What do you think is the most annoying bug in Lightning?

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!

45 comments

  1. Not being able to delete notifications in some cases.
    Its in bugzilla.
    Enough for me to simply disable lightning. ;-)

  2. A password prompt for each remote calendar (I have 3 on the same remote server). Checking the ‘remember password’ box doesn’t help. If I check the ‘remember’ box I shouldn’t be prompted at all.

  3. Unable to send reminder via email – this considered a small issue?

  4. Move lightning’s tab in front of Inbox tab.
    Reason –
    Starts thunderbird and mails starts coming in.
    Inbox – 1st tab
    Lightning – 2nd tab
    Click on new mail, new mail opens on 3rd tab.
    Close email and wants to open another new mail, but you are in 2nd tab (lightning) instead of inbox.

  5. Vincent (cameleon)

    Hi Philipp,
    I would point you to the easiest bug to fix in my list of priority:
    651805 [Month view] Distinguish “All day events” from other events
    link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=651805

  6. For Lightning to be useful, it just needs to work correctly with responding to invites (from MS world and via Gmail Calendar). Without that fixed, I am forced to switch to gmail/gcal to respond to invites.
    A couple of related bugs are:
    Bug 564132 – when importing from .ics, sends out invitations for *all* calendar entries including events in the past and events created by others (edit)
    Bug 465515 – Responding to event invitations sends out a new invitation from Google Calendar.
    Bug 384308 – GData Provider should correctly handle iMIP invitations
    Bug 684482 – Investigate use of gCal:syncEvent to fix invitations
    This is just very critical. Without the possibility to respond to invites Lightning is just useless.

  7. The biggest problem I have with Lighting is not being able to accept meeting requests into my google calendar.

  8. Hi, I can’t find this as a reported “bug”, but IMHO it would be great to have a descriptive error message when a calendar sync fails or an event modification fails too.

  9. Bug 563314 – After DST (daylight savings time) change recurrent events displayed shifted by one hour
    Lightning is working okay for me except for this very annoying bug. I will have to delete and recreate my recurring tasks in a few weeks to ensure they occur at the proper time if this is not fixed.

  10. Edvin Lindqvist

    The most annoying bug for me is that externa google calendars sometimes fail to be shown. Might be related to the gcal sync plugin.
    Most wanted feature is to be able to save invitations in external (google) calendars.

  11. The one that still grates on me for over a year is the fact that remote calendars “disappear” often with the little warning triangle, and reload remote calendars doesn’t fix it. This requires exiting Thunderbird (sometimes needing a force close) and relaunching. The calendars ALWAYS work on Thunderbird reload.
    I know we have talked about this bug off and on for years, and it has been “fixed” or marked “closed” on the tracker, but it still haunts me.

  12. I use Google Apps and have several calendars associated with my domain. I usually import all of them into lightning (using add-on) and lightning asks me for user name and password for every one of them (even if I store uname and pass). This is annoying. If it is not possible to insert all calendars from my acc is it at least possible to fill the stored password if I fill the user name? I would still prefer to be able to automatically detect all my calendars like Gnome 3.2 / Evolution / Android / … does. Too big issue for this list? Regards; Luka

  13. Hi guys,
    thanks for your work! Here 3 bugs of my buglist. ;-)
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362653
    Google Calendar Provider: Support for Comments
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433848
    Editing invitation email message before sending is not possible anymore
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463402
    Unwanted and confusing E-Mail notification dialogs

  14. Prevents me from upgrading my default profile to Lightning: bug 693974 – Alarms/reminders for recurring events/tasks fire/are shown multiple/several times, especially after hibernation

  15. Jonatan Cloutier

    I’d say https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=533654 is the most annoying bug that I have to cop with

  16. I really like Thunderbird and have been using it as my main e-mail client for multiple accounts since version 2.0. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement:
    1. Support of invites on event with Google Cal (without spamming all attendees when accepting an invite). This is a long standing issue of Gcal Provider vs. Google.
    2. Lack of offline calendar support / sync / cache with Google calendars. I am not sure if this doesn’t work, but I don’t typically use “experimental” features.
    3. Support for right to left (Hebrew) e-mail – non-calendar issue…

  17. One issue that frequently annoys me about Lightening (1.0b7) is that when the remote calendars refresh, they all disappear from the screen for a moment before reappearing, even if nothing changed. If I’m working at my desk (either on my computer or on the desk in front of my computer), this will unnecessarily draw my attention to the Thunderbird window because I saw something flash on the screen. I’ve got about 8 remote calendars (all but one are Google calendars).
    I know that there has been a lot of work recently into the Offline Caching, so perhaps this issue has already been resolved. If not, I’m not sure how easy it would be to fix (so it may not qualify as a “small issue”), but I thought I would put it out there.

  18. And I don’t see any other comments, so I will suggest one more that just came to mind. It should be relatively easy to fix, but is most likely a fix for Thunderbird rather than Lightening.
    I never use the preview pane, but prefer to open messages in tabs. I will often have the message lists open in the first tab, and the Lightening calendar open in the second tab. When I double-click on a message, it opens into a third tab. When I’m done, I close the tab and am brought back to the second tab (the calendar) rather than the first tab (the message list). That forces me to make two clicks (close tab, select first tab) instead of just one click to get back to the message list.
    This happens whether the second tab is the calendar or another message, but I don’t usually leave message tabs open, while I often leave the calendar tab open. So, although it is an issue with Thunderbird, this relatively simple fix to Thunderbird would enhance Lightening.

  19. First, thanks for the great work Lighting team does!
    Now to the question you asked. The most glaring bug by far is inability to accept event invitations to the Google calendar via provider for Google Calendar. That’s not a small or new issue but greatly affects Lightning daily usability. Is your latest bug 684482 can have a solution?
    I use Thunderbird/Lightning with Gmail/Google Calendar. Every time a new invite comes in, I have to login to Google via browser to accept the event. That becomes a multi-step process that breaks my workflow.

  20. I’m not sure if I can remember encountering any bugs in Lightning! It’s more usability & interface issues for me; stuff like creating events, it sometimes feels like it’s harder than it needs to be.
    Sorry this criticism isn’t any more constructive; I wouldn’t know how to go about changing it myself. Perhaps a preset system of some kind and a way to set default values.

  21. Most important for me is offline mode. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=380060
    It looks like it is sort of ready after google’s summer of code, but not included in 1.0 (of am I missing something?).
    Thanks for the great product!

  22. Bug 456706 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=456706). I can’t use Calendar with Zimbra because of this bug :(

  23. It was bug 360916 that annoyed me most when switching from Outlook a couple of years ago. I.e.: when you set a new alarm time for an event you expect not to bothered with the event again until the new time. I see there is work going on, hope it can be fixed.
    Thanks for the great product.

  24. Like Cae said above, the missing possibility of moving the calendar tab at “pos. 1” is one of my biggest “small” issues.
    Syncing with an ics file on my own webspace should be much easier (I didn’t really try it so far, but what I read about it, sounded very very very complicated.). In that case a solid offline/online handling would be fine, too. But that might be a bigger one…!?
    But I like and work with Lighting anyway. Good work!!!

  25. The CalDAV per calendar url configuration makes it totally unusable by non techie users, especially in a corporate environment. I was delighted to see http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar/2011/05/calendar_in_summer_of_code.html (“Improving the New Calendar Wizard”) but I have not seen any update on the state of this project. Any bug associated with it ?

  26. Arnaud Quillaud

    Looks like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306495 : “autodetect remote calendar type so user doesn’t need to pick”
    No activity on it though.

  27. The most annoying thing about Lightning for me is that I have to manually create a version for my Windows/Linux dual boot machine after every single update.

  28. Casper Joost Eyckelhof

    The one I’m getting a lot of questions about in our organization, is “Event Accept/Decline does not show in reply” (bug 495906).
    When somebody replies to an invite, it is impossible to know whether it is an accept or decline, without updating the event first and afterwards opening the event. (or use “view source” on the reply; so the information is available…)
    Slightly related to this workflow: bug 366680, “Event tool tips in calendar views should display list attendees”. That would at least skip one step in scenario above. And would be quite useful in general too.
    Thanks for the good work!

  29. The most annoying bug remains to me that Lightning failed to copy an entire recurrent event from a calendar to another. Only one occurence is copied at a time.
    Thanks for the great job done since years on Mozilla Calendar.

  30. Scrolling of multi-week view (bug 403922)
    Scrolling does not work as expected in multi-week view:
    Events disappear whilst scrolling and are redrawn some time later – several seconds for remote calendars.The selected day changes as you scroll. In any other scrollable window, the selection moves with the contents.

  31. I hate the password prompt box for remote calendars. Why can’t lightning respect the “remember password” check box?
    Thanks for your survey. I appreciate your work.

  32. Let me create events by dragging&dropping emails ‘into’ the calendar (means: onto the calendar tab / the calendar button / the today pane).
    Go go go, lightning! And thanks…

  33. Thank you Philpp and everybody who contributed to Lightning. Without it, Thunderbird would be next to useless.
    I’d like to second these to annoying bugs already mentioned by others:
    ronw | October 15, 2011 5:00 AM:
    > A password prompt for each remote calendar (I have 3
    > on the same remote server). Checking the ‘remember
    > password’ box doesn’t help. If I check the ‘remember’
    > box I shouldn’t be prompted at all.
    (Also posted by uniq | October 17, 2011 7:45 AM)
    Edvin Lindqvist | October 15, 2011 8:23 AM:
    > The most annoying bug for me is that externa google
    > calendars sometimes fail to be shown. Might be related
    > to the gcal sync plugin.

  34. Being reminded of dates one year ago or longer (randomly)
    Thx.

  35. Please consider this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586276
    It would be a great step foreward! Thanks!

  36. Thanks for your effort!
    Using Lightning is for me affected by the bug:
    Bug 563314 – After DST (daylight savings time) change recurrent events displayed shifted by one hour.
    I use remote calendars for synchronisation of private and business calendars, so this is really a drawback.

  37. Please consider this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=582089
    caldav won’t display calendar items if they are marked with a content type of “text/plain”
    Thanks in advance.

  38. Hi.
    Lightning is really great! Thank you so much for keeping it updated.
    I have 2 small bugs that I find annoying:
    1. When you create a new event, without setting an alarm, it sets a default alarm anyway.
    2. There are some issues with importing lightning-esported calendars to MS Outlook:
    a. .csv format: MS Outlook does not accept the US time format (AM-PM) when Windows regional formats are set to French (00:00-24:00), and it considers all times are in the morning.
    b. .ics format: You cannot open the file in MS Outlook when there are periodic meetings (problem linked to a gregorian vs lunar calendar issue).
    OK. I have three annoying bugs, but I guess that 1. and 2.a. are the easiest to solve.
    Thanks.

  39. For me the biggest bug is that with Lightning and Google Calendar sync, Thunderbird asks for the password twice:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349641
    Thanks for your work. Without Lightning, Thunderbird would be much less useful!

  40. I have one bug and one feature request. I am using version 1.0b7.
    I guess my complain is related to the following bug.
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=529771
    Each time my laptop has an active internet connection but can not reach to a remote calendar then the remote calendar go into locked state. I have to delete the calendar and add it again back to make it working again.
    The problem seems to me is that when the calender is unreachable then there should be a warning popup(it may also say don’t show me again) and then clean exist. Instead, I see an error in error console.
    Feature request: I would like only to see the events that belong to certain categories. I may be able to choose the selection in the Preference tab “categories” where we choose color for them.

  41. It would be nice to have ‘normal’ appointments displayed different from all day events or multi-day events:
    * Normal appointment: No box (no border, no fill) text in calendar’s colour
    * Multi-day event: Box border in calendar’s colour, no box fill, text in calendar’s colour. In month view, the event is drawn on same line for each day and the box is drawn as a continuous line for the whole event (not on a per day base)
    * All-day: Box (border and fill) in calendar’s colour
    Thanks for your effort!

  42. I need those fix!
    refresh killer: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502936
    offline mode support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=380060
    hooks / stubs mechanisms: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586276
    Posted by: Alessio | October 17, 2011 12:22 AM
    +1