Since my announcement, that we’ve released a first release candidate of Lightning 1.0 beta1, there have been a few questions here in the comments, which I’d like to address:
- I am getting this error when trying to install Lightning: “Lightning 1.0b1 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.5.6.” What’s wrong?
This happens when you just click on the link to the Lightning add-on file in the announcement post in Firefox. Firefox is unable to distinguish between add-ons designed for Firefox and add-ons designed for other Mozilla applications. Please make sure, that you right-click on the link to the add-on file and choose “Save Link as…”. After that follow step 2-4 in the announcement post. - The Google Calendar Provider add-on from the links in the announcement post gives the following error message: “0.6b1 requires additional items”. What’s wrong?
This is a known bug and will be fixed shortly. - Are 64bit builds for Linux available?
Not yet, but our lead developer Philipp Kewisch is in the process of creating them and will post an announcement here on the blog once he’s finished. - Does the lightning-all.xpi file contain all localizations, and does the lightning.xpi in the en-US folder contain only the English strings?
Yes. - Will this release candidate build automatically update itself to the final version of Lightning 1.0 beta1?
No. Once Lightning 1.0 beta1 is released in its final form, we will make it available on addons.mozilla.org. You will need to download it again then. - I have an error “An error was encountered preparing the calendar located at moz-profile-calendar:// for use. It will not be available.” I cannot create events or tasks. What can I do to fix this?
Please take a look at this blog post here. - There’s no release candidate for Sunbird yet. When will that be available?
As said in the earlier post we are having problems with our Sunbird build machines. Once those are fixed, we will make a release candidate for Sunbird available.
I hope that answers most of your questions.
Hello Simon, I wonder if you plan to release a cross-platform XPI ? I did not look at the repository, maybe the build scripts are available/patchable. I’d be glad to help ! More info at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Ssitter/UnifiedLightning
Having a cross-platform XPI available for download by default without the need to create it manually would indeed be greatly appreciated!
In the FAQ it states that all locales are supported, but how come Traditional Chinese isn’t in the build? It resorts to using Simplified Chinese.
The older 0.9 version does have Traditional, but I had to upgrade because of Thunderbird 3.
It’s pretty certain that not all locales are supported yet; the release announcement states that Swedish at the very least is not yet supported.
It’s beta, and it doesn’t have the visibility of Thunderbird. They may not have the resources, or perhaps just have not yet have those resources applied to full localization.
I have tried several times this Christmas morning to install Lightning 1.0 beta 1 in Thunderbird 3.0. I get the following error message:
Thunderbird could not install the file at:
file:///C:Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Lightning%201.0.xpi
because: Not a valid install package – 207
Question: I followed your instructions to Save Link As (I named the file: Lightning 1.0 beta 1.xpi) What am I doing wrong? Please help me – I didn’t know that when I installed Thunderbird 3.0 I would lose my calendar and all its content! I need to get a calendar back! Have a great Christmas. Bob
@Bob,
just try to save the file as lightning.xpi and try again. Perhaps that works.
@Snap & Peter,
I’m pretty sure that we won’t provide a cross-platform xpi simply because of its huge download size. The current single-platform Lightning builds are already pretty big (over 2 Megabytes) and subjecting every user to a nearly 7M download does not seem like a good idea too me.
@ToniCipriani & LesBarstow,
the multi-locale builds contain every locale that we could find a localizer for. Unfortunately for this 1.0 beta1 release, some localizers (among them the Swedes and the Traditional Chinese folks) couldn’t find the time to localize Lightning, so those locales weren’t included in the builds.
I wrote:
I have tried several times this Christmas morning to install Lightning 1.0 beta 1 in Thunderbird 3.0. I get the following error message:
Thunderbird could not install the file at:
file:///C:Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Lightning%201.0.xpi
because: Not a valid install package – 207
Question: I followed your instructions to Save Link As (I named the file: Lightning 1.0 beta 1.xpi) What am I doing wrong? Please help me – I didn’t know that when I installed Thunderbird 3.0 I would lose my calendar and all its content! I need to get a calendar back! Have a great Christmas. Bob
Posted by: bob | December 25, 2009 7:25 AM
You responded: @Bob,just try to save the file as lightning.xpi and try again. Perhaps that works.
NEW POST: I saved it as lightning.xpi to desktop – got the same message when I attempted to install. PLEASE HELP.
I NEED THE F***ING THUNDERBIRD PLUGIN NOW!!!
Hi thank you for all your help/hard work. Any updates on the provider bug? Is there an alternative download location that will work with this beta? Thanks!
is it a known bug, that Thunderbird asks 2 times for a masterpassword if lighntng and Google Calendar Provider is installed???
Hey Simon, thanks for all the great work from you and your team! Can you provide an update on if/when a SunOS version of Lightning will be available?
I’m running OpenSolaris 2009.06, and I’ve been quite lost without my calendar function since upgrading to TB3.0.
Have a safe New Year!
@Johnny84: Don’t be so rude! The developers have families and I am quite sure that they would like to have some time with them these days. Furthermore, they plan to get a solid release out of the door and this takes time.
Anyway, for all developers from all other lightning users: Thanks a lot for your work you put into lightning. It is a great programme which I (and probably many others) use everyday.
Thank you. I introduced my mother to the Lightning extension in early 2009 and she has taken to it like a fish to water. She had already been using Thunderbird for a few years. She has really loved this because she always uses her email, so what better place to have your calendar schedule. So far everything is peachy with the Lightning beta and Thunderbird 3. Thanks so much for helping me wean my mother off closed source programs and onto open source. Good job on Lightning!
P.S. First comment on the last year of the first decade!
Thank you. I introduced my mother to the Lightning extension in early 2009 and she has taken to it like a fish to water. She had already been using Thunderbird for a few years. She has really loved this because she always uses her email, so what better place to have your calendar schedule. So far everything is peachy with the Lightning beta and Thunderbird 3. Thanks so much for helping me wean my mother off closed source programs and onto open source. Good job on Lightning!
P.S. First comment on the last year of the first decade!
I have been using the nightly builds and have got my tasks back, but get nought but the blue bar with red cross if I try to edit a task. I am using TB3 with the xpi,(Win XP, on a 3 year old Dell laptop) and can still convert an email to a task(which I use A LOT), and mark as done, et al. but it would be handy to edit the time, location and such like. I think you guys are doing an amazing job, just thought you could do with the feed back.
I’m switiching to Outlook.
THANK you so much for all your hard work developers! i have been lurking around reading this blog for a long time now waiting for the magic 1.0 release. so near now…
i plan to use this everyday to get my life sorted out, have not liked any other free calander software and am not paying for outlook :)
Great work. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Johnny84: In all likelihood, the only reason you were using Thunderbird/Lightning is because you were too cheap to buy Outlook to begin with, or you are a MSFT fanboy or employee. Why are you whining about something that you didn’t contribute to/support and got for free?
This is open source and you are more than welcome to hop in and help fix blockers to the 1.0 release…..I’m sure that your mad coding skilz would be very appreciated.
To the DEVs: I, and many others appreciate all the work that you guys do to bring those of us who can’t afford to buy apps a good solid alternative to Outlook. Take your time to do it right…..we’ll wait.
Johnny84: In all likelihood, the only reason you were using Thunderbird/Lightning is because you were too cheap to buy Outlook to begin with, or you are a MSFT fanboy or employee. Why are you whining about something that you didn’t contribute to/support and got for free?
This is open source and you are more than welcome to hop in and help fix blockers to the 1.0 release…..I’m sure that your mad coding skilz would be very appreciated.
To the DEVs: I, and many others appreciate all the work that you guys do to bring those of us who can’t afford to buy apps a good solid alternative to Outlook. Take your time to do it right…..we’ll wait.
I must say, Outlook is just the best program I have ever used. If you want quality you gotta pay kids!
Hello,
really nice work you are doing! Thanks a lot.
But I was wondering how far the progress is with the 64bit version? Can we get an estimation, will it be days, weeks, months?
Thanks!
Ben
Johnny84: Enough dude. You obviously work for MSFT, or you’re a child and for that matter likely both.
“I must say, Outlook is just the best program I have ever used. If you want quality you gotta pay kids!”
Well you are not bright enough to realize that:
1) This is a forum for people that like to know what is going on with the project, not casual users. We understand that open source works differently, and “Things get released, when things get released.” That means it may be tomorrow, next week or even next year. We don’t care that you are upset. Nor do we care about what you want, or would like.
2) Bashing Lightning here won’t affect the user base. Bashing it anywhere else won’t affect the user base either. Most of us use Thunderbird/Lightning because we like it better than Outlook for whatever reasons we have.
3) We don’t have to pay for quality. Yes, some MSFT products are more polished and some do function better than their open source equivalents. But, over the last ten years open source has eaten into MSFT’s bottom line. Why? Because of the racket that MSFT made about how bad and unusable it was. Everyone found out, “It’s good enough for me!: An APP is a tool, and if the tool works just fine for us, we could care less that it’s the best tool you’ve ever used.
Since you REALLY want Outlook (but for whatever reason you haven’t purchased it yet), check out Evolution. It’s open source and almost an Outlook clone. Might make even you happy.
The only interesting thing about Johnny84 is that he somehow manged to get your attention.
I can’t find any version that work with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2b6pre) Gecko/20100104 Lanikai/3.1a1pre ID:20100104035233
latest-comm-central-trunk display empty calendar
first of all thanks to the developers for the effort.
I received an invitation for a Microsoft Exchange Calendar.
I’m using Thunderbird and Lightning, is there a way to access that calendar without installing outlook?
(very happily running beta Lightning in TB 3.0 against both Google and corporate calendar – great work)
Why would you want to use the “Google Calendar” option instead of the “CalDAV” option when setting up Lightning to work with Google Calendar?
Any feature available in one and not the other?
I have only managed to use the CalDAV option and it seems to work great but wondering if I’m missing on anything.
Also, what should the “location” look like with Google Calendar (vs CalDAV)?
(sorry if this info is available somewhere – browsed various FAQs and blog posts without much success)
@lisa,
This type of question is probably best asked over at the MozillaZine Calendar forum…
Short answer, Lightning will process Outlook invitations to events, but you need Outlook itself to subscribe to Exchange calendars. (There is no MAPI plug-in underway that I know of…)
Why are you kidz from Canada so angry with Microsoft? They make good products for a fair price.
Lightning is great but it stinks against Outlook 2010 which you can get as a beta for FREE hahah.
@Johnny84
You get a fully bugged and incomplete beta of Outlook 2010 (otherwise MS wouldn’t give it to you), you use it, find bug and wrong behavior that MS will fix for the final version, then you have to pay 500$ to get the (almost) bug free version. And MS will tell you: “thanks Johnny 84, thanks very much, your time, your suggestions and, above all, your 500$, make MS the greatest company in the world! Keep tuning for Outlook 2011. With others 500$ we will fix that bug that bothers you”.
If you want to be a beta tester do it for open source software, here nobody is kidding you.
Hello Lisa,
If you want to use Lightning with Exchange this is possible. Check http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
Kind Regards
Any word on a Solaris on x86 version?
Oh my god, how long can it take to compile that new version?? I don’t wanna switsch back to Outlook but I will have to.
I’ve got lightning 1.0b2pre installed with TB3. It seems to work fine, except incoming event invitations don’t have an accep/decline button. Is this a known bug?
Thanks for all the hard for. Thanks for saving my soul from MS.
Hello, when installing the beta 1, i can’t copy (STRG+C) anymore text from the subject line. It works again, when i deactivate the lightning plugin.
Please fix this.
…very happily using Lightning 1.0b2pre with Thunderbird 3.0. Many thanks to the development team!
There is one thing about Lightning which I think is glaringly missing and which I would make great use of: the ability to set a Reminder for the exact time of the calendar event. …not 5 minutes before or even a custom 1 minute before, but 0 minutes.
The main reason I use Lightning is to get Reminder alerts about important upcoming events. Not being able to set the alert time exactly seems like an unnecessary awkwardness.
Hey.
I just wanted to ask, if you could give an update on the progress. I know it sucks to keep writing “it will be released, when we’re ready” but I find myself counting the days that passed since Christmas …
If there is anything I (not a computer-pro at all) can help, let me know.
By the way: Lightning has made (organizing) my life a lot easier. Thanks for all your effort!
Hey.
I just wanted to ask, if you could give an update on the progress. I know it sucks to keep writing “it will be released, when we’re ready” but I find myself counting the days that passed since Christmas …
If there is anything I (not a computer-pro at all) can help, let me know.
By the way: Lightning has made (organizing) my life a lot easier. Thanks for all your effort!
Hey.
I just wanted to ask, if you could give an update on the progress. I know it sucks to keep writing “it will be released, when we’re ready” but I find myself counting the days that passed since Christmas …
If there is anything I (not a computer-pro at all) can help, let me know.
By the way: Lightning has made (organizing) my life a lot easier. Thanks for all your effort!
Congrats for this release – it took some time since the last version but who cares ;)
I have a question for me being a developer having built an (Windows only) extension for Lightning 0.9 (http://tlhan-ghun.de/?q=node/6) as well as the last official Sunbird build (http://tlhan-ghun.de/?q=node/45) and would like to port it now to Lightning 1.0.
As the current way my extensions works with Lightning is quite a hack I am wondering how the documentation will go forward. I would need an event / listener when a reminder will be displayed and about which object I will get in this case with which availble attributes .