Just a quick note: Due to a slight packaging glitch, the Linux Lightning builds for 2.5b1 were broken. I have just uploaded 2.5b2 to addons.mozilla.org, you can get it in the “Development Channel” box or from the Other Versions page.

Hello Folks. If you have been using Lightning 2.3b1 with a localized version of Thunderbird, you probably had troubles with undefined entities. This happened due to a glitch with the Mozilla localization dashboard, the wrong changeset was used.

I have just uploaded Lightning 2.3b2, which should fix the issue. As always, you can download beta versions from the addons.mozilla.org site in the “Developer Channel” box. If you have previously installed a beta, you should get the update via automatic updates.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/lightning/#install-beta

Hello Folks, we have managed to get all issues out of the way now. You can get Lightning builds for Daily and Earlybird on the Mozilla FTP Servers again. As a bonus, these builds should now auto-update using the addons manager so all you need to do is install them once and then check for updates once in a while.

Many of you have already mentioned this, thank you for the feedback! This is obviously an important issue so we will release an update that fixes it. I will upload it to addons.mozilla.org within the next 12 hours, then it only needs to go through their review.

Users depending on inviting attendees are advised to downgrade to Lightning 1.5.0 until the Lightning 1.5.2 release is live.

Also, on a side note, we finally have a new Mac OSX nightly for Thunderbird Daily! You can get it on ftp.mozilla.org, as always. Windows is so close to being ready. There was another IT issue which is fixed now. Now another build automation issue showed up, which is hopefully the last one.

Just a short note, the second beta of Lightning 1.2 is now available on the developer channel of addons.mozilla.org. It fixes a regression that keeps the user from saving events with attendees. If you were having trouble in the past, please do update!

Also, if you are a localizer, please note that we are nearing the final beta of Lightning 1.2. A total of 9 locales are green but have not signed off yet and 5 other locales are just missing one string for translation. I’d love to get some more locales in the Lightning 1.2 release, as right now its only 26 locales.

In case you are using Thunderbird 10 or Seamonkey 2.7 betas, you will be happy to hear that after some Christmas delay we have released Lightning 1.2b1 to the addons.mozilla.org beta channel.

To get it, please visit Lightning on addons.mozilla.org and click on the Development Channel.

If you have previously installed Lightning 1.1 betas, you should automatically get updates by tomorrow.

I’m happy to announce that Lightning 1.1 has been released. If you were having trouble with alarms then you will want to upgrade to Thunderbird 9 (or Seamonkey 2.6) and Lightning 1.1.

If you are experiencing issues (Lightning not installing or the calendar not working at all), I’d suggest uninstalling Lightning and then doing a fresh install. Your calendar data will be kept intact, as it is contained in your profile.

You can get the builds on addons.mozilla.org, as always.

Hello Lightning users and testers,

With the forthcoming release of Lightning 1.0, we would like to organize a community driven testing event in order improve subsequent versions of Lightning, making sure that it isn’t regressing in any major way. This event will take place during the week starting on November the 13th. If you use Lightning regularly, it should be quite easy to participate.

What do I need to do to participate ?

• You will need to sign up by sending an email to ludovic@mozilla.com who will coordinate the testing effort. Mention “Lightning testing” in the subject.(1)
• You will need some free time on that week to perform some tests.
• You will need an account on litmus.mozilla.org – this is the tool that we will use to track testing and you might need an account on bugzilla.mozilla.org to report defects.

How would my involvement participation would look like ?

• You read this – send the email and create the accounts that you might need.
• On the day we start the event you’ll get an email with detailed instructions on what needs to be tested and links to getting started.
• You follow the links and select some test in litmus.
• Test
• Report if the test is ok, or borked
• If borked you file a bug.

It’s that simple !!!

And while this test will be happening – we will also test Thunderbird 10. If you also want to help just let us know when you signup

(1) signing up ensures that the test workload can be distributed amongst the participants – if we don’t do that install get’s tested 4 times and alarms might end up not being tested.

Thank you very much for the feedback on my last blog post. I’d like to give a short wrap-up and comment on some of the mentioned annoyances.

• Multiple Password Prompts – Sorry, this one isn’t trivial to solve. The issue lies somewhere in the Mozilla Platform and how we interact with it.
• Send Reminder via Email – This means you need to have Thunderbird running for it to send you an email. Is that really what you want?
• Move Lightning’s tab in front of inbox/Tab closing order – More of a Thunderbird issue. You might want to watch bug 508776
• Invitations with Provider for Google Calendar – I have a possible fix for this, I’ll see that this makes the next release (bug 684482)
• Descriptive Errors on Failure – This means string changes, which we can’t do this late in the cycle. We did add some debug messages for the ics provider though
• Disappearing Calendars – Unfortunately I haven’t been able to reproduce this issue, so its hard for me to actually fix it
• Editing invitation email – This needs some Thunderbird changes which are not part of Thunderbird 8. Maybe for Thunderbird 9 though!
• Alarms showing multiple times – I’ll take another look into this bug, I thought I got rid of that for the last release!
• Failures Dismissing recurring events – We’re doing our best to fix this bug for the release
• Offline Support – Well, that’s not exactly very small….but on the bright side, this was planned already! Support has landed and will be part of 1.0rc2, which is due very soon (today, tomorrow)
• Flickering in the views – I agree this is a very annoying bug. Unfortunately its not trivial to fix and requires massive changes in the views and/or backend architecture. As much as I’d like to make it a part of 1.0, I doubt its reasonable.
• Snoozed alarm fires at old event time – Yes, working on this!
• New Calendar Wizard – While a lot of work was done in the Summer of Code, this is not quite ready yet. The Student is still in contact with me though and is working on fixing the remaining issues
• Dual Boot – Until certain platform issues are fixed, this is not feasible, sorry
• Copy entire recurring event – We need some good UI for this, how would we know if the user wants to move the master or just an occurrence?
• Multiday scrolling issues – I’ll look into this and see what I can do
• Events being an hour off on DST change – I’ll also take a look here
• Import/Export issues – This isn’t much of a focus for 1.0, but if its an easy fix I’m happy to consider
• text/plain on caldav – I can imagine allowing this might cause issues for items that are really just text/plain, i.e documents uploaded to the same collection. This would cause an error message for those events. Can’t this be fixed on the server side?
• Hooks/Refresh Killer – Refresh Killer is already in, Mohit is working on the hooks patch, which will make it in too.

I’ll do my best to round off these edges to make 1.0 the best Lightning release you’ve seen to date!

In anticipation of 1.0, I’d like to ask you what bug you find most annoying in Lightning. Our goal is to round the edges, so please focus on small issues (negative example: Missing local mobile device sync) and try to keep it down to one (I’ll also go with two, but don’t start copying our whole buglist ;-).

Comments welcome, lets get this rolling!