It’s been a while since my last status update on September 19 and I want to give you an update on what we’ve been up to in the last four weeks.
But before I do that, I want to move your attention to the fact that all calendar code development has been moved away from the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH to our new repository comm-central, that we share with the Thunderbird and SeaMonkey developers.
This benefits us in various ways:
- We get all the benefits of the Gecko platform development over the last two years (e.g. better memory management, faster javascript execution, better performance, etc.)
- The platform is actually developed further, while only security and crash fixes were added to the 1.8 branch, which allows us to remove a lot of workarounds and ugly hacks in our codebase
- We can now actively focus on getting Lightning in shape for the next Thunderbird release (TB 3) in early 2009. Before our move to comm-central Lightning on TB3 nightlies was broken in various ways and it’s getting better every day now
There is one major downside as well:
-
As announced earlier on various occasions, Lightning 0.9 was the last release for Thunderbird 2.0.0.x releases and Sunbird 0.9 was the last release for Windows 98, Windows ME and MacOS 10.2 and 10.3.
The reason for this is, that with the very small development team that we are having, we can only support one platform in an optimal way. For us this is Thunderbird 3, which we hope will feature a fully integrated Lightning extension in its default install. Everything else has to come after this longstanding goal of our project. There will still be Sunbird releases of course and we are planning to release Sunbird 1.0 together with Thunderbird 3
With that being said, it’s time to mention the tremendous work of our developers in the last four weeks, where 63 bugs where fixed. Here’s the complete list:
- 386432:
Unify front-end code of Lightning and Sunbird - 393748:
Active tasks are dimmed in task list while completed tasks are shown in black - 405196:
Unifinder: selecting event in unifinder doesn’t select it in day or week view - 407961:
Google sends Email reminders to all non-google attendees, 24 hours before the event - 414336:
Last day in minimonth view is always not bold, independent whether events exist or not - 414957:
Missing link on the Plugins pane of the Add-ons manager dialog - 419007:
Invalid ics files don’t trigger INVALID_TIMEZONE error, times are assumed as floating - 428091:
Unifinder close button icon is misaligned/misplaced - 431775:
Remove unused gopher files - 432440:
A new calendar file of Israel holidays – 2008-2009 - 435166:
Better error handling for repeating tasks without start date - 437418:
Libical shouldn’t add extra linefeed after inner components of VTIMEZONE. - 437441:
Finalize calendar-timezones.xpi - 437622:
Upgrade via update mechanism fails, restart results in error on local calendars - 438807:
Introduce “Meeting” category - 438964:
Closing Edit Event window without modifications prompts Save Event dialog - 448753:
Lightning and GData Provider are incompatible to Thunderbird 3.0b1pre - 450147:
Some locales need to add “of” to the yearly-period-absolute-controls - 450391:
Remove workaround for Task context menu - 451035:
Remove the strings time.1 – time.23 - 451912:
Major update not offered when some language packs are installed - 453330:
Make it possible to build Sunbird from comm-central - 453422:
Add et (Estonian) locale for Calendar - 455182:
Problems refreshing multiple Digest-authed CalDAV calendars - 455221:
Graphic glitch on invitations-pane - 455262:
Use PROPFIND instead of REPORT in CalDAV refresh()es - 455512:
Dom_events.xpt differences bettwen ppc and i386 architectures breaks builds - 455728:
Consolidate sort mechanisms in different views and trees - 455733:
Consolidate filter mechanisms in different views and trees - 455768:
Convert calendar/ from application/x-javascript to application/javascript - 455837:
Support for re-enabling disabled calendars - 455863:
Select event in unifinder scrolls multiday-view to time in its timezone - 455868:
Update Sunbird and Lightning version numbers for comm-central builds - 455869:
Remove MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH ifdefs from calendar trunk code - 456037:
Provide Sunbird nightly builds from comm-central - 456102:
Minimonth should generally be able to show free-busy states - 456170:
Cannot change authentication information for GData Provider - 456362:
Thunderbird3: Move Today Pane Button into Status Bar - 456715:
Remove COMM_BUILD ifdefs from calendar code - 456724:
Add fy-NL to calendar all-locales list - 456865:
Select Calendar dialog doesn’t show Google Calendars when accepting invitations - 456923:
Add a build target to compare bin/ and the package list - 457078:
Incorrect Icelandic language name on download page - 457692:
Switch the invites dialog to use local Address Book autocomplete on toolkit interfaces - 457755:
Add l10n.ini file for Calendar for new python-based compare-locales - 457830:
Delete extended properties - 457854:
Drag Shadow doesn’t disappear after event resize - 457890:
Lightning 0.9/Google Calendar 0.5 do not synchronize Google Alarms anymore - 458078:
Sunbird-bin shouldn’t try and link directly with libtracemalloc anymore - 458163:
Lightning 0.9 source tarball is missing on FTP server - 458201:
Link to 64-bit Linux version of Lightning is incorrect - 458368:
Move and integrate calendar/prototypes to calendar/base - 458404:
Remove -moz-pre-wrap from calendar-views.css - 458492:
Llink to lightning/nightly/latest-comm-central/ builds - 458589:
Drag and drop ical (.ics) attachments onto calendar icon does nothing - 458611:
windows nightly build link is broken - 458808:
Remove some unused entities from calendar.dtd - 458830:
Lightning build instructions are obsolete - 458858:
Lightning keeps asking for password on startup - 459107:
Sunbird startup error (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND – nsIXPCComponents_Utils.import) - 459182:
Syntax error in iCal file for Israeli holidays - 459432:
Please move to Gecko 1.9 - 459951:
Update to links and description for CSV to iCal tool
Many thanks go to all developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters that make this possible.
I understand the move to start development for TB3. But for me its now impossible to test each nightly. Lightnight was being developed for a stable product. Now if I want to test lightning I will also have to test a alpha version of Thunderbird.
I am looking forward to a TB3 with an even better Calendar..
Keep up the good work.
I would like to see contacts of TB3 and calendar of lighting sync with iCal and Address Book on the Mac this is very important since this makes it easy for me to sync my mobile device through iSync.
There are many work around that are not practical, this is very frustrating.
I have many planning tools that utilize the compatibility with iCal, Address Book and Mail, the only missing link is to have TB and Lighting sync with the those applications through iCal, Address Book and mail.
I would like to see TB3 grow truly as a good business tool.
Waiting for a real revolutionary version of TB in the upcoming release of TB3.
With best wishes…
Hello,
is there a new roadmap for sb 1.0 ?
does moving to comm-central mean that there is hope for the calendar extension for SeaMonkey? I miss this a lot.
To answer the few questions:
– there currently is no formal roadmap for Sunbird 1.0
– yes, moving to comm-central makes it easier for us and for the SeaMonkey team to make a Lightning extension possible. But what we would really need for this is a committed individual, who would be actively working on making this a reality. Without such a committed person, Lightning in SeaMonkey will not happen as the Calendar core development team has its hands full with making the full integration into Thunderbird possible.
Hello,
first of all I’d like to thanks all people involved with the calendar project: really a good work!!!
I’d like to ask you what are your plans for off line support.
It seems to me that this feature can’t be missed for 1.0
Best regards
I concur with walter. Off-line support is essential. Without the ability access caldav collections from a “smart phone” being able to at least view calendars while off-line and (ideally) cache changes while off-line is a very important feature.
Any chance of reworking Lightning so that it can be scripted via a public API (and document it)? I think you might find even more excitement if developers could piggy-back on your work. Extensibility has worked quite well for a project called Firefox… :)
Also, while it may admittedly be quite a challenge, it’d be great to be able to support different calendar types besides Gregorian….
Thank you…
I have installed 0.9 release (20080917). Using unofficial nightly updater extension, I have find 0.9 release 20081008: what are the differences beetwen 20080917 and 20081008 releases?
Dedalus, these are the old Mozilla 1.8 builds. There’s nothing new in them compared to the Lightning 0.9 release.
Brett, Lightning is as extensible as Firefox is and there are lots of public APIs to hook into. The documentation is not yet there, however.
In Mail mode, can I customize the location of the “Mini-month” view of the calendar? Currently, I can’t figure out how to move the calendar from the Today Pane in the upper right-hand corner of the window.
I know this request sounds petty, but I would much prefer to have the Mini-month calendar appear in the bottom left-hand corner of my screen (above the Mail, Calendar, and Task Modes) so it wouldn’t take up valuable email reading space. (And you could do this with Lightning 0.5!)