New Fx Releases This Week

Happy Easter

Checking on the in-progress releases page this morning, it appear the Fx 2.0.0.13 security update is still on schedule for release early this week. Should have confirmation with Monday’s Weekly Update meeting. Also still on track for the end of this week Firefox 3.0b5 aka ‘may be this will be the final beta’. A quick reminder while TBird update are normally released at the same time, TBird 2.0.0.13 update has been pushed backed to April 15th.

Getting back to Fx 3.0b5, if this is indeed the final Beta release then it will be a major milestone. Recall Fx 2 only had two Beta releases (but it not have Places, which is on the reason it has been nearly a year and half since major new version of Firefox) as well as three Release Candidates releases. The next Firefox 3 Status meeting is this Tuesday and there may be some additional information from Monday’s Weekly Update meeting as well.

Major Releases In the Next 30-Days

I stumbled upon a link to the In-progress Releases page on the MozillaWiki via David Ascher. Over the next 30 days expect to see new releases for Fx 2, Fx 3 and Thunderbird 2:

Firefox 2.0.0.13 is scheduled for release on or around March 25th. This has already been confirmed in the last Weekly Update meeting on March 10th. I also noticed this past Friday my Fx 2 nightly builds had been bumped up to Fx 2.0.0.14pre. Fx 2.0.0.13 should be released to the Beta Channel later this week.

Firefox 3.0b5 is scheduled for release on or around March 27th. Um…okay, I sure wasn’t expecting to see this coming out so soon. It was a little over 10-days ago when Firefox 3 Beta 5 Announced. Now, I wonder is Beta 5 going to be the last of the Beta releases? Kinda moving fast on this release. Because of this news, I am going to hold off on Making the Switch to Fx 3.0 as my primary browser.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.13 will not be released, until April 15th. David Ascher discusses the reasons why this Thunderbird release is being delayed in his latest blog entry: Progress Update. The main reason is it is not practical (it would be ideal though) to do a simultaneous release (Firefox and Thunderbird 2.0.0.13). The security fixes include addressing exploits with JavaScript which by default is active in Firefox, but not in Thunderbird. Plus given Firefox has a much larger user base which can be affected over this exploit it was decided to go ahead with the Firefox release first. I have to agree with David’s comments concerning the decision to push back the Thunderbird 2.0.0.13 release:

The strange thing is this: everyone on the call was unhappy about it. But I actually feel that the choice was the right one, given the circumstances.

New Thunderbird Engineers

Back in October things were looking very gloomy for Thunderbird. It was a bit of a double-whammy when Scott McGregor, Thunderbird lead engineer and David Bienvenu, developer announced they were leaving Mozilla. These announcements came about a month after, then CEO Mitchel Baker announced the split-off to Thunderbird Mail Corporation (MailCo, now known as Mozilla Messaging). Finally, some good news to report about Thunderbird.

In his blog entry, Progress Update, David Ascher has announced Mark Banner (Standard8 on IRC) has signed on as a full-time on Thunderbird (effective next month).

One of the projects that Mark will finally have time to push on is to beef up the test automation framework and help drive better test coverage for the codebase, which is a crucial step to allow the refactoring we want to do, and facilitate a more agile development model.

Further, Rick Tessner has joined as a part-time build engineer. Rick will be helping with helping with build automation and release automation.

Thunderbird 3 Features…

…what is planned and what should be included

I am looking over the freshly updated Thunderbird 3 Status Meeting notes from Tuesday’s (March 4th) meeting this evening. Direct calendar integration, instead of the external Sunbird Application or Lighting Extensions seems the big ‘must-have’ feature for TBird 3. Honestly, this is not on the top of my list of features. I have and continue to us Yahoo’s Calendar (FYI the Guru is not a big fan of Google). It is simple and is part of my Yahoo! Start Page. But also because I just use TBird just to manage my e-mail. I don’t use it for News Groups (I use XNews) or as a Feed Reader (I use Brief, a Fx extension).

In the Tb 3 planning section of the notes is a very, very brief mention of ‘Tabbed Messaging?’. This is a feature I really want in TBird. Firefox has spoiled me so much having everything open in new tabs instead of ending up with a gazillion open windows. It had been a planned feature in TBird 2, but never made it and judging by the lack of ‘enthusiasm’ I am beginning to think it may not even come in TBird 3. Sadly I think it is going to pushed out to TBird 4 (see Thunderbird 3 Plans for 2008).

One of the reasons why I feel extensions for Thunderbird have still not reached their fullest potential is because they are a pain in the a$$ to install. Okay may be not, for people who are use to Firefox automagically installing the add-ons right from AMO, it is a pain. Consider of the 600-Million Add-Ons Downloaded only 2.4 million (4%) were for Thunderbird. The current version of Thunderbird does have a way to make the process a little less painful but it is turned of by default (see Tweak: Add-ons ‘Install’ Button). Of course one can always simply drag the install link from AMO into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager box to install. Sure it sounds simple enough, for those who know what they are doing. I work technical support and deal with people who can’t even type a web address into their browser (“Why does it say ‘no results found’ when I type in my website address?”). Now you may be thinking that these people wouldn’t be smart enough to install extensions. But consider with Firefox (not sure about IE7) all you have to do is point, click on the link, click on the install button and restart the browser to install an extension. So this is defiantly an area in need of improvement with TBird.

Another area that is really in need of improvement is Account Settings. The most common thing I walk customers through is setting up their e-mail accounts. 99% of the time it is either Microsoft Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook. I know the setup so well, I could do it in my sleep. Thunderbird on the other hand is very confusing and downright difficult to setup. Two things that drive me crazy about Thunderbird is that the Outgoing (SMTP) Server settings are defined else where and there is no where to enter your account password. When you setup/edit an account in Thunderbird you are setting up the incoming mail settings. Yes there is an option on the main setting screen to choose an SMTP server, but you have to go into those settings else where. As far as account passwords, you have to wait until you do a send and receive before you are prompted to enter a password. There is however, one thing I do like with Thunderbird’s Account Settings is server settings are easy to find. For those who want to leave a copy of the message on the server with Outlook have to go into ‘More Settings’ then into the ‘Advanced’ section to accomplish this. In Thunderbird it is the next section down called Server Settings.

So in order of importance for new features, I would rather see improved Extension/Add-ons Installation, Tabbed Browsing, better Account Management then Calendar integration.

New! Thunderbird Status Meetings

Starting today, there will be a Thunderbird Status Meeting every Tuesday at 9:30 AM Pacific (12:30 PM Eastern). This week’s meeting is going to cover getting ready to go to Alpha 1 on Thunderbird 3 as well as calendar integration and which extensions should be come standard features. The complete (or at this time incomplete) notes of today’s meeting can be found here.

Source: David Ascher