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Release Notes - Thunderbird 0.7

Thunderbird is a full-featured e-mail and newsgroup client that makes e-mailing safer, faster and easier than ever before more. More information about Thunderbird is available.

Given the maturity of the underlying Mozilla code, Thunderbird is very usable. However, it is considered a Technology Preview, and as such is assumed to have defects. See the License Agreement for more information.

These release notes cover the following topics:

What's New
System Requirements
Downloading, Installing and Uninstalling
Known Issues
User Support and Feedback

Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla. We want to hear your feedback about Thunderbird. Please join us in the Mozilla Thunderbird Support forum, kindly hosted by MozillaZine.

What's New

Here are the highlights for this release of Thunderbird:
  • Smaller and Faster

    The Windows Installer is now only a 5.9MB download. Significant performance improvements on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X!

  • New Themes and Extension Manager

    Provides a convenient and secure way to manage and update the many add-ons that set Thunderbird apart from other e-mail clients.

  • Crash Analysis Tools (Talkback)

    Help us help you! Integration with Mozilla Talkback allows users to submit crash reports which makes it easier for us to find Thunderbird top crashes.

  • Other New Features...

    New user interface for viewing vCards.

    New Profile Manager which also supports running from a USB device.

    Color quoting for quoted message parts.

    Thunderbird now supports a user interface for creating multiple identities per e-mail account. This makes it easy to have several e-mail addresses which end up going into the same account.

  • Recently Fixed Bugs

    Mac OS X fix for Thunderbird hanging when the computer comes out of sleep mode.

    Mac OS X: When there are no Thunderbird windows open, clicking on the system dock now opens the main mail window.

    Fix for an occassional hang when reading IMAP mail over SSL.

    Our LDAP support works against older version 2 LDAP servers again in addition to version 3.

    Thunderbird can handle mailto urls that contain raw spaces in the subject.

    Other bug fixes too numerous to mention!

  • Additional 0.7.1 changes

    Fix for 0.7 not recognizing profiles whose directory path contained non ascii characters.

    Mac OS X: Thunderbird 0.7 was not recognizing existing 0.6 profiles.

    Fix for the new mail notification icon in the Windows system tray not always showing up.

    Improvements to the extensions system.

System Requirements

Before installing, make sure your computer meets the system requirements.

Downloading, Installing and Uninstalling

Upgraders:  DO NOT install Mozilla Thunderbird into a directory containing program files from a previous version.  Overwriting files from a previous release WILL cause problems.  To re-use the directory of a previous install, the directory must be deleted and recreated, emptied, moved, or renamed.  You should not file bugs in Bugzilla if you choose to ignore this step.

The program directory does not contain profile information; any existing accounts, account settings, options, e-mail, and news messages will remain intact.  This release does not require changes to your profile to function properly. 

Downloading Thunderbird

Mozilla.org provides Thunderbird binaries for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Windows: Installer

Linux: GTK2 + XFT (no installer)

Mac OS X: Compressed Disk Image

Contributed builds (These are unofficial builds and may be configured differently than the mozilla.org builds. They may also be optimized and-or tested on specific platforms. Please see below.)

Solaris x86
All 32 bit x86 processors including AMD Opteron in 32 bit mode
thunderbird-0.7.3-i386-pc-solaris2.8.tar.gz - Sun Contributed SunOne Studio 8 build for 32 bit for Solaris x86 8, 9, and 10 (readme) (MD5SUM)

Solaris SPARC
thunderbird-0.7.3-sparc-sun-solaris2.8.tar.gz - Sun Contributed SunOne Studio 8 build for 32 bit for Solaris x86 8, 9, and 10. If you have downloaded this file before 20040909, this file now has missing libraries for SSL and other support. (readme) (MD5SUM)

Sun Java Desktop for Linux 2 and 3
thunderbird-0.7.3-i686-jds2-linux.tar.gz - Sun Contributed Build for Java Desktop for Linux version 2 and 3 (readme) (MD5SUM)

Localized builds (contributed by volunteers of the MLP):

Installing Thunderbird

Once you have downloaded a Thunderbird installer or compressed archive, follow these instructions to install:

Note:  Mozilla Thunderbird will create its own user profile information if it does not exist, and will not interfere with your Mozilla App-Suite profiles.

Windows

Double click the ThunderbirdSetup-0.7.exe installer to start the install.

Mac OS X

Double click the Thunderbird Compressed Disk Image to mount. Your browser may have already uncompressed the image and mounted it for you. Double click the Thunderbird 0.7 Disk Image and drag the Thunderbird application onto your hard disk. Drag the icon to your Dock if you want it to appear there.

Other Platforms

Extract the compressed archive and run thunderbird

Uninstalling Thunderbird

To uninstall Thunderbird, follow these instructions:

Windows

From the Start menu, choose Control Panel and double click Add or Remove Programs. Find "Mozilla Thunderbird (0.7.)" in the list and click Remove to uninstall.

Mac OS X

Drag the Thunderbird application to the Trash.

Others

Remove the thunderbird folder.

Changes You Should Be Aware Of

Themes and Extensions

To prevent the kind of problems we had with the 0.6 release (users were having the client not start or finding that their theme was broken), when you run 0.7 for the first time all of your extensions will be automatically disabled, and the theme will be reset to the default. You must then look for newer versions of your extensions that are compatible with Thunderbird 0.7. After Thunderbird 0.7 these updates should be more seamless.

Known Issues

The following is a list of the more visible known issues in Thunderbird 0.7. Please do not file bugs in Bugzilla for these issues.  Also, please refer to this list before reporting bugs on new issues (this list will be updated).

  • When upgrading to 0.7, some users are getting stuck in 'offline mode'. Messages are added to the Unsent Folder and the Get Mail command fails to download new mail. If you installed with the offline extension, use the offline indicator in the application status bar to go back online. Or delete the network.online preference from the profile's prefs.js file.
  • If Thunderbird 0.7 is placed in a location with limited access privileges, it should be run by a user with access to that location first, so that all initial startup files are generated. There may be issues still where if a restricted-access user is the first to run the app, these files may not be generated properly and Thunderbird may enter an infinite restart loop. This will be fixed in a future release.
  • Linux: Thunderbird properly dispatches browser URLs to the default browser. Read more about how to hook this up.
  • HTTP Proxy Authentication and Thunderbird. If your network uses proxy authentication for HTTP, Thunderbird fails to bring up an authentication dialog which keeps it from fetching the http parts through the proxy.
  • The default dictionary is English-only. To add a non-English dictionary, read the installation instructions.
  • The enable/disable option for adaptive junk mail detection appears to apply to all accounts (Tools > Junk Mail Controls > Adaptive Filters).  It is, however, a per account option.  To set the option for a specific account, choose the account in the 'Account:' dropdown on the 'Settings' panel, then switch to the 'Adaptive Filters' panel and set the option.  Repeat per account as needed.
  • Mozilla App-Suite profiles are not currently migrated to Thunderbird. You can migrate your Mozilla profile manually.
  • The default theme is almost finished. There are still some Classic theme icons in the UI. Please do not file bugs about icons not being converted to the new theme.
  • Some users are having a problem setting a default character encoding for Outgoing Mail.

User Support and Feedback

There are several excellent resources contributed by members of the Mozilla Thunderbird community to help support users and gather feedback:

Introduction to Mozilla Thunderbird (getting started quickly)
Mozilla Thunderbird Help (FAQs, Tips & Tricks, and other customization)
Mozilla Thunderbird forums (general discussion, feedback, and peer user support) hosted by MozillaZine
Previous versions of the Release notes: 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.6