
New Thunderbird Releases and New Thunderbird Staff - discreditable
https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/12/new-thunderbird-releases-and-new-thunderbird-staff/
======
sebastian
Thanks for not letting Thunderbird die. In my opinion it's still the best and
most customizable opensource email client and there is just not a viable
replacement.

Most of the open source email clients I have tested require you to run a local
webserver and access the mail using a web browser with very limited features.
All I want/need is a desktop app that can be customized to work similar to
Gmail, pulls and deletes emails from remote SMTP/IMAP servers and allows me to
create backups locally.

Thunderbird gives me that.

~~~
busterarm
I've found Mutt, Alpine, Sup and Notmuch all to be very good, depending on
your needs.

~~~
Maarius
[https://www.postbox-inc.com/](https://www.postbox-inc.com/) is also a nice
alternative (and mostly compatible to Thunderbird - at least when I migrated)

~~~
sebastian
Even though Mutt, Alpine, Sup and Notmuch might work great for some people
they seem to be accessible only from a terminal, emacs, etc and very text
heavy. As much as I love spending time on the terminal, I prefer a GUI app for
my email.

Postbox unfortunately doesn't support Linux, besides that while I don't mind
paying licences for great software, it doesn't look like Postbox is fully
opensource [1].

[1] [https://www.postbox-inc.com/coveredcode](https://www.postbox-
inc.com/coveredcode)

~~~
nine_k
BTW what makes you prefer GUI over text almost-GUI? My experience with email
is that it's 99% text.

I use gmail because of the labels (no, folders are inadequate), full-text
search, and the fact that it runs in browser which I keep always open anyway.
I wish there was a comparable open-source solution.

~~~
dalai
> BTW what makes you prefer GUI over text almost-GUI? My experience with email
> is that it's 99% text.

For me it is the fact that setting up a GUI client takes 10 minutes and
learning to use it even less. If it was the same with mutt, I would switch in
a heartbeat.

I tried gnus and mutt in the past, but gave up on them after a few days. I was
spending too much time tweaking the config, trying to remember shortcuts or
googling how to get it to work the way I wanted to. IIRC even displaying Greek
with an ok font was a problem on gnus. That was 10+ years ago, could be that
the documentation is better now and a good-enough setup is easier to achieve.

~~~
dsr_
My experience is that mutt is a tool which rewards the learning process with
massively improved productivity.

By way of contrast, people who use Outlook or Thunderbird feel comfortable in
ten minutes, but they never make much progress.

If you deal with a lot of email, using the right tools is important. If email
is not your primary communications method, there's no point in putting in the
time to learn more advanced tools.

------
pkd
Oh my god. Thank you for this great news. I was almost resigned to see
Thunderbird being sunset. It's an amazing client and will only become better
by utilising the progress made by Firefox.

~~~
wpietri
Agreed! I just donated cash money, as I'd hate for it to go away.

~~~
kevinchen
Consider setting up a small monthly donation, as this helps nonprofits plan
better and be more sustainable

------
wallacoloo
Is the new Thunderbird compatible with Microsoft's Exchange email service? If
memory serves, I think that was what forced me to switch to the Evolution Mail
client (which uses "Exchange Web Services") since my workplace uses Exchange.

With regard to the Photon UI, I'm weary of the calendar button being in the
application header like that. It's just not where I would look for it, and I
don't see what's different between it and the other buttons that would merit
some of them being in the header and some of them not.

Either way, I'm happy that Thunderbird isn't dead. Even version 52 has some
nice features that I couldn't find in other clients.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>Is the new Thunderbird compatible with Microsoft's Exchange email service? If
memory serves, I think that was what forced me to switch to the Evolution Mail
client

I see this very much as a Microsoft problem rather than a Thunderbird problem,
although I appreciate that doesn't make your situation better.

I use davmail[1] to solve this problem at work. Davmail sits in your tray,
connects to exchange and turns the exchange traffic into standards-compliant
mail traffic for your email client.

Of course, you lose some features in the process. About once a month I have to
remind HR that the "vote" buttons in exchange are not part of any email client
except outlook. Still, it works well for sending/receiving mail and tolerably
for handling calendar invites.

[1] [http://davmail.sourceforge.net/](http://davmail.sourceforge.net/)

~~~
smarx007
Can you see the calendar availability of everyone who you invite as Outlook
shows?

~~~
Sir_Substance
I have no idea, I mostly use the calendar for receiving invites to meetings.
Try it and let me know?

------
mintplant
I'm so glad for some news about Thunderbird's future. A conglomeration of
little annoyances made me go hunting for an alternative client earlier in the
year, and I just couldn't find one that would really replace it for me.

If any of the team are reading, I hope the search interface is on the radar
for when the project is on stable footing again. That's Thunderbird's main
area of weakness in my opinion.

~~~
tombrossman
I find recent emails with Thunderbird's search pretty reliably, but for
indexing a large archive of emails I can definitely recommend Recoll. I have
it run a scan daily as a cronjob and it finds absolutely everything.

[http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/](http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/)

------
Illniyar
I thought thunderbird was in pure maintenance mode and practically abandoned.
Has something changed? Is this a maintenance release or is thunderbird
starting to be a viable client again?

~~~
Sniffnoy
Why would Thunderbird need to change beyond maintenance in order to be
"viable" in the first place? Email hasn't changed. It's still solving the same
problem. It should be as good as ever.

~~~
jrnichols
> Email hasn't changed

Tell Google that. :/ Most of my email woes doing support over the years have
been Gmail related. Google changes something, suddenly happy email clients
cease working as users expect.

~~~
digi_owl
Oh so much this.

Google is, on a number of topics, dancing very close to the EEE behavior that
MS has gotten lambasted for in the past.

You could probably plaster the colorful G over top of Vader's helmet in the
old scene between him and Lando.

~~~
Sniffnoy
Hell, they basically outright _are_ EEE with regard to how they've treated
XMPP. I basically just had to stop using Gchat (or whatever it's called now)
because its behavior was just so incompatible with Pidgin.

------
Grollicus
If you are using Thunderbird you're propably using Enigmail and might want to
check out this new Enigmail vulnerability:

[https://twitter.com/symbolicsoft/status/943106337617084417](https://twitter.com/symbolicsoft/status/943106337617084417)

~~~
bigbugbag
Actually according to usage share, if you are using TB you are probably not
using enigmail, but thanks for the warning.

------
Derbasti
Finally! I hope they start moving forward again.

How about, once all the maintenance is done, \- Exchange support \- Native
Calendar with Exchange and CalDAV support \- Native Contacts with Exchange and
CardDAV support

(I'm currently using Evolution, and it mostly works. But elegant or polished
it is not.)

------
oneplane
While I'm happy they are keeping development up, I'm sad about the 'move to
web technologies'. I really like the idea of purpose-built applications in
fast languages that compile to efficient native code. I don't really want a
webapp, wrapped in a single-app browser, we already have so many of those.

~~~
rebelwebmaster
More relevant to Firefox than Thunderbird, perhaps, but the advantage to using
web technologies for their own front end is that it forces them to eat their
own dogfood at least. Given that Mozilla wants the web to win, making sure
their platform is well-rounded enough to performantly build their own products
on top of seems like a wise strategy. Kind of a vote of no-confidence
otherwise.

~~~
bigbugbag
What makes you think mozilla wants the web to win ?

------
buovjaga
If you love Thunderbird, set it (bug) free! You can help a lot without any C++
knowledge. I wrote about getting started in bug triaging earlier this year:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_lov...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_love_for_thunderbird_by_testing_bugs/)

Sadly I have not gotten around to guestblogging about my TB testing (done over
the course of 3 months).

------
mariuolo
I'm sorry, but from the blog article it's not completely clear what this is.

I knew a major rewrite was going to be required with Gecko and XUL being
abandoned by Mozilla: is this a step in that direction? Or just a stopgap
measure while still relying on legacy code?

------
pjmlp
Thanks for all the work, it is my favourite email client since Netscape days.

Guess it is time to renew my donation.

~~~
u801e
I thought that Thunderbird (along with Firefox) was based on the Mozilla
application suite which itself was open sourced from the code that Netscape
wrote for their browser, mail and news client, and html composer/editor aka
Netscape Communicator.

I still use Firefox as my main browser, and Thunderbird as my mail and news
client and have been using their earlier incarnations since the Netscape days.

~~~
dboreham
Yes. Thunderbird is a descendent of Netscape Messenger.

------
gravypod
I currently use ThuderBird but I'm very sad about the lack of some basic
features (grouping email chains?).

I wish someone would make an open source replacement to Mailspring's sync
engine. I'd switch to that as soon as available. I just don't like the thought
of someone having hidden code touching my email.

[https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring)

~~~
mintplant
> I currently use ThuderBird but I'm very sad about the lack of some basic
> features (grouping email chains?).

If this means what I think it does, it's provided by the Thunderbird
Conversations addon.

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

~~~
lorenzhs
I use that but it's a bit of a mixed bag. Works pretty well in general but
sometimes it's just incredibly slow, or decides to display a portait image
with 100% width in a half-height view, spanning half a dozen screenfuls,
instead of doing something reasonable like resizing so that both dimensions
fit.

------
jboogie77
Diehard thunderbird fan. Using it on OSX and Windows. Glad to see it still
being updated.

------
Tharkun
Not impressed by the visual "refresh". Looks like yet another trip to flatland
to me. I wish this design trend would go away already.

~~~
bigbugbag
Mozilla rarely impress with the unnecessary UI changes, but for some reason
the make sure to deprive the user of the freedom fo choice by removing the
previous UI instead of having an option in preferences to choose the UI the
user prefer.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Because maintaining two separate GUI frameworks is utterly pointless.

------
nerflad
Wow, just last night I was thinking about how Thunderbird is getting so long
in the tooth. It's still my favorite email client. Happy to see this update!

------
dwheeler
I'm REALLY excited that Thunderbird has more people and releases. I'm hoping
that calendar & native Exchange support will be eventually added.

------
bigbugbag
Thunderbird lacks privacy protection features and integration for GTD flow.
I'm waiting for caliopen to be ready for public use and I'll switch all the TB
install I maintain to caliopen[1].

[1]: [https://www.caliopen.org/en/](https://www.caliopen.org/en/)

------
NKosmatos
Great news!!! Thanks for keeping TB alive for us loyal users. Just yesterday I
tried the 58beta and some problems I had with Lightning not loading properly
after some restarts, disappeared. The visual refresh with the flat UI was also
a nice change. Wish I could contribute...

------
rcarmo
Awesome news, given that I still use it on a weekly basis on my Linux laptop.
I pinned the apt on Ubuntu to make sure it would stay ‘stable’, will take a
look at 58 once it goes out of beta.

------
ausjke
Great to see it is alive and kicking.

I have been a heavy thunderbird users for years until about half-year ago, I
now move/forward all my email to outlook.com instead, so far it works for me
well.

------
epx
Great news, made my day! It is the one usable mail client for Linux.

------
znpy
It's sad to see Mozilla dropping off Thunderbird to basically a spin-off
entity (this seems to be the direction).

------
cs702
I see no information about integration with calendar and contacts web apps.
Did I somehow miss it?

~~~
addicted
That's achieved with the Lightning add-on, I believe.

I'd like to see Thunderbird focus on separating their mail handling engine
from the UI aspects. Much like how the Chrome V8 engine can be used by a
variety of projects, it would be nice if a separate open source project could
take the Thunderbird engine, and experiment with their own UI.

It would also allow the adoption of newer replacements for IMAP. My hope would
be that it could also lead to the replacement of proprietary messaging
networks such as Slack, Discourse, etc., with something based on the newer
open email format.

~~~
systemz
I think you mistaken Discourse with Discord. Discourse is open source forum
engine, the second is Slack-like but faster, with rich permissions system.

~~~
addicted
Yes, you're right. I meant Discord. Thanks for the correction. Too late for me
to edit though.

------
sigjuice
Please have some sort of ACME support for automatically doing S/MIME.

------
AndyMcConachie
Thank you Mozilla for continuing to support Thunderbird!!!

------
nkkollaw
WOW, I used to use Thunderbird until around 2010 when I moved to more modern
clients, it's so sad to see that they're still stuck in 2010 in terms of
design.

~~~
noja
> when I moved to more modern clients

Any chance you can give me your list? I haven't found any desktop e-mail
client that rivals Thunderbird. Thanks.

~~~
nkkollaw
Depends on what platform you are. I'm currently on Ubuntu and I use Google
Inbox wrapped in an Electron app.

I used to use Mailbox (which I think became Google Inbox? or was it Sparrow
that did), Sparrow, Airmail.

Thunderbird turns managing emails into a full-time job. No shortcuts
whatsoever to help you getting rid of unimportant emails, awful spam
protection.

Of course, if you're productive in Thunderbird who cares and why not just use
that, this is just my opinion :-)

~~~
bigbugbag
Sparrow has been dead for over 5 years so not exactly a modern thing, it was
apple only, not cross platform anyways so not comparable to thunderbird.

Airmail is also apple only so useless to most people.

Mailbox was a phone only app that stopped operating last year, again not a
cross platform desktop client.

You're welcome to try again, but AFAIK there are no such "modern" cross
platform desktop email client that you throw around as a model to follow.

Even your current Inbox by google is a phone only / web only application and
not a cross platform desktop email client.

Claws[1], sylpheed[2] are such cross platform desktop email client competing
with thunderbird and I don't any of the features you're complaining about

I do not know what you are referring to when you mention thunderbird has awful
spam protection. I maintain a dozen of TB installs and they do a great job of
filtering spams for those who do not know better email hygiene.

You should try experiencing email outside of the giant mega centralized
repository that is killing the web and internet and see how it's done in the
outside world that you seem to not visit often.

[1]: [http://www.claws-mail.org/](http://www.claws-mail.org/) [2]:
[http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/)

