Outlook 365 account using IMAP. Immediate issues were minor:
      - One of my POP accounts re-downloaded all the emails left on the server, which is annoying and didn't happen in previous upgrades.
      - One of my Gmail accounts appeared without any subfolders. I close
    • by theCoder ( 23772 )

      LOL, I was just thinking I was going to have to get whatever version I'm currently using and install it in /opt, but then I went and looked and it turns out I did that several dozen versions ago! Probably because later versions of Thunderbird broke my preferred theme. Fortunately, email protocols don't really change over time, at least not as much as web standards. And I love it when past coder has already prevented future coder's problems!

      btw, if you're interested, https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunde [mozilla.org]

  • The Mole vehicle ?

    ( If you can't be bothered to write a complete headline, I can't be bothered to read further than that. )

    • The mole vehicle would have been a better choice in my opinion, or at least an option for Thunderbird 7.
  • I like the ui changes in this version. I don't really want a chat client in my email app though. Not sure why they've done that. I tried it anyway and it's too barebones to be useful. They shouldn't bother, a dedicated chat client will always be better. There's one more thing I'd like from thunderbird, and that would be having the multi line list style that some clients have, as an option, so that you can see a bit more info about each mail. In vertical mode I don't need to see as many emails, usually only
  • Have they given the UI its own thread yet or do I still have to lose what I type while it's creating a mork index?

  • Works fine for me. I like the slightly different icons. The spaces toolbar is easy to disable. It's still Thunderbird. It did set the authentication method to "TLS Certificate" for some of my accounts, which was momentarily disconcerting, since it didn't work, but changing them back was easy enough. Interestingly, the option for "TLS Certificate" disappeared from the list after I unselected it. I have been using the same profile folder for like 18 years though, so I'm sure there's cruft in there.

  • After 18 years I think it's time to close the door on the developers of Thunderbird. Its resource demands are absurd. It's an email client for crying out loud, not emacs!

    Someone needs to organise to take Claws email client and add in HTML generation support with some decent funding to have it happen. I for one love plain-text emails ( prefer in fact ) but it seems spam filters love to mark off clean and lean emails as "likely spam".

  • Did they bring back movemail. The latest upgrade messed up the complete system. Now at Th68 not upgrading.

  • I'm doing just fine staying with v.52.4, and can live without them changing the UI out from under me. Is it insecure? Maybe; I don't care. I don't have time to learn a new UI every 5 minutes as every app I use decides it needs to change monthly.

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