Lightning 0.7 & Sunbird 0.7 have been released

I am happy to report, that the 0.7 of Lightning and Sunbird has been completed and is now available via AMO and the Calendar Project website.

Just 1.5 weeks after our originally scheduled release date, Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 bring us a huge step closer to our 1.0 release, which we hope to release in 2008.

Notable improvements of this release are:

  • It is now much easier to switch between the mail and calendar parts of Thunderbird thanks to a user interface redesign
  • A redesigned event/task dialog has been enabled to gather feedback from the community. It offers a much cleaner user interface and additional functionality including:
    • Events/Tasks can be created in different timezones
    • Attendees can be added from a local or corporate LDAP directory
    • Free-Busy information is available for users of the Sun Java Calendar Server
    • Integrated display of recurrence patterns, reminders and attendees
    • Custom recurrences and reminders
    • Clear separation between tasks and events
  • The new event summary dialog lists all the details of tasks and events for calendar which are read-only
  • The Today Pane gives a quick overview over your current tasks and upcoming events. The Today Pane can be enabled/disabled by a toolbar button
  • Colliding events (events in the same time slot) are shrunk so that they fit into the display of a day. This no longer affects other events on the same day
  • Localized releases of Lightning and Sunbird in Chinese (simplified), Georgian, Lithuanian, Portuguese (European), Spanish (Argentina) and Turkish
  • A full list of changes that have gone into this release can be found on The Rumbling Edge website

Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 are available for Windows, Mac OS X (universal builds) and Linux in 27 different languages including English.

Please use the following links to download the release:

Please read the release notes for Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 before downloading.

Thank you again to all our developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters. We would not be able to do this without your assistance!

UPDATE: We have heard reports, that after upgrading Lightning to 0.7 all tasks and events are no longer displayed. To get your tasks and events back, switch to Calendar Mode using the toolbar button below the folder pane and ensure that all your calendars are marked as visible.

48 comments

  1. congrats on the new release!
    one problem: doesn’t seem to work with the google calendar provider anymore. is this a known issue?

  2. I expect that Philipp will update the Google Calendar Provider extension within the next few days.

  3. Helpful hints:
    *After updating to Lightning 0.7 switch to Calendar Mode using the toolbar button below the folder pane and ensure that all your calendars are marked as visible.
    *After updating to Lightning 0.7 reset the toolbars via menu “View -> Toolbars -> Customize… -> Restore Defaults Set” to ensure that the new toolbars will work properly.
    *The Provider for Google Calendar extension 0.2.1 will not work after update to 0.7. You need to wait for the extension update coming soon.

  4. Finally I am willing to update from Version 0.3. Lightning looks so much better than my ooold sunbird. Hopefully I can import the old calendar.

  5. simon: ok, thanks!
    to the next release: if possible, maybe issues like this should be adressed before the release. a lot of people rely on the gcal provider, and when lightning “autoupdates” within TB, they are left without their calendars.
    I’m totally fine with waiting ofcourse, I just think about the people out there :)
    something else:
    very nice to see multiweek view in lightning by the way! My top missing feature I think!

  6. Carl, Philipp tells me that the GCal provider update has just been released.

  7. Thanks for the release ! We made an article for french user, to learn them how to use basically Lightning 0.7 :
    http://www.geckozone.org/articles/2007/10/25/145-lightning-l-agenda-pour-thunderbird
    After the 0.7, it will be a 0.9 and then a 1.0 ?

  8. Omnisilver, I think simon mentioned something about a 0.8, 0.9 then a 1.0.
    Simon, IMHO there should be a /source directory in Sunbird 0.7 directory, much like there is one in TB 2.0.0.6 … easier to find version specific sources to hack on..

  9. Keep up the good work folks!

  10. I updated tonight and none of the items from my calendar transfered. I now have a completely empty calendar. What am I missing?

  11. Never mind – I thought it was marked as visible, but see now that it wasn’t!

  12. I have the same problem as Natasha. I updated and when I started again all my appointments and tasks disappeared. What is wrong now? How can I restore?

  13. Thank you for your great work! The new 0.7 is a really nice version, with lots of useful new features.
    I have a little problem: I can’t find a way to search or filter events or tasks. Maybe I’m missing something?
    Thanks in advance and keep up the great work. :-)

  14. Now I could display all my appointments and tasks again. I made it by just adding a new appointment (event).
    As a result all old events and tasks appeared again.
    P.S.: Nice work with great improvements. It is getting better from release to release. Hope you will become market leader very soon.

  15. Just a great thank you for all that work. Sunbird is becoming more and more powerful towards other applications, and therefore, I’m using it more and more :)

  16. HI!
    Thanks for the good work, but is it possible to have a little calendar at the bottom of the folder pane as it used to be? I kinda liked that feature because I was able to quickly find out what date it was on Thursday 2 weeks ago for example. Now I have to click to the tool bar button bellow, which is kinda irritating when browsing emails and trying to find out which day it was on the 15th of June.
    Thanks inn advance.

  17. I’ve been using sunbird for a while and thought I’d try lightning this time around. Overall, great work! I do have a few questions, though.
    1) The events and tasks sidebar appears in the mail mode. Is there anyway to make it appear in calendar mode instead (or in both)? I find it pretty frustrating that I can’t look at the calendar and see the list of tasks at the same time.
    2) If I click the close button on the events and tasks sidebar, how on earth do I make it reappear?
    I’m sorry if these are trivial questions or if this is the wrong place to ask, but I couldn’t find anything about this in any documentation. I’d have thought these things would be simple to do, am I just overlooking the obvious?
    Thanks for your help! I’m looking forward to 0.8 and beyond!

  18. @cl
    Re 1) I have submitted an enhancement request for this some months ago [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389150]
    Re 2) Use the toolbar button, the menu command in View -> Layout or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D to show the Today Pane.

  19. The new version is nice. I like it better than the old one. However, I have a question regarding today panel. The panel only display date, , instead on
    Please take a look at the picture at the following link.
    http://s229.photobucket.com/albums/ee204/sanyasayan/?action=view&current=today.jpg
    I have tried to adjust the column but nothing has changed.
    Please help. Thanks in advance.

  20. Nice work but could you please hury up with the google extension and try to synchronize both the calendar option itself and the google extension in the future releases…

  21. @kpm: the google-extension was updated already. Go to options-addons and let the program search for updates to your extensions, then it will roll in by itself…

  22. Hey everyone!
    Great update but I’ve got one little problem.
    When I add a task, it doesn’t show up in the task pane. Any ideas?

  23. I agree with bonis. Please allow the original calendar placement in the folder bar. Thanks

  24. Hi,
    the 0.7 looks nice, BUT:
    1) switching from calendar mode to email is harder than before, since I have to click the icon down left and then the correct email folder. Before I directly clicked on the email folder, now they aren’t displayed when the calendar is open.
    2) I followed tip 2 and resetted my toolbar menu. Now I can’t get the “Month” button in again, which means I have to move my mouse to the down left corner to click on Calendar.
    Perhaps people with only email folder don’t notice such problems, but I have several different account and several blogs, so the Email/Calendar button is really far down.

  25. FWIW, I miss the old calendar and upcoming events below the email too. I don’t want my email sandwiched between the list of folders with a ton of whitespace underneath and the list of events that doesn’t show a calendar. :(
    (I can see where, if you have a ton of events and/or tasks, it probably wasn’t useful in that location. However, for the more casual calendar user like myself, the old layout was much less intrusive than the Today Pane. Plus the little calendar was very useful while reading and writing email!)
    On another topic, why does the calendar view have a miniature calendar with a combo box underneath that pops up another miniature calendar? They seem to do the same thing. Did I miss something?
    Good luck with the project!

  26. Hi All,
    Please forward or link this to the team who may be interested.
    I am just an ordinary user so your bug reporting system is “all greek” to me. So this might be a duplicate, if so I’m sorry.
    0.7 does not work on Mepis7 Linux.
    I was surprised that there was no default calendar.
    After a fresh install I tried to create a Calendar. The wizard launches, accepts the local choice,(On MyComputer- that is a bit too MSwindows centric for me) on the next window it allows a name to be entered and a colour choice made but will not advance to the next screen.
    Guess I will have another look at the next release. Hope it be able to sync with Palm devices.
    Best of luck with this project.

  27. It should be possible to move the Mode toolbar or its buttons to the mail/calendar toolbars. I hate it being down in the left corner.
    Generally all buttons should be available in all toolbars with automatic mode switching.

  28. Kudos to the developers!

  29. I’m running Ubuntu Gutsy. I installed Thunderbird version 2.0.0.6 (20071022) and Lightning 0.5 from the repositories. All worked fine. Then I uninstalled Lightning to try the 0.7 release. Nothing is working as expected : the calendar view doesn’t display a calendar, but a buggy picture, the buttons to switch from mail to calendar are at the right place on startup but when going back from the calendar to the mails, it occupies a complete pane on the left of the screen.
    I tried Lightning 0.7 beta with Ubuntu Feisty (I can’t remember if my TB came from the official Mozilla site or from the Ubuntu repositories) but it worked well (at least much better than it is doing…). I really liked the new interface.
    Is anyone having the same problem ? I guess I’m not the only one running Ubuntu Gutsy…

  30. About UI:
    I 100% agree with moving the task/event panel out of the way of the mail folders list: as I keep my mail organized in a thousand folders, it really helps to have as many as possible of them visible without resorting to scrolling. THANKS!
    BUT I also agree with ppl requesting that the display of the current month should be made sticky, as it is very convenient to look up days of week for the next few weeks. My proposal: an option to have the ‘current month’ widget either stick or appear only on mouseclick, inside the tasks/events panel, ie. options shoould be
    show all/show events/show tasks/show current month/etc…

  31. I absolutely agree with Balazs Lengyel.
    All toolbar icons should be available for any toolbar.
    We should be able to place calendar icons in the mail toolbar (eg. to facilitate creating an event while reading email without needing to fully switch to the calendar).
    We should be able to place email icons in the calendar toolbar (eg. to write a quick email message while looking at one’s calendar without having to switch back to mail mode).
    The new toolbar in the lower left corner should be optional. Also, we should be able to place other icons there as well (eg. “new event” or “new email” or “address book” or whatever one’s heart desires).
    It seems that with this step forward to 0.7 we have taken a step back with respect to integration. Now it’s as if we have two separate applications running within the same program and additions have been made to facilitate switching between the two (rather than blending the two into a more and more powerful email/calendar application).
    Please don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the work that’s been done here and have been following the progress very closely.
    I just hope to provide constructive input to make Thunderbird/Lightning even better!
    Great work!

  32. I can confirm the same problems with Gusty Gibbons, TB 2, and 0.7
    With feisty every thing worked quite right until RC1 (after that I switched to Gusty)

  33. I’ve just tried Lightning 0.7 RC1 (that I downloaded today from http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/releases/0.7rc1/) with my version of TB (2.0.0.6 (20071022) from the Ubuntu Gutsy repositories) and I have the same problem as with Lightning 0.7 final. Then I guess the problem we have with jabbermike is not coming from Lightning but from TB…
    I hope we can get this fixed soon.

  34. @jabbermike, @Beber
    Ubuntu 7.10 ships their own Lightning build that works with their custom Thunderbird build. Search for lightning-extension package in the repository.
    I suggest to use a Thunderbird build from mozilla.org instead of the Ubuntu package for Lightning 0.7 or wait for an updated Lightning package from Ubuntu.

  35. Needless to repeat the developers did an even greater job at 0.7. I use Calendar since 0.3, which was already a lot funcional.
    But I agree the Today pane should appear in calendar mode instead of mail mode (as in Bug 389150). Also, there has been an idea of placing calendar items as folders altogether with the mail ones (Bug 341230). This would look awesome to me.
    Besides this and that, thumbs up! Using at home and work, and convinced a couple more guys too. Calendar Rocks!
    Regards all

  36. I would also vote to allow the today pane to be in the old style. Also, just a note.
    You can move the Mail/Calendar Mode toolbar to the top of the folder list. Just open Customize Toolbar, pick the Mode Toolbar, and set Location to Top.

  37. I removed the thunderbird installation that came with Gusty and used “ubuntuzilla” to install the build form mozilla.org – what should I say: It�s working quite nice! :)
    very nice! @ssitter: thank�s for the hint.
    mike

  38. Thanks jabbermike for your tip!
    Thank you Lightning dev team! Great update!
    But I have two suggestions:
    – I think it would be good to activities that last all day to completely fill that day in a month/week view. Any shorter duration tasks would appear above it.
    – Watch out for too long tips when hovering an event with a long text or URL :)

  39. Very good.
    Is there an actual roadmap to Ver 1.0 ?

  40. I am exploring Lightning for migration purposes (onto Linux), and find two things would be useful:
    – Display of the category colors should be full-background color, so as to help people with limited vision impairment. (I use pdf-ed month views online, and need the readers to figure ou very clearly which color the event is)
    Is there already a way to change the skin to that effect?
    – more important: I have two- or even three-day events that should be obviously the same on the monthly view. Is it possible to make them stand out as one large tag spanning the related days rather than splitting them into separate tags for each day, that may not be at the same height in the window?
    The events I manage are several per night and overnight, so I always have two or more events between a day and the next and between a day and the previous one. as of today, they are colliding. (see an example of the desired outcom at http://www.transmekong.com/calendar.pdf )
    That would be a very serious addition to the useability of Lightning here.
    Otherwise: I love it, and am ready to convince my staff we need to change.
    Where should I post the above suggestions so they are read by developers (apart from, hopefully, here?)

  41. A return of the Groupwise integration that existed in .3 but lost .5 but a new problem has arisen –
    Accept and Decline buttons now appear instead of the original “add to calendar” or “add event” (don’t remember which) but Decline adds the event anyway and Accept adds the event and then opens a reply email to the user.

  42. Clicking “accept” on a (parsed) message with a meeting.ics meeting request pops up a nice little dialog asking which calendar to add the event to. However, once selected and hit OK, the event doesn’t go into the calendar and the Error console contains the following:
    Error: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///Users/hugh/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/pn7gf2ue.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Source File: file:///Users/hugh/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/pn7gf2ue.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js
    Line: 109
    Error: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///Users/hugh/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/pn7gf2ue.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Source File: file:///Users/hugh/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/pn7gf2ue.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js
    Line: 109
    Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///Users/hugh/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/pn7gf2ue.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    This on OSX using TB 2.0.0.6 and lightning 0.7.
    Same error happens whether I select a google (via provider) calendar or a local (file) one.

  43. hi,
    for those who interested i always recompile lightning for fedora (since the prebuild version not working on fedora) and can be found here: http://www.lfarkas.org/linux/packages/fedora/8/i386/
    you can also public this url.

  44. I do love the new UI. This is the first time I’ve actually *used* Lightning, after having it installed for 6-9 months. Now, I would like to be able to REALLY use it, but like many others have posted, it’s frustrating to not have the tasks work correctly.
    I’ve tried ever single suggestion/fix/work around posted here. None work. Yes, all my calendars are visible, yes I have “show tasks in calendar” checked. yes I restarted TB, etc etc.
    The *only* way I’ve found to show the tasks in the calendar is to create a new task and make sure:
    1. It’s a PUBLIC task;
    2. That it has a START time as well as a DUE DATE.
    Without either on of these, task don’t show. I don’t know about anyone else, but this seems like a bug to me. It’s an annoyance in an otherwise wonderful and very useful app.
    XP SP2
    TB 2.0.0.6
    Lightning .7

  45. Update from 0.5 to 0.7 seems to have broken the accept/decline buttons for meeting invitations.
    Windows XP
    Thunderbird 2.0.0.9
    Is there an easy way to back out an update without losing calendar data?
    Console error:
    >>>
    Error: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/ol/Application%20Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/htkhpw9z.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Source File: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/ol/Application%20Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/htkhpw9z.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js
    Line: 109
    >>>

  46. I can’t wait until there is sync support for my Palm Tungsten T3.
    When it comes I’ll start to use Lightning. Not earlier, since it would mean I’dd hace to maintain two calanders…

  47. Michael D. Spence

    Is there a forum for questions about Sunbird?
    Specifically, I’d like to turn off the “Start Sunbird Now” checkbox in the install kit.

  48. I’m using Thunderbird v2.0.0.9 (20071031) and Lightning 0.7 running on Gentoo Linux. When I receive an email with an attached event (.ics iCal file), Neither the ‘Accept’ nor ‘Decline’ buttons seem to do anything. Error Console displays the following three errors after clicking ‘Accept’ once:
    Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///home/********/.thunderbird/oc8llj9h.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Error: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///home/********/.thunderbird/oc8llj9h.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Source File: file:///home/********/.thunderbird/oc8llj9h.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js
    Line: 109
    Error: [Exception… “‘Component not initialized’ when calling method: [calIItipItem::clone]” nsresult: “0xc1f30001 (NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED)” location: “JS frame :: file:///home/********/.thunderbird/oc8llj9h.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js :: cipPII :: line 109” data: no]
    Source File: file:///home/********/.thunderbird/oc8llj9h.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/js/calItipProcessor.js
    Line: 109