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Regarding broken addons and the future of Thunderbird

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  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

DR
DR
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Just about every addon I use is broken in Thunderbird 78. I went through this once before, and now I'm actually searching for a new solution. In one of the addons I use, the author wrote this below, and I'm on his side. The Thunderbird team needs to be working WITH the addon community (since it's not that great without the addons) instead of disregarding them with every update.

>>>>

TB v68 compatibility note: There is no plan to move the addon to the TB v68 "standards", and here is why: - Mozilla itself has decided not to work on compatibility developments and leave "that" to the addon developers. - Besides the fact Mozilla leaves us doing the "dirty work", they are not even able to provide detailed information about how to make the old addons compatible with their new standards. I mean a relevant guide, not an information note explaining that the addons should be restartless, turned into webextensions and so on, and not even giving an example. - That is not the first time that Mozilla is acting as if addons developers and the community was not important. I have had already several bad experiences in the past when my addons got broken just because Mozilla changed something which used to work without even thinking about compatibility or giving information. - I'm tired of all this, and as i have another real job to afford my bills, i'm not ready to make all that effort for so few consideration.


The afterward addition of signatures in e-mail is apparently not provided, the functionality can not be found anywhere. Therefore, I have crafted this little add-on which adds this function. Just click the right mouse button in a new e-mail and insert the signature.

First you have to create a signature (html or text - no file signaure!), if you would like to have no signature as default then choose "add signature from file" and leave the filename empty! Now no signature is added by default and you have the option to add the signature by right-clicking.

If you need more than one signature please use Signature Switch addon!!

Just about every addon I use is broken in Thunderbird 78. I went through this once before, and now I'm actually searching for a new solution. In one of the addons I use, the author wrote this below, and I'm on his side. The Thunderbird team needs to be working WITH the addon community (since it's not that great without the addons) instead of disregarding them with every update. >>>> TB v68 compatibility note: There is no plan to move the addon to the TB v68 "standards", and here is why: - Mozilla itself has decided not to work on compatibility developments and leave "that" to the addon developers. - Besides the fact Mozilla leaves us doing the "dirty work", they are not even able to provide detailed information about how to make the old addons compatible with their new standards. I mean a relevant guide, not an information note explaining that the addons should be restartless, turned into webextensions and so on, and not even giving an example. - That is not the first time that Mozilla is acting as if addons developers and the community was not important. I have had already several bad experiences in the past when my addons got broken just because Mozilla changed something which used to work without even thinking about compatibility or giving information. - I'm tired of all this, and as i have another real job to afford my bills, i'm not ready to make all that effort for so few consideration. The afterward addition of signatures in e-mail is apparently not provided, the functionality can not be found anywhere. Therefore, I have crafted this little add-on which adds this function. Just click the right mouse button in a new e-mail and insert the signature. First you have to create a signature (html or text - no file signaure!), if you would like to have no signature as default then choose "add signature from file" and leave the filename empty! Now no signature is added by default and you have the option to add the signature by right-clicking. If you need more than one signature please use Signature Switch addon!!

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Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
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DR said
Just about every addon I use is broken in Thunderbird 78. I went through this once before, and now I'm actually searching for a new solution. In one of the addons I use, the author wrote this below, and I'm on his side. The Thunderbird team needs to be working WITH the addon community (since it's not that great without the addons) instead of disregarding them with every update.

You are correct, add-ons are certainly a source of pain. It is also a source of pain for those of us involved in the release process, because we do desire user adoption without undue pain on the part of the user, but it is it's also two way street - many authors drag their feet, regardless of documentation or preparation by release planners.

That said, the add-on situation has significantly improved compared to last year, or even six months ago.

1. Last year a fantastic volunteer Christopher Leidigh stepped forward to help with outreach, documentation, etc and also created https://cleidigh.github.io/ThunderKdB/ as an aid to better identifying the state of add-ons and facilitating outreach. (Christopher is now a member of the Thunderbird Council.)

2. Earlier this year when I was still on council we hired a developer, who is also a well respected add-on author, to be a full time add-on coordinator, documentor, champion, coach, developer. He is doing a stellar job, although unfortunately we were only able hire him just prior to releasing version 78.

There are certainly many add-ons which have not been updated by their authors, and some users are harder hit than average, especially if one is running many add-ons. But overall the current add-on situation of v78 is much better than had been the case for v60 and v68[1], and we expect even better for version 90.

[1] You can see in https://cleidigh.github.io/ThunderKdB/ only two of the top 10 are not compatible with 78 (AIUI those two are still being worked on), and I think about 50% of the top 50 are compatible - a much better situation that we had with version 68 at a similar point in time.