Lightning 1.9 will be the ESR compatible release, please test our beta

Lightning 1.9b2 is now available on addons.mozilla.org. It is compatible to Thunderbird 17 and its betas, which will also be released as Thunderbird 17 ESR. This means testing is more important than ever, since this is a version that will stick around a bit longer.

This is why we need you! Without your testing work, possibly critical bugs might go by unnoticed. Not only does this mean extra pain for the end user, it also means more work for us to do emergency releases.

Please take a moment to download Thunderbird 17 beta and Lightning 1.9b2 and report any issues you find. There have been quite a few fixes in printing support and some drastic changes to the cached calendar / offline support. Your main area of testing should therefore be printing and any kind of cached calendar, for example with a CalDAV server or the Provider for Google Calendar. For those of you using WCAP, support for the cache has been restored in this release too.

Of course I’m eager to hear about problems in any other area, so give it a try and either comment here or file a bug!

56 comments

  1. Hi, I’m running Thunderbird 17 beta with Lightning 1.9b2 and Provider for Google Calendar 0.18pre. However, the problem I am about to describe started already with the last versions (16, with 1.8 and .17, respectively).
    For some reason all my events from Google calendars have little icons indicating a cell phone and email reminders. I have not set cell phone or email reminders for any of my events. If I open the event and look in the reminders, there may or may not be a alert reminder (according to what I entered), but there are no cell phone or email reminders set in any of my events, and yet they display in all my events.

    This problem never used to occur until the Thunderbird 16 / Lightning 1.7 / Provider .16 series. I thought perhaps it was a glitch that would go away in the next update, but it’s still here, so I’m making you aware of it.

    Also, this problem does not occur with calendars that are stored locally on my hard drive, only remote calendars. And to be more specific, Google calendars are the only remote calenders I use.

    I hope you can figure it out, but it really clutters up the display of events.

    • Philipp Kewisch

      This might be the known issue we have fixed for the next version. Its only a display glitch, there should be no operational issues. Thanks for reporting!

  2. Hi,

    With this version, when you add a category which is colored, you can no more see what is under the category (half bell of alarm, nearly all of google specific icon, …).

    A feature which could be fine should be disponibility for local agenda as it exist for Google when you try to add other people.

    For Google Agenda, when you move from a calendar to another, you loose reminders and category. There is also an undocumented icon which is’nt the mobile phone, I think public / private).

    Jacques

  3. Hello,

    With Google (Apps) Agenda (TB 17), seem to encounter problems when using “cache” option.
    Must I try early bird ?

    Jacques

    • Philipp Kewisch

      What kind of error message are you getting? Please check Tools > Error Console.

      • The “major” error is that an event which is created and present on my PC 1 is’nt on PC 2 (and nothing specific in error console). Time later (more than half day) there is the “attention” icon on the right of google calendar name.

        If I try to move from google to yahoo, there are more informations in the console.

        You can find copy of error lines here (don’t want to put 62 lines here) :
        http://dl.free.fr/ctz2kVoiQ

        • More information : when you create an event, it is created in Google Calendar (access by web). The issue is replicating this event on other PCs (TB 16 & TB17 react the same way).

  4. I think that “File”, “Print”, “Layout => monthly grid” should automatically switch the paper to landscape instead of portrait. I have never seen a monthly calendar print on a portrait page!

    Do you think it worth a bug report?

  5. another comment: if I unchecked “task” printing, then “Task with no due date” and “Completed task” should be grey, because they shouldn’t have any impact.

  6. I can’t tell from the Addons site (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/lightning/) nor the Calendar site (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/) which features Lightning has.

    For example, does it support syncing with iCal WebDAV and/or Google calendars? I can’t find where Lightning’s features are listed.

    • Philipp Kewisch

      I don’t think we have a definite feature list, sorry. It supports iCal WebDAV calendars, and Google calendars either via CalDAV or the Provider for Google Calendar extension.

  7. I am finding that some meeting invites show as:
    “This message contains an event that this version of Lightning cannot process”. The invites were sent from Outlook (a recent version). But others seem to be fine.

  8. Problem: Calendar events from Calendars that ar on Google are not displayed. Local calendar events are displayed all right.

    > Make sure you are using the right version combination: Lightning 1.8 is compatible to Thunderbird 16.
    The problem (calendar not displaying events) appeared after upgrading to TB 17 (latest to the time of my post). I upgraded TB and upgraded lightning to 1.9 as suggested.

    > Do you have any other addons installed? I’ve heard about some trouble with the “Calendar Tweaks” extension for example.
    Full list of extensions
    AddressBookTab
    British English Dictionary
    Dictionary Switcher
    Edit email subject
    Enigmail
    Folderpane Tools
    Lightning
    More Snooze
    Provider for Google Calendar 0.17
    QuickFolders
    QuickFox Notes
    rendom(signature)
    Russian spellchecking dictionary
    StartupMaster
    SubSwitch
    Sun Cult
    Tag toolbar
    XNote++

    > Open Tools > Error Console and tell me about any error messages you see there
    Calendar related events in error logs are all in “warnings”. I’ve a screenshot but I cannot attach it here. There are a number of errors, I mean, warnings there.

    > Are any calendars no longer in the calendar list on the left side?
    All calendars are in place

    > What kinds of calendars do you have? Local? CalDAV? Google Calendar via the Provider? Other?
    google calendar via the Provider (0.17) that is in trouble

    > If you are using the Provider for Google Calendar, what version do you have installed?
    Provider for google calendar 0.17


    No files quarantined

  9. Hi,
    Today, I was badly bitten on my Windows 7 PC by the automated update of Thunderbird to version 17…! I had a perfectly working Google-connected Calendar function with “Lightning 1.9” and the “Provider for Google calendar 0.17”. After upgrade, no more calendar ! My calendar is still visible on the Google server, e.g.thru’ the Google calendar tab (v.3.9). Shall I update something ?

    Regards,
    Robert Herzog
    herzog@aamodels.be

  10. More about my issue…
    I created a “local” “calendar” (in reality an “agenda” as I use the French version) in my sick Thunderbird 17 configuration. I can create events in there, but when I hit the “Sync” button, even the “local” events vanish…
    Whatever I create on the Google calendars does not propage to Google. I suspect the “provider for ggogle calendar for not establishing the contact with the server.
    Help !

  11. Yep !
    I found out that indeed I need version 0.18 of the provider to have the Google calendar to function under Thunderbird 17 !
    Sorry for the fuss, but the automated update of Thunderbird should look for possible conflicting extensions before updating blindly !
    Greetings,
    Robert

    • I’m sorry this happened, I am not sure myself why it was not prompted. We have filed a bug to investigate.

  12. Hi,
    after updating to TB 17 and lighting 1.9 (win7, 64bit), it lost ALL the events for a google calendar.
    Even adding the calendar again doesn’t help, it just won’t read any events.
    Somehow, Thunderbird imported the entries as feed though – but that doesn’t help.
    A different ical-Calendar works fine.
    Is anybody else having those problems?
    I hope you can work out a fix soon!

    Cheers,
    Conni

  13. Catherine Lessing

    Running T’bird 17 and Lightning 1.9 on Windows 7. I have several calendars – my “regular” calendar that syncs with my Google calendar and several “category” calendars that only display in Lightning. Just updated on both T’bird and Lightning, and now my “regular” calendar entries are no longer displayed in Lightning. I’ve uninstalled/re-installed Lightning several times to no avail. My “regular” calendar events are still displayed on my Google calendar, but syncing does not bring them into Lightning. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. In the meantime, I’ll try disabling all of my other add-ons in T’bird to see if that makes any difference with Lightning.

  14. Lightning is so a great addon for thunderbird. But nowday’s nothing is working annymore. After the update off thunderbird. Lightning is letting thunderbird crash directly. I have empty’ed out the error log. And here is the new error log after simply starting up thunderbird:

    http://pastebin.com/GjT3uUKH

    The only ACTIVATED modules that I have used for this testing purpose are:

    Lightning1.9 true {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}

    Provider voor Google Agenda0.18 true {a62ef8ec-5fdc-40c2-873c-223b8a6925cc}

  15. Since 1.9 was released we cannot read our calendars with TB17, and reminders either no longer work, or won’t dismiss if they were pending when the upgrade took place. We use calDAV across the network (*not* via Google Calendas Provider, which is not even installed). Using Lightning increases CPU significantly. Haven’t managed to capture useful errors yet, but will try if you tell me what to look for.

    • I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Could you tell me if you get any error console messages? If there is nothing significant, please enable calendar.debug.log and calendar.debug.log.verbose and you will get loads of messages around caldav. What happens when you try to dismiss an item would be interesting.

      • Many thanks. So far all I have now I have added those strings (set to true) on startup is: Error: [calCachedCalendar] replay action failed: null, uri=http://dellpe1800:5108/calendar/epaine/default, result=2147500037, op=[xpconnect wrapped calIOperation] and a DAV_NOT_DAV and READ_FAILED Warnings. Same caldendar was working with 1.8.

        • Could you check if that machine (dellpe1800) is still reachable and that the caldav server is still running? This message usually only shows if the the server is giving an invalid response at the url mentioned there.

          Try re-subscribing to the calendar, maybe?

          • That’s not the problem I’m afraid – I have 3 computers on the same network running 1.8 (or older) and they can access the same shared calendars just fine.

  16. I just upgraded my mac (OSX 10.6.8) to Thunderbird 17 and Lightning 1.9. I upgraded Google Calendar Provider to .18. I tried to add my Google Calendar (I had been using with no issues prior to this upgrade). When I select ‘Offline Support’, Thunderbird hangs, with what looks like a memory leak. I waited about 20 minutes, memory usage went over 1G & kept rising.

    • Kind of known issue if you have a lot of items. There is also a but with switching to offline support. Please try turning on offline support either manually in the prefs.js, or at least try restarting after selecting offline support.

      Once the initial sync (which might take a while and use up a lot of memory) completes, all further syncronizations should be instantaneous.

      • I am having issues with this as well, but strictly with caldav calendars. I can get one installed, sometimes two, and then Thunderbird will hang anywhere from hours to days. Or if I shut it down I have to delete the lightning add on and then recreate a brand new profile and start over again. I know that my server is fine, as I am connecting using a webmail client with no issues, however I have people that really want to use Thunderbird for caldav, and I’m finding this to be an impossible request to fulfill.

  17. More info: the Google calendar seems work fine in online mode; but all events vanish when offline.

  18. Another report of Calendar problems after upgraging to Thunderbird 17, Lightning 1.9

    I can no longer view or interact with exchange calendar after reinstalling to upgrade from Mint 10 Mate 32 bit to Mint 14 Cinamon 64 bit (Patch current as of Dec 20 10:30 EST).

    I restored my mailbox directory and settings from backup prior to initial connection attempt. This worked for mail, but not for calendar. Calendar promtped me to install “Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar and Tasks Provider 1.8.5” as I gather “Provider for Microsoft Exchange 0.18” is now considered obsolete, so I did so. Restarted, still no luck. Removed “Provider for Microsoft Exchange 0.18”, resarted, still no luck. Currently I have restored “Provider for Microsoft Exchange 0.18” so that I can supply error logs from both scenarios.

    Also briefly tried Lightning 1.9b2 with no luck before reverting to 1.9.

    One possible interesting detail, the email address uses ‘scott.little’ but the login uses ‘slittle’
    ———————————————
    Data:
    Thunderbird 17.0
    (17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.10.1)

    Current Add-ons installed

    Lightning 1.9
    LookOut 1.2.13
    Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar and Tasks Provider 1.8.5
    Provider for Microsoft Exchange 0.18
    Toogle Word Wrap 1.9
    Messaging Menu and Unity Launcher Integration 1.3.1
    EDS Contact Integration 0.5

    ——————————————————-
    Attempt to connect to calendar via Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010 results in these errors.

    Timestamp: 12-12-20 10:35:27 AM
    Error: can’t wrap XML objects

    Timestamp: 12-12-20 10:35:27 AM
    Error: Error: resource://exchangecalendar/ecEWSTimeZoneDefinitions.js – Could not set symbol ‘ews_2010_timezonedefinitions’ on target object.
    Source File: resource://exchangecalendar/erGetTimeZones.js
    Line: 49

    Timestamp: 12-12-20 10:35:27 AM
    Error: [Exception… “Component returned failure code: 0x80570015 (NS_ERROR_XPC_CI_RETURNED_FAILURE) [nsIJSCID.createInstance]” nsresult: “0x80570015 (NS_ERROR_XPC_CI_RETURNED_FAILURE)” location: “JS frame :: resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///home/slittle/.thunderbird/y5p85909.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/calendar-js/calCalendarManager.js :: cmgr_createCalendar :: line 486” data: no]

    ——————————————————-
    Attempt to connect via Microsoft Exchange results in

    Timestamp: 12-12-20 10:41:54 AM
    Error: Assert failed: undefined
    2: [resource://calendar/modules/calAuthUtils.jsm:114] calPasswordManagerGet
    3: [resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///home/slittle/.thunderbird/y5p85909.default/extensions/lightning-exchange-provider@gitorious.org/js/calExchange.js:979] null
    4: [resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///home/slittle/.thunderbird/y5p85909.default/extensions/lightning-exchange-provider@gitorious.org/js/calExchange.js:201] null
    5: [resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///home/slittle/.thunderbird/y5p85909.default/extensions/lightning-exchange-provider@gitorious.org/js/calExchange.js:188] setTimeout_notify

    Source File: resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///home/slittle/.thunderbird/y5p85909.default/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/calendar-js/calUtils.js
    Line: 1105

    • You must upgrade the Exchange calendar provider addon to a later version. If no version is available on addons.mozilla.org, please use the beta version from the author’s site.

  19. I use TB 17.0.2 and lightning 1.9. I have configured the Calendar with Google using caldav and also the off-line mode. My problem was also in earlier versions ( a couple of month
    Whenever there is a alarm on one of the events I can’t suspend or delete the event.
    If I uncheck the off-line mode everything is working fine

  20. Hello

    I have a problem with lightning wrt the Google agenda.
    I use TB 17.0.2 and Lightning 1.9 and synchronise with Google agenda using the Caldav protocol. If I check the Offline support while configurating the agenda in Lightning it doesn’t allow me to suspend or delete any event. If I uncheck offline support it’si working fine. Is that correct ?

  21. Let me reported that after upgrading to TB 1.7 and Lightnight 1.9. Some items of my calendar items with caldav server cannot be updated with offline support.

    However, if I unchecked the offline support. The calendar items can be modified successfully. But I will take up to 5 minutes to load the calendar initially everyday.

    It works with old version of TB and Lightning. The calendar is shared to read/write among a group 3 peoples with 2 iPhone and 3 TB 1.7 and Lightning 1.9.

    Thanks in advance

  22. I am using v1.9 on TB17.02. In my use of the calendar, seeing the event location with the description on all views is critical. I have seen numerous requests for this, will this ever be a possibility? Simply, I need the choice of a two line display in all views that is description plus location. (I travel for a living; knowing where I am going is as important as knowing the event name). Re-entering location into the description field is a duplication, and in many instances, makes the line too long to display.

  23. Hi,

    are there any plans to implement “meeting requests” for CalDav Calendars in Lightning ?

    • You can send meeting requests by adding attendees to events. You will be prompted to send an email. Be sure to set up the email address for the calendar to be the organizer of your choice.

      If you mean caldav scheduling, there is a pref that is default-off and given next to noone is testing it, its probably broken.

      I’d like to overhaul scheduling support before I go on and improve the caldav implementation, but I’m not sure when I will get to this.

  24. How can I sync. Lightning with co-workers?

  25. How can I sync Lightning with co-workers so they can see my activities and I can see theirs?

  26. I can not add new category to lightning. There is form, i am able to add name of category and choose a color, but i am not able to confirm this form.

    TB 17.0.3 Lightnig 1.9 Ubuntu 12.04

  27. Thanks for finally writing about > Lightning 1.9 will
    be the ESR compatible release, please test our beta
    | Mozilla Calendar Project Blog < Loved it!

  28. Do you have ANY news about the integration of lightning (as it is the best and only calendar add-on for thunderbird, which is now the default email application for ubuntu derivates) in the ubuntu/mint etc. calendar?
    I realy dont like evolution email and dont want to go back to it…

  29. Try to enable cache (now called offline support) in Thunderbird 17 and lightning+provider and your calendar will disappear. It comes back inactive when you restart and it will only work if you disable offline support. This is a major bug introduced by Thunderbird 15.

    Please fix it!!!

    Stefano