With the implementation of the Rapid Release development process for Thunderbird, I will no longer be announcing Thunderbird releases (now done on DevNews instead) as well as their changes in a blogpost, since any significant bugfix or new feature will, in all high probability, make it to the next release train within a few weeks. Calendar might be an exception till it joins the Rapid Release process.
The Rumbling Edge will continue to track comm-central landings every few weeks or so, as well as for Calendar.
Thunderbird release changelogs have been continuously updated since 2005, and the first version on that list was 0.7.3. (Thunderbird has come a long way, a journey of ups and downs indeed!) This list will occasionally be updated as well.
Compare this to old days when new releases would only come out “when it’s done”. How times have changed!
The Rumbling Edge :: Thunderbird Release Changelogs | 21-Jul-11 at 2:33 am | Permalink
[...] What’s new in Thunderbird 5 … (Released on 28 Jun 2011 – last release-specific changelog blogpost) [...]
David Harrison | 21-Jul-11 at 7:55 am | Permalink
Thanks for the update; I’ve updated my subscriptions.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the new build process. I will join those in saying I think the wanton version updating is excessive and confusing for all – while I can understand that a version number is just a number, there is a long history of major version updates being associated with major changes.
This new process means that I’ve gone from Thunderbird 3 to Thunderbird 5 and my user experience is exactly the same – well, if anything, a little worse due plugins not working due to the major version change, as well as a weird latency issue opening new emails!
I’m sure plugin developers will adapt to the new cycle and simply starting making all their stuff compatible with basically anything greater than some previous version. But at the moment the versioning increasing in Mozilla software doesn’t seem to offer any real benefits and just reeks of a game of one-upmanship with other software vendors – and frankly, I would have thought Mozilla would be too good for that.
All that said, as an avid Mozilla product user I look forward to an increasing rate of releases and new features, especially in Thunderbird, which I think is probably Mozilla’s most important product at the moment.
Thanks, as always, for all the hard work.