Thunderbird 5.0 - New Features and Changes: Difference between revisions

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'''mail.identity.default.suppress_signature_separator''' [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58406], [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218346]
'''mail.identity.default.suppress_signature_separator''' [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58406], [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218346]


{{Right-pic|Tb50sizeMBmarker.png}}
===Display of large message/attachment sizes===
===Display of large message/attachment sizes===


{{Right-pic|Tb50sizeMBmarker.png}}
For both total message and attachment sizes, only values less than 1.0 MB are shown in KB, then the size is presented in MB [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=516787]. This has the advantage that you don't have to calculate any more how many KB are a MB (1024 would be the answer), but makes it harder to spot large messages or attachments in the list.
For both total message and attachment sizes, only values less than 1.0 MB are shown in KB, then the size is presented in MB [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=516787]. This has the advantage that you don't have to calculate any more how many KB are a MB (1024 would be the answer), but makes it harder to spot large messages or attachments in the list.


Line 125: Line 125:
  chrome%3A//messenger/locale/messenger.properties#megaByteAbbreviation2=***%.*f MB
  chrome%3A//messenger/locale/messenger.properties#megaByteAbbreviation2=***%.*f MB


This will add ''' *** ''' in front of messages for which the MB notation is chosen. You can reduce this to just a single ''' * ''' or any other string that is easily recognized by replacing the part between the ''' = ''' and the ''' % ''' in that string.
This will add '''***''' in front of messages for which the MB notation is chosen. You can reduce this to just a single '''*''' or any other string that is easily recognized by replacing the part between the '''=''' and the '''%''' in that string.


===New add-ons manager===
===New add-ons manager===

Revision as of 18:29, 5 June 2011

This is a draft and work in progress. Please add comments and suggestions to the discussion page.
  • This article is inherently incomplete and subject to change until TB 5.0 is released.
  • Make sure you understand that pre-release versions may be stable enough for your purpose but equally well may corrupt your e-mail or entire system when running into bugs!
    • Do not use pre-release versions in production environments where data loss or instability matters!
    • See Testing pre-release versions on how to stay on the safe side before looking into the release candidates.


Thunderbird 5.0 has just issued its first beta release and the final release is coming up soon! Don't be fooled by the version number. While the changes from 2.0 to 3.0 were substantial, this is a rather incremental release, comparable to 3.1 versus 3.0. Thus, Everything in Thunderbird 3.1 - New Features and Changes and also Thunderbird 3.0 - New Features and Changes should still be valid unless obsoleted here.


What happened to Thunderbird 4.0?

In a process driven by the Firefox developers, Mozilla has substantially redesigned their release process. Thus, there will no longer be parallel branches after Firefox 3.6 and Thunderbird 3.1 have reached their end of support. Instead, each release will have a full version bump even if there are no or marginal feature changes (i.e., Firefox 5.0 will be the stability update for 4.0.1, then 6.0 will be the update for 5.0, etc.) [1]. Only in quick "firedrill" follow-up releases which become necessary shortly after a release to fix a missed issue, a minor "dot" release will be issued.

Thunderbird decided to follow that pattern, and in the process re-aling its numbers with Firefox again [2]. Consequently, the "Miramar" branch has been bumped from 3.3 to 5.0, and the next release after 5.0 will be Thunderbird 6.0 around the same time when Firefox 6.0 is released. It yet has to be seen how this process turns out in practical terms, especially with respect to add-on compatibility as a stable API is no longer given as it was previously assured during the lifetime of a branch.

Changes in supported platforms

There are no changes in support on Windows, the minimum platform remains Windows 2000 and only 32-bit builds are available [3]. On Mac OSX, support for 10.4 is discontinued, and the PPC platform (G3, G4, G5) is no longer supported. Instead, the universal downloads contain both 32-bit and (new) 64-it versions. Linux requirements are the same as for 3.1, by default you will get the 32-bit version from the download page, official 64-bit builds are available from the release server for manual download [4].

New appearance on Vista and Windows 7

TB 5.0 aero theme over Windows 7 Default desktop theme

New default theme

While the "aero" theme has received a major overhaul [5], only moderate updates have been made to the themes on the other platforms, including the Windows XP/2000 theme. See Thunderbird 5.0 - New Features and Changes/Themes for a detailed discussion on the changes on Vista and Windows 7.

There has be a redesign of the addressing area in the composition window on all platforms [6]. As the most visible change, the "To", "Cc", ... selector buttons are no longer part of the address block but appear as "true" menu buttons to the left of it.

On Linux, the default theme uses several GTK stock icons, i.e., they aren't included with the Thunderbird default theme. You may see error messages in your console window that icons are missing, and those may not display properly when Thunderbird is running. Thus, make sure that the relevant GTK libraries are installed. Using a re-packaged Thunderbird version from your distribution's repository may avoid any such conflicts, but beta versions may not be available.

Font rendering issues

Most platform perform font smoothing by default to achive a better rendering on LCD screens. Depending on your personal preferences or needs, different settings may work better for different users, thus it's a bit of try and error to find the optimum settings. In general, this applies equally to all applications and isn't unique to Thunderbird.

Like Firefox 4.0 and later, Thunderbird 5.0 supports Direct2D font rendering on Windows [7]. You can check in Help → Troubleshooting Information, Graphics section at the very bottom, if it is available on your platform (look for "Direct2D Enabled") along with possible hints, e.g., on an outdated driver. This feature is related to but separate from the ClearType settings [8] which can be found (on Windows 7) in the Display section of the Control Panel ("Adjust ClearType text").

If the fonts look blurred to you and don't improve with tweaking the ClearType settings, change gfx.direct2d.disabled to "true" and restart Thunderbird to see if it makes any difference.

Account setup

New account wizard

After substantial critisicm on the original implementation of the account wizard, it has been reimplemented to a large extent in Thunderbird 5.0 and resolves a couple of issues seen with the 3.0/3.1 wizard [9]. Performance has been improved in the "guessing" algorithm to try the various options in parallel rather than one by one. Also, if both IMAP and POP configurations are available, it is now easily possible to pick one or the other [10], [11]:

TB 5.0 result of Account Wizard for Gmail account

Note that once an account has been established as either IMAP or POP type, it can't be siwtched to the respective other type without recreating the account, this hasn't changed.

While it is still not possible to start a completely manual setup from scratch (the argumentation being that a configuration known in Mozilla's ISP database should be more accurate than frequently wrong information given by the providers themselves), the "Manual Config" button can now be pressed at any time to abort the auto-configuraion process and to enter the manual setup. The account wizard requires that the servers are responsive in either case, thus it's still not possible to set up an account manually while off-line or if the server isn't available for any other reason [12].

Archiving can be disabled

Thunderbird 5.0 now allows to disable the "archive" function if not desired, along with the "A" keyboard shortcut, message-header button, and menu item [13]. This setting is available on a per-account basis in the Copies & Folders Account Settings [14]:

TB 5.0 new Archive settings with enable box and options button

When pressing the "Archive Options" button (not available for Gmail accounts as they don't support subfolders [15]), additional options are shown to determine the structure of the "Archives" folder:

  • Choose from a single (flat) arrangement, grouping by year (default), or by year and month.
  • The checkbox allows you to retain the structure of the original folder in the "Archives" folder, which are arranged underneath the optional year and month folders.
  • The folder tree shows an example for the resulting folder structure and is not derived from any of your own folders.

In addition to the per-account settings, you can set the defaults for these preferences in the Config Editor. Any account which doesn't have specific settings will inherit from those preferences:

  • mail.identity.default.archive_enabled
  • mail.identity.default.archive_granularity
  • mail.identity.default.archive_keep_folder_structure

Auto compacting by default

related article: Compacting folders#Automatically

The defaults for compacting folders automatically have been changed [16]. It is now enabled by default and the threshold specified in MB rather than KB with a new default of 20 MB. These settings can be changed in the Advanced → Network & Disk Space settings.

Attachment pane redesign

There are several improvements and changes to the attachment panes in both the message viewer and the composition window. The sizes of individual attachments as well as the sum of all attachments are now shown when composing [17] or viewing [18] a message. This helps to estimate download times and to avoid messages bouncing back due to the server's size limit being exceeded.

Note: The sizes are for the raw attachments, thus not considering the overhead of encoding. As a rule of thumb, for each 10 MB message size allowed by the provider you can have 7.3 MB of raw attachment (assuming base64 encoding and 76 characters per line).

Another major change in the message viewer is the collapsed attachment pane [19]:

  • By default, only the number of attachments, their total size, and an action button is shown (which contains the same actions as provided in the attachment-pane context menu).
  • For a single attachment, you can open it right away by clicking on the attachment name.
  • For "multiple" attachments, you have to use the twisty to the left to see them in detail.
  • The opened view corresponds to the attachment pane in previous versions, including the context menus.
  • Note that the action button and the context menu contains "Open" and "Open All" items now.

It has been criticized that the attachment pane now always appears collapsed without an option to open it expanded by default [20]. While an add-on is provided to work around this limitation, also allowing to hide the attachment bar entirely [21], it is possible to modify the default behavior with a couple of userChrome.css entries.

As a compromise between showing it collapsed (thus not providing direct access to the attachments even if only a few are provided) and always expanding it by default (thus potentially using up a lot of space when the message has lots of attachments), the following code shows only first row of attachments when opening, then allows opening in full with the toggle [22]:

#attachmentView > [collapsed="true"] {
  visibility: visible !important;
  overflow: auto !important;
}

As another quick workaround, the following code always opens the attachment pane completely, in which case the twisty is redundant and thus removed:

#attachmentView > [collapsed="true"] {
  visibility: visible !important;
}

#attachmentToggle {
  display: none !important;
}

Either version is beneficial if you receive only a small number (but more than one) of attachments on a regular basis.

Advanced options

Signature delimiter

mail.identity.default.suppress_signature_separator [23], [24]

Display of large message/attachment sizes

For both total message and attachment sizes, only values less than 1.0 MB are shown in KB, then the size is presented in MB [25]. This has the advantage that you don't have to calculate any more how many KB are a MB (1024 would be the answer), but makes it harder to spot large messages or attachments in the list.

To add a special marker to large sizes, you can add a file custom-strings.txt to your installation directory with the following content:

chrome%3A//messenger/locale/messenger.properties#megaByteAbbreviation2=***%.*f MB

This will add *** in front of messages for which the MB notation is chosen. You can reduce this to just a single * or any other string that is easily recognized by replacing the part between the = and the % in that string.

New add-ons manager

extensions.getAddons.cache.enabled [26]

Troubleshooting information

Privacy considerations

Scam warning

Phoning home

  • extensions.blocklist.enabled
  • extensions.getAddons.cache.enabled [27]
  • extensions.getAddons.get.url [28]
  • mail.instrumentation.askUser [29]
  • mail.instrumentation.postUrl

See also