Thunderbird:Thunderbird3

Thunderbird 3 Planning

Thunderbird 3 is still in early planning stages. This page represents draft thinking about what such a release could be like. It is very much subject to change. Individuals working on the project or interested in the process are encouraged to participate in the mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird

Goals of the Thunderbird 3 Release

The 3.0 release of Thunderbird has a few high-level goals:

• To ensure that Thunderbird keeps up with the evolution of the Mozilla platform
• To increase adoption of Thunderbird
• To improve usability
• To facilitate the development, dissemination and use of extensions

Non-goals

Thunderbird 3 is not the last planned release of Thunderbird. As such, many desirable changes will not be included in this release, so that Thunderbird 3 can happen sooner. Planning for Thunderbird 4 will start long before Thunderbird 3 is out the door, along with a longer-term roadmap for Thunderbird evolution.

Platform Update

Thunderbird 3 will be built on top of Gecko 1.9. This is expected to yield performance improvements, usability improvements especially on OS X, and access to new technologies which will allow further Thunderbird evolution.

Many of the underlying changes for this change have already been done. Major work items remaining include converting to frozen linkages, and The Great Mailnews String Roundup

Older docs at Architecture Cleanup.

Increased Adoption

I (DavidA) believe that Thunderbird could gain large numbers of users by a combination of improving the out-of-box experience, especially w.r.t. configuration, and by bundling in Lightning.

In no particular order, features to consider include:

• UI refresh
• Easier configuration, possibly using one of the ways described in Simple Account Setup
• Bundled Lightning 1.0, possibly with the GData provider.
• Faster content search
• Improved address book usability
• GMail IMAP support
• Selected additional user experience improvements

Better Extensibility

The extensibility features of the Mozilla platform are one of the strongest assets that Thunderbird has, but there are a few roadblocks towards making extensibility as vital for Thunderbird as it is for Firefox. While this is a long-term goal spanning more than just the client itself, there are some changes which should be done in the Thunderbird 3 timeframe to allow for easier extension writing, publishing, installing and community building.

• Better copy & editorial work on Addons.mozilla.org
• Better installation experience (see Simple Extension Installation)
• STEEL
• Documentation of Thunderbird APIs for extension writers
• Sample code, code snippets
• Review pages welcoming Tb extension developers, encouraging them to join #maildev, etc.

Architectural Cleanup

Major revisions are always the occasion for refactorings and other architectural cleanups which may have little short-term user-visible impact, but which are needed for maintainability and long-term feature planning. Some of the specific changes being considered:

• De-morkification of the Address Book (bug # ???)
• De-morkification of the .msf files (bug # ???)
• Removing RDF usage
• Cleanup base XUL files - Move from overlays to an incremental buildup of the UI (menubar, commands, scripts, etc.) as Firefox or Sunbird already do (bug # ???)
• XXX

Finishing Half-Completed Features

There are several features which have partial implementations. These should be reviewed to determine whether the work required to finish them is a good payoff relative to other possible work items. The ones I know of:

• Roaming support
• Tabs (and figure out which tab model is "the best one") Bug # ???
• XXX

Important Bug Fixes

This section should be used to keep track of notable bug fixes which are notable enough that everyone involved in the project should be aware of them. Many other bug fixes will happen as a matter of routine.

• no bug listed yet

Getting Involved

This page should generally not be edited except by the Thunderbird 3 leads (currently DavidA). However, input is welcome, either in the Discussion page, or as additions to the following pages:

• Bugs to consider for Tb3
• Enhancements to consider for Tb3

Four good sources of candidates for the above are:

• RFEs in Bugzilla (1300+!)
• Collected User Requests
• Thunderbird talk page
• Thunderbird Extensions