
What’s New in Thunderbird 78 - anotherevan
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/07/whats-new-in-thunderbird-78/
======
kioleanu
I've started using Thunderbird again after months of trying literally every
other solution on the market. I wanted to switch from Outlook and Gmail to
something that is fast, has good keyboard support and a good message editor.

It's incredible how slow most of the email clients on the market are. What's
even more incredible is that, apart from Outlook, none of the other clients
offer a good way of editing tables properly.

But there's also a problem: I now have Thunderbird exactly how I wanted it,
but it took a few hours to set it up and it required some technical knowledge:
calendar, tasks, Gmail like smart search, multi language corrections. For a
normal user, that might be off-putting. However, I think Thunderbird is
gaining momentum again and will soon be back to one of the biggest player on
the market.

Since I was more than willing to pay for a good solution, I've now redirected
that monthly payment to Thunderbird.

~~~
swiley
Why are you sending emails with tables in them? If you really need that much
formatting maybe you should link or attach your document.

~~~
HPsquared
It depends on the field you're in I suppose. I use tables all the time in
email, they're a very organised and quick way of presentning infomation, wth
the benefit of colour coding. Someone can respond to the table by adding a
column with their own thoughts on each item, etc. - very good for formal
approval/discussion on a list of points. Why should someone be forced to use a
separate file for simple HTML formatting?

~~~
swiley
Collaborating on documents over email feels like a hack. I definitely don’t
share your experience but that seems like something which belongs on a wiki or
at least in a git repo.

~~~
HPsquared
The point is to keep things as lightweight and transferrable as possible. I
can send an HTML-formatted email to someone, and they can see it right away.
Also, an email chain on a topic shows the development of the discussion over
time. I'm in consulting so when dealing with clients there is a need to keep
things lightweight.

Email is more of a 'record' than a 'document' \- these are different things.
Wiki and Git repos are more for building up a permanent body of work which
will be referred to and built on (i.e. documents), rather than transitory
discissions and a log of daily events (i.e. records).

------
dugite-code
Just FIY the winmail.dat (the horrible Microsoft email format) plugin LookOut
(Fix Version) has not been updated for this release and unless someone jumps
in to help Probably wont be updated. [https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-
fix-version/](https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version/)

I was maintaining it but haven't been able to find time to work on the
upgrade.

There was talk in the dev mailing list about adding TNEF support but that
probably wont happen until 2021

~~~
pitdicker
Thank you for maintaining the extension until now!

Sadly the improperly configured Outlook clients are still not extinct in some
of the organizations we work with. Does anyone know a good guide (with
screenshots would be ideal) of the settings they would have to change?

~~~
dugite-code
Thanks, I am proud I was able to give back something useful for a time.

Unfortunately it's not only the clients it's the servers as well. Also this is
still occasionally an issue in Office 365

This guide doesn't look bad - [https://capsulecrm.com/support/setup-and-
configuration/micro...](https://capsulecrm.com/support/setup-and-
configuration/microsoft-tnef/)

The official Microsoft article - Change the message format to HTML, Rich Text
Format, or plain text - [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-
the-messag...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-message-
format-to-html-rich-text-format-or-plain-
text-338a389d-11da-47fe-b693-cf41f792fefa)

And of course the Microsoft Exchange article - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/exchange/tnef-conversion-op...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/exchange/tnef-conversion-options-exchange-2013-help)

------
LeoPanthera
Many of these UI changes seem like backward steps.

[https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2020/07/compose-
compariso...](https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2020/07/compose-
comparison.png)

Old: Clear that you can enter multiple "To" addresses. Obvious that the
formatting buttons are buttons.

New: Single-line "to" implies you can only enter one address. "Flat" buttons
don't look like buttons.

[https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2020/07/account-
setup.png](https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2020/07/account-setup.png)

Extra white space makes the window nearly twice the size for no apparent
reason. I wouldn't say the new one is any clearer. Maybe even less clear,
since the grey textual tips next to the fields have gone.

~~~
addicted
Not a fan of the flat buttons but I strongly disagree about the single/multi
line TO situation.

I doubt there will be a single person for whom Thunderbird is their first
email/messaging type app. Most would have used something on their iOS or
Android devices first at least.

All of them will be comfortable with multiple users in a single To line, while
having multiple lines for multiple users will actually appear alien to them.

~~~
waheoo
Perpetuating bad UX choices (or at least trade offs made under the mobile
constraint) from mobile into the desktop doesn't help anyone.

I use thunderbird because I want an email client, not a dumbed down web
experience built for mobile.

~~~
BoorishBears
Who said it's a difference made under mobile constraints?

I've literally never used a mail client that didn't do multiple emails on the
same line. On Desktop or Mobile.

And it's never been an issue.

~~~
atq2119
I've had issues editing email addresses in clients with multiple mails per
line.

As long as everybody is on your address book it's fine, but if they're not,
things tend to get awry.

I haven't tried the new Thunderbird, but I am suspicious of this change as
well.

~~~
ViViDboarder
How is it any more difficult to edit multiple email addresses in a single box
as it is to edit a multi word subject line in a single box?

~~~
atq2119
Clients tend to get confused about where one address ends and the next one
starts. I'm sure there are ways to solve this well, but my personal experience
makes me skeptical.

~~~
dsfdsfsdfasd
Commas?

~~~
waheoo
Yes, if that's how it's implemented... Gmail doesn't. They wrap your email
address text in a button thing. Others prefer semicolons, or was it commas, or
was it both?

Its just yet another thing I shouldn't have to think about

------
AnonHP
The integration of GPG into the client was a great move. The addition of dark
mode is also good to keep up with the times. After all this while, _the best
thing I love about this release is the simplification of the To (and also CC
and BCC) list into one field instead of being multiple rows (it was always
painful to scroll)._

I used to use Thunderbird as my only mail client for many years and still
prefer it for personal accounts. I loved global search when it was launched,
but that was not improved over time for accurate searches, especially for
large mailboxes (I struggle to find mails with it in mailboxes that are a few
Gigabytes in size).

Thunderbird has not focused on built-in MS Exchange support (especially
including calendar), which, combined with environments where IMAP is disabled,
makes it a no-go. I know of one commercial extension (Owl) that works with MS
Exchange/Office 365, but that extension requires the purchase to be made by
providing which email address one wants to use it for. It’s a privacy concern
that the developer said they wouldn’t fix. So I’m stuck with Outlook Web
Access at work (I refuse to use the Outlook client).

~~~
upofadown
It is OpenPGP capability that is being integrated into the client, not GnuPG.
You will have to import your keys from any existing GnuPG installation. Any
new keys you add in Thunderbird will not be accessible to other things that
use GnuPG.

------
zelphirkalt
In some of the screenshots the old version looked better than the new version,
especially with regard to how everything nowadays needs to be "flat". It lacks
the visual feedback of buttons, which can be "pressed in" and that can be
annoying. Also I dislike how every button now seems to be bigger and
everything needs to be in "tiles" instead of simple links or buttons.

I think in general I simply dislike "material design".

~~~
thom
It's always seemed odd to me that on the one hand material design admits how
important the physicality of an interface can be, as well as our spatial
understanding of it, but on the other hand tries to eliminate the most
established examples of those things. Why talk about shape and depth if you
then eliminate shape and depth on the most important UI widgets?

I do think there's great promise to the core idea of treating data in our UIs
like we'd treat, for example, pieces of paper on our desk, or pages in a book,
but just more efficiently. For example I've always felt that a music app built
around a paradigm of piles or boxes of songs, interacted with very physically
and naturally to build playlists, would be wonderful (especially versus the
current state of the iOS music app). However most of the time it's just
flatness for flatness's sake, and an excuse for designers to go wild with
minimalism.

------
jsilence
I really wish TB would store mails in Maildir by default and operate on that
storage according to the standard so that the local mailstore becomes
compatible with other mail clients.

Right now one can manually switch the storage to maildir, but it is not safe
to use that storage with other maildir compatible software.

~~~
bzb3
Isn't Maildir too wasteful?

~~~
effie
In what way?

~~~
bzb3
Each email in its own file means a minimum of x KB on disk for each email,
where x is usually 4. For people with thousands of emails that's very
wasteful.

~~~
ethelward
That's ~4MB per thousand emails; while I agree it's conceptually wasteful, I
doubt it would have any real consequences for anyone.

~~~
jcranmer
Waste isn't the issue with big folders; filesystem performance (especially
NTFS, which is to say Windows users, which is to say ~90% of users) degrades
pretty horribly when folders have tens of thousands of files. Even on Linux
filesystems, having a folder with a 100,000 files in it was having issues.

~~~
kevincox
FWIW on ext4 I benchmarked adding millions of files to a folder and compared
with `xx/...` and `x/x/x/x/...` and found the performance to be basically
identical between the options and didn't degrade with the file count.

The one thing that I did find is that deleting folders with many files was
very slow. I guess that path wasn't well optimized. However even then you
could deleted hundreds of files a second so for regular mail usage it likely
isn't a major issue.

------
Legogris
This is a pretty significant release:

* Integrated OpenGPG E2EE (fully realized in a future 78.2 release)

* Significant UI improvements

* Integration of calendars and tasks

* Dark mode (though I actually don't get why a GTK application should do this; well-behaved GTK integration should respect dark GTK themes already)

~~~
Liquid_Fire
> * Dark mode (though I actually don't get why a GTK application should do
> this; well-behaved GTK integration should respect dark GTK themes already)

Maybe that has changed recently, but the UI of Thundebird, like Firefox, used
to be primarily based on XUL, only relying on GTK for drawing certain "native"
elements, so it wouldn't implicitly inherit the GTK theming.

------
aneutron
I skimmed through the features and was very excited for the dark mode
announcement. But that quickly went down the drain when I couldn't find how to
force it from the setting, because I'm using i3wm, and there's no "dark mode"
per se.

The other thing I'm wondering about is how this will integrate with OpenGPG,
more specifically if it will allow the use with smartcards. And it looks like
it planned ![1]

Great work Team Thunderbird. Been a fan for the past 5 years, will be for the
foreseeable future.

[1]:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Status](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Status)

~~~
Boulth6
> The other thing I'm wondering about is how this will integrate with OpenGPG,
> more specifically if it will allow the use with smartcards. And it looks
> like it planned ![1]

Actually smartcards were already supported when I tested alpha some time ago.
Thunderbird used GpgME to talk to GnuPG and GnuPG talked to the smartcard.

~~~
gmueckl
The OpenPGP support is based on Enigmail (ginally merged in!), which has been
a wrapper around GPG all along. GPG does all the actual cryptography in this
setup.

------
galacticdessert
Love Thunderbird, and super glad to see that its development pace is picking
up again.

The only big thing missing now is a three pane view: there is this 17 (!)
years bug on the topic, and hopefully somebody will pick it up soon (Before
you say it, I know that I could contribute myself but I do not think my skills
are up this particular task)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945)

~~~
kevincox
Maybe I don't understand the bug but I'm pretty sure Thunderbird has this. I
can see the folders, messages and message all on the same screen.

------
davb
I just switched Linux distro last night (Ubuntu to Fedora) and downloaded the
latest Thunderbird (v78). I thought the oversized, cartoonish UI was something
inherited from the Gtk or Gnome version shipping with the new distro (which
oddly didn't affect other applications).

Now I can see it was a change in Thunderbird, and I hate it. It's so clunky,
that when enabling Large Text in Gnome (to make things more legible on the
1080p 14in laptop screen) Thunderbird looks disproportionately large compared
to every other application.

------
berkes
I keep swinging between dislike and acceptance with Thunderbird.

It feels old, clunky and cludgy. And not in a good way (the way Vim is old,
but still marvellous, or mutt is cludgy but still Just Works Everywhere).

The UI feels horribly out of place (on my vanilla Ubuntu), the UX is terribly
inconsistent and after -I think- 10+ years of using it, I still have to search
where to find stuff. Daily.

I've been comparing it with each and every option for the Ubuntu desktop and
even webmail. Clients like Geary[1] or Roundcube [2].

Those are often unfinished; I guess mail clients are like many other software-
challenges in that regard: it's easy to make the basics, the 90% that 90% of
the people need. It's doable to make those basics really good (see all the
webmail, electron mail and other mail clients). But it is really hard to do
the last 10%, because each of the individual users has a different 10%.

And so, I find I love the UX of Geary and use Roundcube often for its
simplicity and "Getting Stuff Done". But I also find that I keep going back to
Thunderbird, because <insert some feature I use once a week> is only there.
But, boy, it annoys me how cludgy and convoluted thunderbird then feels.

Edit: forgot to mention that a lot of the 10% things in Thunderbird are
severely in my way, daily. I have an RSS reader - why is there one in
Thunderbird taking up mental (and memory) space, I don't ever use the built-in
IM (is it jabber?), the calendar and todo-tasks feature I don't use, but they
attempt to manage my agenda/invites anyway, making me miss an occasional
meeting even. I'm sure other people find the GPG being severely in the way
(part of the 10% that I use often) or that archiving and offline features are
clumsy, confusing and making people miss emails (another feature I often use).

\-- [1] [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary)
[2] [https://roundcube.net/](https://roundcube.net/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Have you tried kmail, it's pretty mature. I use TB,YMMV.

~~~
mxuribe
I recently jumped from linux mint to Fedora...just to play because i haven't
lived in anything related to redhat for many years (no offense to fedora or
red hat, just formed a habit of ubuntu-derived distros like Mint)...anyway,
i've always been a tunderbird user, but now that i am trying fedora i set it
up with KDE...so figured I'd try kmail - which i had heard good things about.
Well, my experience was ok/so-so as compared to thunderbird. Please don't
interpret this as some start of a flamewar...i don't hate kmail by any
means...it just felt like it was a similar to thunderbird but i don;t know
less polished or with fewer features that were exposed. I'm sure that i have
to give it more time to be fair, but so far kmail has disappointed be a little
bit. I'm going to continue using it to see how things go. (Obviously my
experience is not based on any evidence, nor is a formal review or anything
like that...just early usage feelings.)

EDIT: I should have added that as much as i use (and admire) thunderbird,
there are many gotchas, and it could benefit from many more adjustments and
fixings. Also, i do like to live in a world that has choice, so I would be
overjoyed not only for thunderbird to improve but also kmail and all other
open source email clients. The more, the merrier!

------
j1elo
I had an IMAP account that, when deleted from the server (the company closed
and closed their GSuite accounts), was rendered impossible to access from TB.
But afaik the emails where there, given the space that the TB folder occupied
on the hard disk.

I saw some conversations about how if you want to have a local copy of emails
and be sure that server errors (or server dissappearance, as it was the case)
won't affect your access to old email copies, you should manually copy them to
the Local Folders section within TB.

Does anybody know what is the "best practices" for keeping access to
downloaded emails and not lose them if the server closes? Should I be copying
every email to the Local Folders storage?

~~~
elbows
I use OfflineImap to backup all my email to a local maildir:
[http://www.offlineimap.org/](http://www.offlineimap.org/)

------
acidburnNSA
I'm a major fan. I self host email, contacts, calendar, and Thunderbird is
essential in my workflow.

Only issue is that the task descriptions don't render HTML and with all the
crazy zoom meeting invites it is ugly. HTML in caldav is not standard but I
would like the option since its a thing these days.

~~~
tarasmatsyk
just curious, what do you use to host email and calendar?

~~~
acidburnNSA
Postfix and dovecot and spamassassin for email. Radicale for caldav and
carddev.

------
jmpeax
Dark mode still needs some work. It doesn't detect black text, and keeps it
black on the dark background.

~~~
davb
I found the same. It would be useful if you could enable dark mode on all UI
elements but the message pane.

------
scoutt
I love Thunderbird and I use it since forever. I welcome this update and
changes, but they really have to fix _Search_.

~~~
MayeulC
I second this. This is my number one usability issue with TB, that I use
almost everyday.

Example: I recently (2 months) received, say, 150 e-mails from one person.
During that same period, that person has also received lots (~300) of e-mails
that are in my client: ones I sent, ones they were CC-ed, etc.

Now, I need to find that pdf they sent me some time ago. It would be no
problem to scour the 10 or so message I received from this adress with a pdf
attached (still doable without the mimetype).

TB lets me search messages that "concern" that person, but also gives me the
ones they didn't send. Would a "sent by" be too hard to provide? Quick search
works a lot better than the regular search for this, it's something I do
multiple times a day. I sometimes spend more than 5 minutes looking for an
e-mail, then give up, load zimbra, and I'm able to find the e-mail in 10
seconds thanks to the more granular filtering available there.

~~~
VVertigo
Thunderbird has three search methods: quick search allows you to filter by
Sendor (unselect Recipients), but you can also do a more granular search using
EditFindSearch Messages (Ctrl+Shift+F). I don’t use the other Ctrl+K search
much.

------
majkinetor
While minimize to tray is finally there, it would be good to have:

1\. close to tray

2\. start minimized (changing shortcut properties in Windows to start
minimized doesn't do anything).

3\. Always keep tray icon - now it is removed when you click on it which is
anoying

I am sure people will accidentally click close instead of minimize.

~~~
aembleton
This sort of thing should be a feature provided by the Desktop Environment so
that you can set how each application operates for closing and minimising.

~~~
majkinetor
Yeah, it should come as systemic feature.

In the meantime, there is Minimize on Close plugin that works with v70.

------
mod50ack
It also now supports Microsoft's modern authentication (i.e., their flavor of
OAuth), which is now becoming annoyingly mandatory at more and more
organizations.

------
clircle
Long live Thunderbird.

------
account42
Will this version let me compose text-only messages by default while still
being able to switch to a HTML message when needed? You used to be able to
shift-click reply to compose as text but that that stopped working in a
previous update.

~~~
ronjouch
Shift-Click on Reply/Compose to switch from text to HTML (or HTML to text if
HTML is your default) still works for me. If it doesn't for you, it's a bug.

~~~
Silhouette
Though since they inexplicably removed the reply-to-all button from the easily
accessed tools in a recent UI update, this can be more fiddly now than it
needs to be...

~~~
ronjouch
Was it? It wasn't removed for me. You can add it again with Right click
anywhere on the toolbar -> Customize

~~~
Silhouette
You _should_ be able to do that, and it was the first thing I tried when it
was removed by default. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me then, and having
just checked again, it still doesn't work now (I'm on 68 for now, as the 78
update isn't being pushed to the regular release channel for me yet).

Edit: Apparently I was wrong and the replacement "Smart Reply" button does
show up, but only sometimes depending on context. Since Thunderbird only shows
it selectively now, I did not see that when I was checking before.

So I withdraw my criticism about removing functionality, and I replace it with
criticism of changing user settings during updates, replacing a well-
established feature with a subtly different one, and hiding controls that are
currently not applicable rather than showing them as disabled. The fact that
this comment thread exists is a pretty good demonstration of why these are bad
ideas.

------
jjice
Calendar integration off the bat is essential for an email client IMO. Glad
that it's being incorporated. Dark mode is also a nice addition. I'm rooting
for Thunderbird, I want them to help bring back non-web email clients.

------
pantulis
Thunderbird is one of the few email clients on MacOS that doesn't choke with
huge GMail inboxes.

Thing that baffles me is that you need to install an extensions to have
keyboard shortcuts for moving & copying messages with autocompletion, of
course the one I was using broke with the latest release ("Quick folder
move"). What's the favorite these days?

Same for Lightning and G Suite calendars, but I guess this will be fixed
upstream quickly.

------
rcarmo
Thank goodness, they’ve cleaned up the to: fields in the compose window at
long last. I have been using Thunderbird on and off for a _long_ time, and the
lack of UI polish in thins like that has been a constant eyesore.

Too bad that the formatting toolbar seems to have become visually “heavier”,
with bolder lines in some icons. I’ll just have to see what the final product
looks like on both my Mac and Elementary...

------
Krasnol
Oh this is fantastic.

Finaly Tray support. The only minor thing I need i "send later". It worked
through an addon but that will require a subscription(?!) now...
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jik/rewritten-add-
ons-f...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jik/rewritten-add-ons-for-
mozilla-thunderbirds-next-release)

------
Krasnol
There is one thing not mentioned there:

If you have a master password defined, the program won't open until you've
entered it.

This wasn't the case before.

------
pmlnr
\- google provider plugins are broken

\- carddav plugins are broken

\- mail client is nicer

I'm tired of this. Either be a PIM suite and don't break functionality, or
don't.

------
wilburhimself
Casually I installed Thunderbird today ... but didn't realize the 78 version,
it looks great, I love the dark mode!

------
poglet
I switched to Outlook and found out my calendars and tasks from my Fastmail
account were not supported (only Exchange accounts are now supported). If
Thunderbird has now improved their calendar and task support, I will switch
back.

It also looks like they added minimize to system tray, something else I found
was impossible in Outlook.

------
rammy1234
Significant release. Missing Dark Mode was making me to switch to other
clients, now I am back to thunderbird

~~~
mixmastamyk
I've been using a dark theme with TB since, I can't even remember how long.
Let's say 2000, though I started with Netscape Mail. :-D

------
LockAndLol
Have they updated the documentation for writing addons? Last time I checked it
was a decade or so old.

~~~
miedpo
Yes. The new docs are here. The new add on code is in beta though and not
fully stable so you have to keep an eye on it.

[https://thunderbird-
webextensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://thunderbird-
webextensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

------
inanutshellus
I'm stuck on Thunderbird 60 because of Dorando keyconfig.

I like to read an email /then/ move them to folders.

Keyconfig lets me just tap a key and it manually runs the mail filters on that
selected email. Otherwise I have to drag each email to its appropriate folder,
which suuucks.

~~~
matthewn
I was stuck on Thunderbird 60 for a long while for the exact same reason. I'm
now using tbkeys on Thunderbird 68; it works great.
[https://github.com/willsALMANJ/tbkeys](https://github.com/willsALMANJ/tbkeys)

------
WalterGR
Did Thunderbird remove support for older XUL-based add-ons like Firefox did?
It’s unclear to me what the article means by “legacy extensions” - based on
context it seems simply to refer to extensions that work in 77.

~~~
bonzini
It refers to XUL extensions, they still work but need updates for new releases
unlike WebExtensions.

------
cs702
Still no first-class calendar and contact sync with mobile and online
services!?

~~~
acidburnNSA
Set up a radicale server and and the calendars sync just fine. Add the
cardbook adding and contacts do too. I guess thats what you mean by not first
class?

[https://radicale.org/3.0.html](https://radicale.org/3.0.html)

~~~
abawany
AFAICT, Cardbook doesn't work with TB78
([https://gitlab.com/CardBook/CardBook/-/issues/574](https://gitlab.com/CardBook/CardBook/-/issues/574))
. The built-in Calendar integration is real nice though - was able to pick up
various CalDAV options well. Edit1: fixed link.

------
vdfs
Wow, this remind me of the Firefox 4 release era with exciting new features

------
tarasmatsyk
It looks nice, however it feels like I am running one more browser, am I wrong
here?

I really like Thunderbird and that one of options for mail clients if I am on
linux, however another electron app is a no-go for me.

~~~
bawolff
Good luck running a mail client - you know, a program that takes html
documents and renders them, because modern email is html - without running a
browser.

In any case, thunderbird essentialy has a lineage going back all the way to
netscape navigator (at least spiritually), so it was doing this way before
electron was cool.

~~~
ars
alpine for the win! It can render some html, enough that I rarely need to open
an email with an actual browser.

But some emails are mainly images with little text, and then I have to export
the email.

------
alibert
Did they changed something on the interface because I used to change the order
of the action buttons on the email pane (anwser, archive, spam, delete, etc.)
and this can't be done now?

------
hibbelig
I see that the Nostalgy author is working on an upgrade. Very nice!

------
waynesonfire
thanks for the integrated openpgp support. finally.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Was enigmail being a plugin a showstopper before? Just curious of this
perspective.

~~~
dtech
Don't underestimate the power of defaults and core functionality.

If gmail support PGP, you could start to really use it, since you could be
reasonably confident the recipient could read the message even if they have no
idea what PGP was. For a plugin they would have to actively look for it.

Unfortunately Thunderbird user base is tiny but it's something

------
kbumsik
Out of curiosity, what UI toolkit does Thunderbird use? GTK or the UI system
derived from Firefox?

~~~
AnonHP
It used to be XUL, but since that was deprecated and Firefox doesn’t support
it, for a while Thunderbird was still using it with a plan to switch out. The
larger plan for Thunderbird is to use “web technologies” (meaning HTML, CSS
and JS). IIRC, this move is already in progress.

~~~
jabl
TB has much less manpower than Firefox, so they're mostly following whatever
Firefox does.

Firefox is indeed in the process of getting rid of XUL in favour of web
technologies, but AFAIK it's not done yet.

And yes, on UNIX platforms the "XUL backend" is gtk.

------
ilikehurdles
bringing E2E into core Thunderbird is an awesome development. Wish it happened
10 years ago.

------
shock
I'm a (mostly) happy user of TB, but I sorely miss a "conversations" feature.

~~~
commoner
You might appreciate the Thunderbird Conversations add-on, which displays
threaded conversations. With this add-on, the message view looks similar to
Gmail's original interface.

[https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/gmail...](https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/)

[https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-
con...](https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-
conversations)

------
eitland
from a linked site:

> Update: A few of you have asked how to make a contribution to Thunderbird
> under the new corporation, especially when using the monthly option. Please
> check out our updated site at give.thunderbird.net!

I want something like this for Firefox too!

------
qqj
Side note on emails in-general: talking to my younger colleagues it seems that
email is going away. We all, me included, prefer to use chats like slack for
work and recreation (see discord) and email is used mostly for registrations
and getting spam. It’s an obsolete format.

~~~
Silhouette
Mail is the _lingua franca_ of online communications. It isn't going anywhere
any time soon, if only because it it's an independent standard that does not
rely on some single commercial entity to continue operating it. That is also
part of the reason why all those other services still fall back on email for
their registration mechanisms.

~~~
eythian
And the Mediterranian Lingua Franca also faded away. I tend to agree with the
person you're replying to, 95+% of my email is automated things sending it,
it's rare that I have an email conversation with anybody these days. I don't
like this trend, because I value open standards etc., hell I still use IRC
regularly. But its use as a person-to-person communication mechanism is
definitely falling, in my experience. Also, most mailing lists I'm on have
been steadily drying up for a several years now.

~~~
Silhouette
I'm sure for some people that is the trend. For others, email is still doing
just fine. Personally, I don't much like the kind of proprietary message board
applications that trade off locking up your communications in someone else's
system for using a prettier UI. Almost any individual online communication
that I care about, whether personally or for business reasons, is done either
via email or via some sort of self-hosted system that isn't trying to replace
email. And speaking only for myself, I have had many email conversations
catching up with old friends online while we can't meet in person because of
the virus situation. YMMV, and presumably so will a few billion other
people's. :-)

------
firoze
Would it be wise to link one's Protonmail account with Thunderbird?

~~~
loudtieblahblah
It remains end to end encrypted due the fact you have to use ProtonMail's
desktop bridge.

~~~
burntoutfire
Which, at least for me, has never worked properly (I check after each update)
and still leads to lags and timeouts in Thunderbird/Outlook. If they don't fix
it till my protonmail's subscription expires, I guess I'm moving to another
provider.

------
ollo
Still no Windows 10 notifications? Disappointing. Alternative clients that
support native Win 10 notifications?

------
pjmlp
Looking forward to update it.

------
venki80
Does this work with AOL dial-up?

------
paulryanrogers
Finally dark mode! Some Windows only add-ons could do it. But now Mac and
Linux can too

~~~
userbinator
Every time I hear about this recent "dark mode/light mode" fad I am reminded
of a time when most software would use the OS's native and fully colour-
customisable UI which let you have dark mode[1], light mode[2], rainbow
mode[3], and everything in between[4], _consistently across all applications
with basically zero effort on the part of the application developers_.

What a pitiful regression it has been since then.

[1]
[https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d3e8c64cd9a38e70d24c0b1b2c73cb5...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d3e8c64cd9a38e70d24c0b1b2c73cb5/tumblr_mwjaieyign1t2as4so6_1280.png)

[2]
[https://64.media.tumblr.com/736251fc23ae5bd8afe4656345d44893...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/736251fc23ae5bd8afe4656345d44893/tumblr_mwjaieyign1t2as4so9_1280.png)

[3]
[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-47IBJRvvGzo/UMohyEJvGEI/AAAAAAAAE...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-47IBJRvvGzo/UMohyEJvGEI/AAAAAAAAEIg/ubOXpQPZ9RI/s1600/Win+3.1+Flourescent+Theme.JPG)

[4] [https://never-obsolete.tumblr.com/tagged/windows-9x-color-
sc...](https://never-obsolete.tumblr.com/tagged/windows-9x-color-schemes)

~~~
llarsson
Yeah, and X resources let us Linux nerds choose freely as well. This is what
we get now that every application ships its own implementation of everything,
including GUI toolkit.

------
orionblastar
Did they fix the bug where you have a Yahoo or AT&T account and change the
password at the server and when you change the password in Thunderbird it
gives you server errors?

------
greggman3
To each their own but I find it hard to fathom using a non-cloud based email
system. I regularly access my email from 7 computers.

~~~
wvenable
I have native apps for email on the various machines I own (between phones,
tablets, laptops, and desktops that's at least 5). And, in a pinch, I can
still use webmail.

I'm not sure why "cloud" matters for email -- it's always been hosted on a
server somewhere.

~~~
Moru
If you use POP for your mail client, your client downloads the mails from the
server that then deletes them and you only have them on your computer (Unless
you use Gmail that does some hybrid thing storing the old emails but marks
them as read I believe)

~~~
wott
POP3 doesn't automatically delete the emails it fetched (with RETR). It has to
emit another specific command (DELE) for this purpose.

So, keeping or not keeping mails on the server is a matter of configuration in
your client. I think all clients propose this choice and some will also add
extra options like deleting only after a number of days since fetching.

