24
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 Finally Released

The Calendar Project is proud to report, that (finally) the 1.0 beta2 release of Lightning has been completed and is now available via addons.mozilla.org.

About 6 months after 1.0b1, we have managed to complete 86 further bugfixes and improvements for the benefit of our users. Notable improvements for this release are:

  • You can now print out your tasks
  • Improved calendar view navigation, performance improved
  • Better error handling when adding or subscribing to calendars
  • Allow setting different start and end timezones for events and tasks
  • CalDAV support and interoperability with various CalDAV servers have been improved
  • Performance improvement and reduced network load when accessing certain CalDAV servers (webdav-sync specification)
  • The application stability, performance and memory consumption have been improved

Lightning 1.0 beta2 is available for Windows, Mac OS X (universal builds) and Linux in 35 different languages including English. Please read the release notes for Lightning 1.0 beta2 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!


20
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 Release Candidate 3 is available

This new release candidate contains fixes for a few locales, no further code changes. Since the Thunderbird 3.1 release is scheduled for this week, I assume this will be the final release candidate.

Candidate builds for Lightning 1.0 beta2 in 33 languages are available as of now for:

A corresponding build of the Provider for Google Calendar is also available at those locations and will be uploaded to addons.mozilla.org once the release cycle completes.

For install instructions, please see one of the earlier blog posts.

Please tell us what you think of these candidate builds and file bugs in Bugzilla as you go. The release is near, and we are glad we can finally concentrate on the next one!


17
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 and Compatibility

A few people have asked me different compatibility questions around Lightning 1.0b2. I’d like to take a moment and tell you about what applications Lightning 1.0b2 will support.

What version(s) of Thunderbird will Lightning 1.0b2 support?
This version of Lightning will only support Thunderbird 3.1. To go a bit more into the technical details, Lightning 1.0b2 and Thunderbird 3.1 use the Mozilla Platform version 1.9.2. The previous versions (Lightning 1.0b1 / Thunderbird 3.0.x) use the Mozilla Platform version 1.9.1. Therefore we cannot provide a version of Lightning that is compatible with Thunderbird 3.0.x

Will Lightning 1.0b2 support Seamonkey?
As you can see in this blog post, Seamonkey does not support the Mozilla Platform version 1.9.2. Therefore, Lightning 1.0b2 cannot support Seamonkey 2.0 or 2.1. Note however, the next version of Lightning will most likely use the Mozilla 1.9.3 Platform, which means the next release (due in about 4 months) will be compatible with Seamonkey 2.1. Until then you can still use Lightning 1.0b1 together with Seamonkey 2.0.x.

Which version of the Provider for Google Calendar should I use?
Together with Lightning 1.0b2, I will release a new version of the Provider for Google Calendar. This version will be called 0.7 and will be available on addons.mozilla.org together with Lightning.

Why don’t you use the latest Mozilla platform, verion 1.9.3?
The 1.9.3 platform contains the newest features and bugfixes to date, but this also means that some Mozilla components we use, as well as some UI features, have changed and require us to adapt our code. Changes in the platform can happen every day, which means it doesn’t make sense to rely on it for a release. Just imagine something big changes between now and next week: this would postpone the release indefinitely, which is obviously bad. Another factor is that the newer platform has binary components that have a different interface. If we build Lightning with Mozilla 1.9.3, it won’t be compatible with a Thunderbird on the Mozilla 1.9.2 platform. It makes sense to use the same Mozilla platform version that Thunderbird does, this causes the least amount of headaches.

Why are you releasing betas, and not 1.0 final?
There is a certain level of stability that people expect from such a major release such as 1.0. We have decided on a certain set of bugs that we think should be fixed before 1.0 final is released. Back when we released 1.0b1, we had a few possibilities on what we should name it. There was 0.10 (as in 0.8, 0.9, 0.10, …), but people could think this is similarly mature as 0.1 was. There was 0.9.5, but we wanted to make clear that the Mozilla platform used has a different minor version (1.8.x vs 1.9.x). So we ended up with 1.0b1. Now we have no other choice than to continue with betas until we’ve fixed all the bugs we think make sense for 1.0 final.

I hope this gives a bit of insight, if you have any further questions, please comment!


15
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 Release Candidate 2 is available

With some delay, we are happy to announce Lightning 1.0b2 release candidate 2. With this release we’ve mainly fixed bug bug 570464, but also made sure we were using the right localization files.

Please re-test if Lightning works in your language! Back with rc1, I accidentally used the newest version of the localization files, but not the version that the localizers suggested. I did notice some further change to the localization files, so it would be great if you could double check.

Candidate builds for Lightning 1.0 beta2 in 33 languages are available as of now for:

A corresponding build of the Provider for Google Calendar is also available at those locations.

Note you will need Thunderbird 3.1 (or a release candidate thereof) to try it out. You are encouraged to back up your profile before upgrading. To install these builds in Thunderbird 3.1, please follow these steps:

  1. Download the build for your operating system to a folder on your hard disk.
    NOTE:Please make sure, that you right-click on the links above and choose “Save Link as…”. Otherwise Firefox will try to install Lightning and you will get an error message like “Lightning 1.0b2 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox.”
  2. Open Thunderbird, then open its add-on manager via Tools –> Add-ons (or the corresponding entry in your language)
  3. Click on the “Install…” button on the lower left and navigate for the lightning.xpi file that you just downloaded.
  4. Restart Thunderbird after the add-on installation has been performed. Voila!

We will be releasing the final version of Lightning together with Thunderbird 3.1. There is not much time left before this release, so I encourage you to do the testing rather sooner than later.

Please tell us what you think of these candidate builds and file bugs in Bugzilla as you go. We are really looking forward to this release, I hope you are too!


07
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 will have a second release candidate

Due to (at least) bug 570394 and bug 570464, we need to respin for rc2. This will happen quite soon (in the next few days), since we need to keep up with the release dates for Thunderbird 3.1.

If you are a localizer and would like to do any further changes for 1.0b2, please file a bug and contact me as soon as possible.


03
Jun 10

Lightning 1.0 Beta 2 Release Candidate 1 is available

This time around, we had a lot less trouble then last time when preparing 1.0b2 release candidate 1. The most trouble this time was again release automation. We managed to work around the issues by producing manual builds on the same machines as our usual releases are built on.

Candidate builds for Lightning 1.0 beta2 in 32 languages are available as of now for:

A corresponding build of the Provider for Google Calendar is also available at those locations.

Note you will need Thunderbird 3.1 (or a release candidate thereof) to try it out. You are encouraged to back up your profile before upgrading. To install these builds in Thunderbird 3.1, please follow these steps:

  1. Download the build for your operating system to a folder on your hard disk.
    NOTE:Please make sure, that you right-click on the links above and choose “Save Link as…”. Otherwise Firefox will try to install Lightning and you will get an error message like “Lightning 1.0b2 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox.”
  2. Open Thunderbird, then open its add-on manager via Tools –> Add-ons (or the corresponding entry in your language)
  3. Click on the “Install…” button on the lower left and navigate for the lightning.xpi file that you just downloaded.
  4. Restart Thunderbird after the add-on installation has been performed. Voila!

The candidate builds will be available for testing for up to 2 weeks. We want to release the final Lightning 1.0b2 together with Thunderbird 3.1, so we may choose to shorten this period by a few days.

Please tell us what you think of these candidate builds and file bugs in Bugzilla as you go. Thank you very much for your support, we couldn’t do it without you!

Update: Windows link fixed, thanks for the note!