Only 5 Weeks Until Thunderbird 31 – Testing Needed

Thunderbird and Lightning do major releases about every 42 weeks and by now there are only 5 weeks left until Thunderbird 31 will be released. Your matching calendaring extension version is Lightning 3.3. Betas for both products are available and now its up to you: we need all the manpower we can get to make sure there are no regressions and everything still works as expected. Over a million active daily users will thank you for this!

To get started, download the beta builds and follow the standard installation procedure.

Although I doubt there will be any issues, its always a good idea to back up your profile. I myself have been using each of the beta builds and haven’t run into any dataloss issues.

Here is a list of areas that have changed and you should especially look into:

  • The access method for Preferences has changed, test everything that looks like we might need to store options for.
  • Make sure disabled UI elements are only disabled if they should be.
  • Some theme changes have been made, also in Thunderbird. Lightning may look different, but if its odd or out of place let us know.
  • Cool new feature: There are new ways to navigate in the today pane.
  • A number of changes in the area of scheduling. Please make sure sending, receiving, accepting, declining and reopening invitations still works as expected.
  • There were changes to the autocompletion feature used in the attendees dialog.
  • Remote CalDAV calendars, especially in combination with Google Calendar.

There is one known issue if you use a localized version of Thunderbird and Lightning. Certain locales have not been fully translated, but are included in the beta builds nevertheless. We will fix this issue for the second beta build soon.

If you notice any issues please leave a comment here as soon as possible. The more time we have to fix the issue the better. If you have a bugzilla account (or don’t mind creating one for free) please comment on an existing bug or file a new one if needed.

Tags: ,

11 comments

  1. Please check this bug and add your self to CC.
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1026382

    Not sure if it’s calendar or TB bug.

    • Philipp Kewisch

      Thanks for the report! I’ve put myself on CC, hopefully we can figure this out soon.

  2. Hello
    Is the new version of lighning “unified” ?
    For the moment, when sharing thunderbird’s profile on a dual-boot windows/linux computer, lightning doesn’t work in linux
    (see http://patrick.cloke.us/posts/2011/07/08/shared-lightning-profile-across-linux/)

    • Philipp Kewisch

      Sorry, Lightning is currently not unified. You will need to follow Patricks guide for manually unifying the xpis.

  3. FYI, Calendar Tweaks 5.0 together with Lightning 3.3 doesn’t work with Thunderbird 31.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit .

    After today’s Thunderbird update from Ubuntu, I had to update Lightning to v3.3, but now Lightning loops forever when Thunderbird is activated (all calendars are refreshed in an endless loop).

    I use Google calendar provider and also caldav .
    I use also Calendar Tweaks 5.5 extension.

    I had to disable Calendar Tweaks in order to get Thunderbird and Lightning to work properly.

    I’ll inform CalendarTweaks dev as well.

    /artur

    • Philipp Kewisch

      Given it works with CalendarTweaks disabled, I bet this is an issue with CalendarTweaks. Thanks for informing the developer!

  4. Today I was advised to update TB to 31.0 and did it. While upgrading, it informed me that my lightning add-on also needed to be upgraded to 3.3, which I also did.

    Now, the calendar stored locally works okay, but I am unable to modify the one stored remotely. Error message: MODIFICATION_FAILED, I found out that the attempt to create/delete/modify events in that calendar causes it to be turned “read-only”.

    Please advise – also for the short term downgrade, while you guys sort it out.

    Thanks, KRC

    • Philipp Kewisch

      For a downgrade you can try installing Thunderbird 24 again and then Lightning 2.6 from the old versions page.

      What kind of calendar is the remote calendar? If its a caldav calendar, what server type is being used?

      Please enable calendar.debug.log and calendar.debug.log.verbose in the advanced config editor (Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor) for more debugging info. You can find the messages in Tools > Error Console.

  5. The search doesn’t seem to work – it only shows recently added events. Doesn’t update neither when entering new search terms. TB v31, Lightning v3.3 on Ubuntu.

  6. In my front of view basically provided for it works with Calendar tweaks debilitated, I wager this is an issue with Calendar tweaks. Much obliged concerning illuminating the designer!