Only mention of rust: "Standalone Rust component experiment of a notes implementation in Thunderbird"
Other planned features of note
- Microsoft exchange support
- updated database allowing for modern conversation view
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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I personally don't use Exchange but native support is a huge plus when recomending Thunderbird!
Who needs notes in a mail program? But cool anyways.
Thunderbird is already more than a mail program. It supports calendar, todo, contacts, multiple chat protocols etc. Notes are in line with features like todo I'd say
What chat protocols? Anything actually used? I tried their chat once but it didnt work with Matrix I think.
That they support Calendar is the result of CalDav I think. For some weird reason mail providers are often also CalDav providers, so you use the same account and that makes sense.
Although I would really like to have calendar and contacts as seperate apps. The combination is weird, and with some CSS it should be possible to have a single-purpose "app" with its own process ID and desktop entry with icon.
I dont know how to do that though, at least yet, as I dont know the CSS. But Libreoffice Flatpak fixed the "calc + writer shown as the same app" which is done via desktop entry stuff
Being able to create create calendar events from dates in emails benefits from being a single app. Also contacts integration is necessary to auto fill email adresses. It'd be great to have seamless integration between mutliple apps, but with Thunderbird having tabs it's also a good experience.
I believe Thunderbird supports IRC and matrix, but I don't use those features. Standalone apps usually provide a better experience.
Hopefully notes is compatible with other notes systems, maybe markdown with a folder structure. This'd compatible with Markor on Android and also many (diy) solutions (e.g. vim).
Thats true. Their tabs are weird though, at least the "places" bar which doesnt make sense as the tab bar is still there and the places bar is incomplete.
What I am honestly wishing for is
- native "Thunderbird Conversations" view for threads. Outlook has this and I guess ever other mail program, even K9Mail has native implementation.
- multi-level boolean Filters, example
(if title "spam1" or "invitation") and ((mail is older than x days) or (mail comes from this recipient)) then delete - better tablet/Laptop view in K9mail (to make it future-proof, for example a GrapheneOS tablet or laptop-like system
- dark mode in mail reader?
- fixing sensitive information sent through the autoconfiguration
- OS Native notifications for Calendar
And mails, which has no notifications at all
🦀
GTK/Qt theming when?
I’m ignorant. What does native exchange support mean? I know we can get outlook/hotmail etc but is this more of the enterprise support?
Here is my understanding of it -
Currently, TB uses POP3/IMAP protocol to access your Mailbox on Exchange Server.
Ideally, it should be done via MS EWS Web API [1][2] which TB currently doesn't support, but MS Office Outlook does.
Given that MS Exchange is heavily used in corporate/company setup, it[3] will put TB on par with Outlook in that regard.
[1] https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/definition/Exchange-Web-Services-EWS
[2] https://www.envisionup.com/blog/pop3-imap-microsoft-exchange-email-platform-use/
Just to add, consumer outlook / live / hotmail also benefits from this since it is also using Exchange in backend.
Additionally EWS is atually deprecated and planned to be closed on 2026 October for at least commercial Exchange Online (M365 / Cloud) customers (unclear from that article if free Outlook accounts also will be affected) although as with all MS announcements it will probably be prolonged. Microsoft Graph API is the new hot thing, but it seems some EWS features are not yet available in Graph API based on comments.
Another thing that in a proper company setting that uses Exchange Online you must approve applications before they can be used to access data (Not just Exchange data, this is Entra ID formerly Azure AD feature) for both EWS (in the past it was different, but now Oauth must be used which requires approval) and Graph API so company administrator will have to approve Thunderbird which many will not allow.
Microsoft's email service isn't really following standards like IMAP/POP anymore and this breaks many apps. So they need to add support for their custom alternative system.