This article describes the major changes visible to users in Thunderbird version 60.0. Full details of all the changes can be found in the Thunderbird 60 release notes.
Table of Contents
- 1 Some add-ons may not work
- 2 New menu location of add-on options
- 3 Changes to date and time settings
- 4 Compose window changes
- 5 Address Book
- 6 Static themes
- 7 Calendar
- 7.1 Provide an option to display locations for events
- 7.2 Copying, cutting and pasting of recurring events and tasks
- 7.3 Provide the ability for sending/not sending meeting notifications directly
- 7.4 Allow to enforce the use of email invitation for meeting for users of CalDAV calendars
- 7.5 Reminders can be dismissed even for read-only calendar
- 8 Maildir experimental feature
- 9 End of support for Windows XP and Vista
Some add-ons may not work
Due to significant changes imposed on Thunderbird, version 60 will not automatically load an add-on unless it has been marked compatible by the author. To date, over 130 add-ons have been made compatible by their authors and several are being added every week. If your add-on is not compatible, please contact the author at their support website or email, which you can find on the add-ons website.
(The decision for turning off automatic compatibility was not lightly made, but the user experience is better for users because non-working add-ons are prevented from breaking Thunderbird. And to help authors update their add-ons, significant planning and code improvements were made in Thunderbird to reduce the impact of changes inherited from Firefox.)
New menu location of add-on options
Options for add-ons are no longer managed from the Add-ons Manager tab. A new Add-on Options menu item is available in the Tools menu.
Or if you use the application menu on the toolbar, hovering over the add-on entry or clicking > will list add-ons which have settable options.
Changes to date and time settings
Thunderbird now has an option to specify if date and time formats used in the program should follow the operating system, or the locale of the installed version of Thunderbird. In other words, an US English Thunderbird can use, for example, German formats.
- In the menu bar, click the menu and select .Click the menu button and choose .
- Select the panel, then choose the tab.
- In the Date and Time Formatting box select Application locale or Regional settings locale.
- Click to close the Options window.Click to close the Preferences window.Close the Preferences window.
Compose window changes
When writing a message, a delete button now allows the removal of a recipient
When you hover the mouse over the addressing labels (ReplyTo:, To:, CC:, BCC:, Newsgroup:) an X button is now displayed to allow the deletion of that entry.
Many improvements to attachments handling during compose
Attachments can now be reordered using a dialog, keyboard shortcuts, or drag and drop. The "Attach" button moved to the right to be above the attachment pane. The access key of the attachment pane (e.g. Alt+M, may vary depending on localization, Ctrl+M on Mac) now also works to show or hide the pane. The attachment pane can also be shown initially when composing a new message. Right-click on the header to enable this option. Hiding a non-empty attachment pane will now show a placeholder paperclip to indicate the presence of attachments and avoid sending them accidentally.
During address entry, the matching part of the address is now shown in bold
To make it clearer why a particular address has been included in the auto fill list, the portion of the address that matches the typed text is now shown in bold. Setting preference mail.autoComplete.commentColumn to 1 allows displaying the address book where the address is stored.
Address Book
It is now possible to set a default Address Book which will be selected upon opening the address books. To set the default, right click a folder and select the Default startup directory entry from the menu displayed.
Static themes
Static themes using WebExtensions API technology are now supported [1]. These are comparable to lightweight themes. Full themes and lightweight themes are still supported. (Add-ons based on WebExtensions browser extension APIs and mail-specific APIs is planned for a future point release of Thunderbird 60.)
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Themes/Theme_concepts
Calendar
Provide an option to display locations for events
Calendar events will now show a location as well as the event name.
The option that controls this is located in the Calendar > Views tab.
Copying, cutting and pasting of recurring events and tasks
Like before for deleting or modifying, now there is a prompt to select whether to apply copying or cutting just to the selected occurrence, or the entire series of a recurring event or task.
If more than one local calendar or calendar subscriptions are available, the target calendar for pasting of calendar items can now be directly selected from a list of all writable calendars.
Provide the ability for sending/not sending meeting notifications directly
When dealing with meetings, there is - except of drag and drop operations - no longer a popup asking whether to notify the other participants about your changes. Instead, this is controlled within the respective dialogs or context menus directly.
Along with this change, support for creating email invitations compatible with Outlook 2002 has been removed.
Allow to enforce the use of email invitation for meeting for users of CalDAV calendars
Some CalDAV servers are configured to take care of inviting other users on the same calendar server when setting up a meeting. This would prevent sending email invitations to other participants from Thunderbird when setting up a meeting. For those calendars, the use of email invitations can be enforced now regardless of the server configuration.
Reminders can be dismissed even for read-only calendar
If a reminder for an event or task stored in a read-only calendar pops up, it can be dismissed now. Unlike for writable calendars, snoozing of reminders is still not possible for those calendar items.
Along with that change, the scope of the option to show missed reminders was limited to writable calendars.
Maildir experimental feature
Conversion of folders from mbox to maildir format and vice versa
In keeping with the long term goal of implementing a maildir like storage system in Thunderbird, tools to convert existing folders to and from the maildir format are included in this release. More information on the maildir implementation in general can be found here. Everyone using maildir needs to be aware that it is still experimental and use may reveal further unknown bugs that result in dataloss.
End of support for Windows XP and Vista
Consistent with the withdrawal of support for Windows XP and Vista for Firefox 60, Thunderbird no longer supports these two legacy operating systems. Thunderbird 52 is the last version of Thunderbird available for those two operating systems.
