Thunderbird news

[JohnTHaller]

So this has happened finally: http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-windows They're calling it "Extended Thunderbird". The office suite currently free for colleges, universities, and teachers but not for students.

I don't see an offer of source code anywhere. Any Thunderbird files they modified are required to be released under the MPL. Note that this doesn't apply to fully new source code files they add.

[freakazoid]

It looks like Softmaker just altered the interface by moving tabs to the bottom and bundled the Lightning addon for calendar and tasks functionality.

They might have not altered any source code, but are redistributing Thunderbird with some custom defaults.

[webfork]

It looks like Softmaker just altered the interface by moving tabs to the bottom and bundled the Lightning addon for calendar and tasks functionality.

They might have not altered any source code, but are redistributing Thunderbird with some custom defaults.

Ghacks is reporting you can download the plugins without buying the software bundle: http://www.ghacks.net/2016/05/23/thunde ... softmaker/ I still don't see them distributing the source.

[freakazoid]

Thunderbird 52 has been out for a week, but Thunderbird Portable hasn't caught up to it yet.

I don't post on the PortableApps.com site, so hopefully JTH sees this!

[webfork]

Thunderbird 52 has been out for a week, but Thunderbird Portable hasn't caught up to it yet.

It generally takes a few days for the update to come through. Since Thunderbird only sees maintenance releases now, this is only problematic if a really serious bug comes out.

In this case, it looks like they got it updated, unless you're talking about 53.0b1, which is a beta release.

[bitcoin]

Thunderbird forced an update on me from version 19 or so to version 38 about a year or two ago even though i had updates turned off

[webfork]

Thunderbird forced an update on me from version 19 or so to version 38 about a year or two ago even though i had updates turned off

More and more I'm frustrated by software I have to disable from being able to connect to the Internet to maintain a reasonably stable machine. I'd expect more from the Mozilla folks, but it's not even really Mozilla anymore. Sigh.

[webfork]

A remarkably feature-complete compression tool is now available as a simple add-on for Thunderbird: Auto Compress File. I've been generally a little underwhelmed by the Thunderbird extras over the years, but this is really something I wish every email client had.

Note that the program hasn't been updated in some time but I saw no issues in testing, and comes with loads of intelligent features:

• Automatic vs interactive (manual) mode
• Compress individual files or compress all files
• Remote backup
• Only compress files that actually benefit from it (either filtering by file type, overall size, or available compression level)
• Set compression levels
• Rename tools and character replacement

You can even edit the extension so it doesn't get flagged on a paranoid email server.

Wishlist (maybe the most nitpicky requests I've ever written):

• 7zip support (probably under an advanced settings menu since it's unlikely everyone in your address book knows what that is)
• Password support (also in an advanced menu)

Screenshots:




Websites:
Main: http://dev.arqendra.net/
Add-on: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... ress-file/
Article: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/05/c ... underbird/

[webfork]

I don't see an offer of source code anywhere. Any Thunderbird files they modified are required to be released under the MPL. Note that this doesn't apply to fully new source code files they add.

The program was updated a few weeks ago but still not seeing anything on source code: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps% ... fsb&ia=web

On a related note, my interest in Thunderbird has come back into the fore in part because I switched over to Zoho Mail. After a lot of trouble with Google Mail + Thunderbird over the last 10 years, it now works like a dream, both on the mail and calendar sides. Notably you can't use Zoho's 2FA program in tandem with Thunderbird, but just using and cycling passwords should offer more than adequate security.

As to why Google Mail didn't work well with Thunderbird, I have no idea. I saw an article basically suggesting that Google doesn't like Mozilla due to browser competition and has made small things incompatible going back many years, similar to stories connected to Microsoft Edge.

Whatever the case, as I've slowly divorced myself from all things to do with Google, and Zoho has provided a solid exit. It doesn't have have a lot of the usability tweaks and there's so much odd overlapping between applications, but I also don't expect to see a bonkers interface reset every two years and a bunch of garbage email response suggestions. It's not their fault: Product Managers see "machine learning" and they forget how interfaces cluttered with absolute junk are a bad thing.

[Midas]

I keep multiple online mail accounts with all prominent providers (i.e., Google, Microsoft, etc.) and I have been (lightly) using Zoho for some time, too. Even made an account for my cub for commercial purposes. Unencumbered and very reliable in my experience.

[webfork]

Unencumbered and very reliable in my experience.

Yeah, I've been very pleased. I'm very glad an open source mail tool is available with this kind of functionality.