De Mozilla Foundation heeft versie 68.0 van Thunderbird uitgebracht. Mozilla Thunderbird is een opensourceclient voor e-mail en nieuwsgroepen, met features als ondersteuning voor verschillende mail- en newsaccounts, een spamfilter, spellingscontrole en een aanpasbaar uiterlijk. In Thunderbird wordt zelden nog nieuwe functionaliteit toegevoegd.

In versie 68 zien we voor het eerste een 64-bitversie voor Windows. Deze is overigens niet over de 43-bitversie te installeren, het programma zal opnieuw geconfigureerd moeten worden. In een volgende update zal een migratie echter wel mogelijk zijn. Verder kan het via policies binnen bedrijfsomgevingen worden beheerd, kunnen filters nu periodiek worden gestart en kunnen meerdere mappen tegelijkertijd als ‘gelezen’ worden gemarkeerd. Het complete changelog voor deze uitgave ziet er als volgt uit:

New:

• File link attachments can now be linked to again instead of uploading them again
• Mark all folders of an account as read
• Run filters periodically. Improved filter logging.
• OAuth2 authentication for Yandex
• Language packs can now be selected in the Advanced Options. Preference intl.multilingual.enabled needs to be set (and possily also extensions.langpacks.signatures.required needs to be set to false)
• On Windows a 64bit installer and MSI package are now available, see the Thunderbird for Organisations page for details
• Added a policy engine that allows customized Thunderbird deployments in enterprise environments, using Windows Group Policy or a cross-platform JSON file
• TCP keepalive for IMAP protocol
• Full Unicode support for MAPI interfaces: New support for MAPISendMailW
• To protect your profile data against a downgrade, Thunderbird 68 may display a message “You have launched an older version of Thunderbird” and will not allow opening a specific profile. Workaround: start with option –allow-downgrade. See this support article for details.
• Calendar: Time zone data can now include past and future changes. All known time zone changes from 2018 to 2022 are included.
• Chat: In each conversation an individual spellcheck language can be selected now

Changed:

• Add-on support: Add-ons are only supported if add-on authors have adapted them
• Dictionary support: Only WebExtension dictionaries are supported now. Both addons.mozilla.org and addons.thunderbird.net now provide WebExtension dictionaries.
• Theme support: Only WebExtension themes are supported now. Both addons.mozilla.org and addons.thunderbird.net now provide WebExtension themes.
• The stand-alone options window has been removed, all options are now shown in a tab
• Changed UI when installing add-ons
• Various theme improvements including a dark message list/thread pane
• Application menu aka “Hamburger menu”
• Improvements when entering, selecting and removing recipients in the Write window
• FileLink: WeTransfer is already included. Dropbox and Box.com using the new WebExtensions FileLink API are available as add-ons, amongst others.
• Text and background colors in the Write window and custom colors for tags are no longer restricted to a fixed 10×7 matrix of HTML colors
• Composition text and background colors no longer sent by default. New option in “Tools > Options, Composition”.
• UI improvements for external and detached attachments, now showing as links with new menu option “Open Containing Folder”
• Improved phishing attempt detection for messages with certain forms
• Improvements to scam warnings
• Reply to self will now search all identities (default of preference mailnews.reply_to_self_check_all_ident changed to true)
• Maildir now uses the message ID as file name and “eml” as file extension
• Auto-compact threshold increased from 20 MB to 200 MB
• Calendar: UI improvements for event dialog
• Calendar: Thunderbird’s calendar add-on Lightning now uses the same version numbering scheme

Fixed:

• Column choice and sort order in “Search Messages” dialog lost after relaunch
• Global indexer causing high CPU loads under some circumstances
• Tags set on IMAP folders sometimes not visible to other users
• “Contribute” button in add-on details not working
• SMTP password wasn’t removed when account was deleted or server or user name were changed
• Mbox to Maildir conversion not working if Windows search integration is enabled
• Mails won’t get removed from Trash folder using Maildir. Note: Other deletion issues related to Maildir may still persist.
• When sending of a message failed due a security issue, only “unknown error” was displayed. Now more details are given.
• Improvements of SMTP 5.7.1 message
• Calendar: Multiple connections with different users to the same CalDAV server not working
• Chat: Fixed XMPP authentication when using SASL