Feedback on Thunderbird v115

[NGC224]

I'm permanent Thunderbird (TB) user and would like to share a feedback on the new TB version 115. In my opinion, its layout is worse than that in the previous v102. Particularly, "Receive mail" and "Create message" buttons must have the same big size and color, like it was always before. Also, users now can't easily downgrade to earlier TB versions, which is not good too, because earlier versions looked better - 100 versions seem to have a downward trend. Overall, it seems that the whole community of TB users is a bit disappointed by v115. Thus, I would like to encourage TB developers to consider going back to older styles/layouts.

[jack05407]

I agree with this comment and would add that the latest version of Thunderbird is a bug ridden, time wasting horror.  Every time you boot it takes many minutes to download emails and you can do little to no work while that cycle is progressing, defeating the purpose of email.  On top  of that the latest version crashes often putting you through the lengthy email download process repeatedly.

The compacting process also triggers the lengthy email download cycle. 

All in all, the latest version is a nightmare.

Version 115 should be fixed or users should be given the option to revert to the more stable immediately prior version.

[tedwhite]

Among all the other annoyances in the new Thunderbird is this: I can no
longer hit "Control" and "+" to enlarge the text in messages (nor
"Control" and "-" to reduce that text). Instead, I must go to "View"
and "Zoom" and "Zoom In" to create a small increase in text size. For
some of the tiniest texts this requires repeating that process a half
dozen or more times. Totally annoying. What were the people at Mozilla
thinking? "Let's make this harder!"?

Bring back Old Thunderbird!

[bipco]

Hi

Not sure about the layout & new "bells & whistles", clearly lots of people don't like it.  Main problem I have is unread mail in subfolders (for some of them) is showing in the top-level folder, but when you open it it doesn't show which subfolder it's in.  So now you know there is a mail in there somewhere, but not where.  A workaround is to use the unread folders view, which I could maybe get to like, but it should work properly on all the folders.

This has been a bug before in more than one version that has been reintroduced.

Likely I will be going back to V 102 for now at least.

[BartZLederman]

Browse though this conference, and you will find at least four discussions on how bad 115 is.  All the feedback I see on the interface (mine included) is very strongly negative.  If you have less than perfect eyesight you won't be able to read things, even if you think glitter is more important than functionality.  You will also find many reports of essential functionality that works in 102 is broken in 115, and there were no fixes for bugs reported quite some time ago.

If you still want to try 115, be sure you make a good backup of your profile folder so you can go back to 102.

[Knownuthin]

I agree with most everything negative I've read on here.it is my intention to revert back to 102 if I can figure out how without trashing I have saved.. Since the upgrade was done without my knowledge I received no notice and therefore had no time to save backups from 102.  If reverting can't be done easily it is time to junk Thunderbird and pick a different client. What really irks me was the update to 115 being done automatically without any warning.  Now not only is it a nightmare. If I click on a folder say "inbox" it may take me to messages from months back not the current downloaded messages. I'm forced to scroll to te top or bottom to find the last download. Each visit to any folder never opens at the last message received. I also cannot zoom to enlarge text without first visiting the view tab and clicking on the zoom tab after that the Keyboard CTRL++ works. Truthfully this version made a mess of what was very functional.

[BartZLederman]

Check out this discussion:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/layout-in-the-new-thunderbird-115-is-terrible/m-p/42254/e...

Or look for the discussion by the title,

Layout in the new Thunderbird 115 is terrible.

You will find instructions on various ways to revert back to 102 that have been tested by other users and found to work.

[bev]

I haven't heard a satisfied customer but one.  He probably is a teck guy.  The 115 was a flop and the response was noted as so.  Maybe Mozilla will do the right thing and the fix will be an easy reset back.   Let's see how customer service orientated they really are. Myself I am looking to switch to some recommendations made on this forum the donations will go there if its good.    Thanks for listening.

[HDB]

TB 115.3.2 (32-bit, classic layout), WIndows 10 (64-bit).

Just a couple of things I found.

1. When reading new emails in a folder with the Fetch headers only attribute set, v102 would duly download the body and display the content in the message (preview) pane.  Now, after initiating the download, v115 moves the item focus in the message list pane down to the next message, causing that message's body to appear in the preview pane.  I have to re-select the now-downloaded message to view its body in the preview pane.

2. I had multiple addresses sending and receiving through the one (in my case POP) server.  After the update, all of these could still receive okay but only one could send messages: all the others would fail with an mf-505: Sender policy - Relay Denied diagnostic.  I eventually figured out that while the SMTP server addresses were of course identical, the user names used in the outgoing request now needed to be 1:1 with the account addresses (or maybe unique at least).

Apart from that, not a huge soul-crushing deal.  Yes the font and spacing looked a little cramped but a couple of Font size -> Increase invocations plus a Density -> Default selection pretty much sorted things for me at least.

[TopGeek]

The automatic upgrade to 115.3.3 occurred on 19th October for me, since when I can't download POP3 mail from the server. I've spent many hours trying to find a solution but to no avail. I know there is mail there through Webmail and Mail Washer. I can also send mail through Thunderbird. I've checked the POP3 server settings and all seems correct but clicking 'Get messages' produces no response whatsoever.

I opened an IMAP account and that works fine but I don't like the way IMAP works so that is not an answer.

Just one oddity is that , even though I ticked to save my password the POP3 server does not appear in the 'Saved Passwords' box, although the outgoing smtp server is there.

If anyone can throw any light on this puzzle, I would be immensely grateful.

[TopGeek]

Finally - After many fruitless frustrating hours, I found another thread covering the same issue, where a kind soul suggested configuring the servers in offline mode. So, I thought I would try that but I didn't even get that far before the solution was found.

I followed File>Offline and was presented with a popup asking if I wanted to download mail before going offline. I clicked Yes and was then asked to enter my password. I entered the password and ticked the box to have Password Manager save the password, clicked OK and, miraculously, my e-mails were downloaded. So I then exited the offline process, sent myself a TEST e-mail and clicked Get Messages. It worked! So Thunderbird is back in business - at last. I then checked Saved Passords and found that the POP3 login is now listed.

Mozilla, if you are reading this, please note that there is some sort of problem with the Thunderbird 115.3.3 setup procedure whereby it does not save the POP3 login parameters.