Thunderbird 115

Well its a complete rewrite. I would suggest using version 102. There seems little point in updating stuff until they sort out the dodgy stuff. Brian

Anyone needing help, look at messages in a.c.s.thunderbird from 3 months back when some of us started using v115, there are userChrome.css and about:config settings that get it looking pretty close to how it used to be, e.g.

Not saying there aren't a few niggles remaining

Keep using horses too?

Anyone restored the vertical lines linking previous posts in threads yet? Most other things don't concern me too much, but that is something I find useful.

I guess it won't be too long before v116 release appears. I think I'll wait for that and hope that most of the v115 issues have been sorted out before messing around with userChrome.css.

On 05 Oct 2023, Brian Gaff wrote

(top-posted for Brian's set-up)

I've just switched Thunderbird on my wife's computer back to 102 from

There was probably a way of correcting that particular fault, but since

Just because something has been updated it doesn't make it better.

With software it seems to be common that something that works well is often updated or given a new GUI and never seems to work well ever again.

I've lost count of the number of programs that I've ditched because of this in the past 30 years.

Don't think there's much chance of CSS tweaks bringing those back.

v116 won't appear, there isn't a release version of TB for every corresponding FF version, only for the ESR versions, so apart from the

I'm still on 78! If it aint broke etc etc .....

no, but if you run an old version that is no longer receiving updates, that will break one day, e.g. if TLS 1.4 becomes a requirement for email providers and TB is stuck on 1.2 or 1.3, it's game over if you stick to an old version ... some "expert users" might roll their own tunnel with plain POP/SMTP/IMAP/NNTP going in and TLS1.4 wrapped stuff coming out the other end, but that chops the user-base down to 0.1% of people

Unfortunately true, but TB had gathered 20 years of cruft, they've done the painful re-write of the GUI now, despite assurances, it looks like a feature or two has bitten the dust in that, they might return, or they might be gone for good.

It's like asking for a car that moves along without the wheels going round, if you drag the car far enough, bits start scraping off the bottom ...

It's not come through to Ubuntu yet, but I was interested to see this video from one of the devs, about how they've thought through the changes and made it both approachable for new users and how old users can go back to (more or less) how it was before:

It sounds like they're thought a lot about how it's possible to configure things for those who are used to the old interface, as well as those new users for whom the old interface is a massive turn-off.

Theo

I take it you are ignoring the 217 known vulnerabilities in 78 then?

Where did you see that? There's nothing on this page:

This seems well out-of-date too:

The next Firefox ESR is 128, expected July 2024:

Theo

There's nowhere I can point you at that will tell you, you just have to know how TB development works ...

FF produces a new version once a month, and bugfix point releases in-between those, then it produces an ESR version about once a year for enterprises who can't keep up with a new version every month, and they feed serious bug fixes through to point releases of the ESR versions.

TB is built on top of the ESR and ESR point versions of FF.

The thunderbird team *are* looking at moving to monthly releases now they have a bigger team, and have moved on a bit with v115.

It is.

TB users don't get forced to have the ESR .0 versions, they wait until three ESR point fix versions have gone past, that's why us "keen" users have been on TB115.0.x and so on since July, but only now are "normal" users being upgraded to TB115.3.x

the "3" is the three month delay, which will likely work out so that

The versions are numbered the same as the Firefox ESRs: the current Firefox ESR is 115 so the current TB release is 115.something. The next FF ESR is

Most FF users aren't on the ESR so their FF continues to increase - 118,

The point releases are those from TB, not FF. So the next will be 128.0, then 128.1, 128.2 etc in sequence. They don't look at the 3 month delay so won't do 128+3=131 or 128+0.3 = 128.3 (although there could be bugfix releases like 128.0.1)

In message <uflur9$sced$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Hmm. My current whinge is that 115 does not recognise when a mail has been read and I have to use the *get messages* route to turn off the message waiting symbol.

I'm not using it for Newsgroups.

you're right, I got carried away with +3, rather than +0.3, so the next version "pushed" onto v115.x users won't be 128+3=131, but it will be v128.3, if you want 128.0 you'll have to "pull" it.

Under tools/settings/reading&display/automatically mark messages as read

have you got "immediately" or "after displaying for N seconds" selected?