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Untitled

Please see the discussion at talk:Thunderbird_(disambiguation). - UtherSRG 20:20, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thunder'bird'?

Is the logo bird the Thunderbird (mythology)? It would be great if the article explained what the "bird" actually is. 96.240.113.171 (talk) 23:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MACOS

"As for Firefox, the Mac OS X version is poorly integrated and generally considered inferior to other ports."


What is this  ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.42.79.229 (talk • contribs) 21:43, June 24, 2006 (UTC)

Polish?

Is a special Polish edition of Thunderbird at work? Did I oversleep or what?--217.237.151.169 12:14, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Of course there's a Polish edition! As of the time of writing, it, and all other translations, can be found here (the filename is thunderbird-0.2-win32-plPL-SEAinstaller.exe.) --Ardonik.talk()* 14:26, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)
    • Hmm. That's not right; it's a link to a really old version. The latest internationalized versions are supposed to be here (link is outdated), but the URL on that page to localized versions is broken. The default installer seems to be for English only. Maybe someone else can help out? --Ardonik.talk()* 14:42, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

I think the Anon misunderstood "Polish work" (to improve 1.0) as "a work in the Polish language" [1]. --Menchi 02:54, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Themes and Extensions

Some thoughts. First, I don't think these should be grouped together- they are not similar, and extensions shouldn't be in the interface section. Second, they are non-standard terms which I think should be commented on to be skins and plugins, or something along those lines. Juan Ponderas 05:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Copying from firefox page?

It seems someone copied part of this page straight from the Firefox page. I found several instances where the word 'firefox' was used instead of thunderbird in the Cross-platform support section and the word browser was used instead of client in the Internationalization and localization section. I fixed the problems, but I'm not sure weather its ok for these sections to be identical to the Firefox page, so I thought I'd leave the matter in the hands of some more experienced users to handle. --Canageek 20:52, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Complaints

A common complaint I have heard (and have myself) is lack of an integrated calendar. Can that be added or do I need a documented source first? Oberiko 04:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I say add, then if people don't like it, it'll get deleted. I mean, no one has answered since January... Additionally, there are extensions for calendar support and Mozilla does have a separate calendar. You may be aware of this though. Dawhitfield 02:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yup. Lightning was announced after I made the orginal post, so I think that basically puts the issue to rest. Oberiko 17:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Criticisms

Just a simple observation, but where it says that Thunderbird has been criticized for not having the ability to automatically save attachments to a folder, that's probably because it would become a huge security risk, with worms and virus's being able to easily infect users. -Astroman 03:49, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Tacking onto the criticism of not having this ability, it mentions that there is an extension to perform this functionality, could someone add a link to said extension ? Signpostmarv 20:00, July 8th 2006 (GMT)


"Some important features are also missing from Thunderbird, such as default templates for new mails and replies, which are present in most other email clients." Thunderbird 2 now has "message templates", so I believe this example should be removed. If there other features missing, they can be added as examples, otherwise I believe the item should be removed. --Patrickdepinguin 14:41, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

not criticisms, feature requests

isn't this whole list pretty pointless? it's just a feature request list. should this be left to bugzilla, and not wikipedia? most of these aren't really criticisms. criticism would be more like "TB does X, but this adversely affects Y users, and the designers have refused to change it" or similar. feature requests are no9t criticisms. --60.242.222.210 00:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Add to this the recent edit by Mojo-chan. You can use templates in ThunderBird for Windows and Linux. Perhaps Mojo-chan is just unfamiliar with the use of the software or (s)he is using an older version, or a Mac version. If this is not an error please provide a source or explain here why what was posted is correct.--71.202.46.143 08:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as the third criticism is concerned (protecting emails from outsiders), it's one of the most basic features imaginable for a mailing client so it certainly deserves mentioning here. And although designers have not plainly refused to fix it, they've actually failed to do so in the last seven and a half years (since it was reported at the end of 1999), which is pretty long time even as compared to the notoriously sloppy Microsoft. Adam78 22:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Granted that's a long time, but I suspect partly this is a misplacing of a lack of os features onto an application, namely functional file and folder permissions. See discussions of how pidgin makes no effort to secure stored passwords beyond trusting that the os has functional file permissions in place and attempting to use them.

I agree. The paragraph "It is not possible to protect emails from other (unauthorized) users of the computer" is hardly a fair criticism of the application. It might be a valid criticism of the operating system or the user, but not of Thunderbird. Brunnian 08:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Message loss due to compacting folders?

I've spent many hours contributing to Thunderbird (not to mention using it and supporting it) and I have never seen this bug: 

 "Compacting folders can lead to the loss of messages in the folder you are viewing at the time"

Thus, I'm removing it from the list of "Possible deficencies". Perhaps someone can cite a source (like a bug in Bugzilla). I have seen folders that incorrectly display the count of messages and compacting folders fixes this problem. Perhaps the person who added this line was confused by that? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.92.53.49 (talk • contribs) 18:41, October 17, 2006 (UTC) I have lost completely all of my messages. Coming back to Thunderbird I was asked to create a new account. However my contact list was preserved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.233.100.172 (talk) 17:22, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it proprietary software?

See discussion at Talk:SeaMonkey#Is it proprietary software?. -- mms 15:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can obtain/install officially branded products which don't have Talkback & are therefore completely free/open source. Trackback is widely considered to be an extension & not the core product. This is really free/open source software. --Karnesky 20:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Windows XP

Why don't we have it running under windows xp? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.131.55.36 (talk • contribs) 02:02, January 19, 2007 (UTC)

If you're talking about the screenshot, I'm in two minds myself: on one hand, XP is a far more common operating system, and Thunderbird is most likely to be run on it - so there is the "Encyclopaedia Accessibility" issue. Then, on the other, Thunderbird and Wikipedia both reflect open-source, non-proprietary values, and so perhaps it's more appropriate to have it under Linux. What do others think? - Certainly there would be no harm in including a screen shot of it running under other OSs as secondary pictures, but which is most appropriate for the primary picture? --Christopher 19:41, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When the user interface is essentially the same (with only the window decorations significantly different), I see little reason to include screenshots from multiple OSs, and whether Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X are used doesn't matter. Thunderbird falls under this category. Now, when there are significant differences (think Mac IE 5 versus Windows IE), then multiple screenshots is appropriate. -- Hawaiian717 23:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Someone has put a weblink in titled "Easy Tutorial to configure Thunderbird." It is obviously translated from some non-English language. I take issue with the use of the word "easy" when the language goes like this: "Thunderbird is a client of electronic mail of novel characteristics that turn it one more an option than attractive than it´s not possible to be let evaluate."

Surely someone's got a better weblink out there somewhere, yes?

Molasseskat 19:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Eudora vs. Thunderbird attachments

"Most e-mail programs use MIME to attach files to e-mails. MIME converts the file to a format compatible with Internet transmission (i.e. "encodes" it) and attaches it to text of the message, creating one large e-mail. Then the whole e-mail, including the attachment, is sent together.

Thunderbird stores the whole e-mail together, including the attachment, in MIME format in the mailbox files in your profile folder. It does not un-encode and store the attachment outside the mailbox file unless you save or detach it as described above. By contrast, the Eudora e-mail program automatically un-encodes and detaches the attachment when you receive the e-mail; it always stores attachments as separate files."

"If a large number of messages are being stored in the mailboxes and mail folders being imported, the process can take extraordinarily long. This is because Eudora 6.2 stores messages differently than Thunderbird 1.5. For one, Eudora 6.2 mailboxes are text files containing the text from all the messages being stored in the mailbox. Thunderbird 1.5, however, stores messages in a binary format. Also, Eudora 6.2 separates attachments from the message text, storing attachments in a designated folder. Thunderbird 1.5, on the other hand, stores the message text and attachments together in its binary format. This means that Thunderbird’s import tool needs to go through every message, put together any attachments with the messages they were sent with, and then compile all of the messages into a binary file that Thunderbird can then read."

Some people like attachments stored with the mail msg, like Thunderbird does. But Eudora users, who want their attachments separate, like they have been used to for years, face a difficult conversion to Thunderbird. Penelope was supposed to be the answer, but seems to not actually be moving forward. So, Eudora users are still stuck, with no real options.

See also: [2] "Avoid this attachment GOTCHA! You may lose changes you make to attachments unless you read this!" -69.87.200.164 15:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot

Could someone please upload a new version of the screenshot with Thunderbird 2 and Gentoo Linux, preferably looking and tagged like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mozilla_Firefox_2.0.0.2.png -KingpinE7 00:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does the old Thunderbird logo really need to be in an encyclopedia? To my knowledge, that logo was only used before Thunderbird 1.0 came out (in versions 0.1 to 0.9). 71.113.250.73 01:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Penelope/Eudora

On November 22, 2006 the first alpha version of the Penelope XPInstall extension was made available on Bugzilla.[1] Version 0.1a19 was released April 26, 2007 (831 KB) for Thunderbird 2.0b2 – 3.0a1. [3]

The Qualcomm Penelope developers announced on 07-19-2007, "We currently have, in house, our first actual Beta build (called Eudora 8.0.0b1). We'll probably get this posted in the next few weeks." This open-source, Thunderbird-based version has been under development since 2006, but will not be a true replacement for the current Eudora (ie., one that has similar features/capabilities) until 2008 at the earliest. [4] -69.87.204.57 20:11, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ The edits announcing Penelope's availability from Mozilla Wiki's page on Penelope

Press Release?

Not to be overly critical but this line: "Just as Firefox aims to redefine the web browser, Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface." sounds a lot like it was ripped right out of a press release. I'm all for GNU and Mozilla, however in wikipedia, I think it sounds a little PRish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikelj (talk • contribs) 18:23, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Market adoption

I've removed the following section, since it contains only anecdotic data. If anyone comes up with better more solid figures, please feel free to re-add.

==Market adoption== {{Importance-sect}} <!--This section could do with some actual percentage market share figures, as opposed to anecdotes. Anyone?--> As of April 2005, the [[Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences]] was making a [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/thunderbird/ customized version] of Mozilla Thunderbird available to students and faculty. According to an article posted on [[May 9]], [[2005]], [[New York University]]'s [[Stern School of Business]] had also [http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163100275 started] using the open source e-mail client. Starting 2005 fall, the Networking Services and Information Technology department of [[University of Chicago]] will [http://blog.ebrahim.org/archives/2005/06/02/uchicago_to_distribute_firefox_and_thund.php include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package] for all incoming students. More recently, [[Saint Louis University]]'s College of Arts & Science has adopted Thunderbird as its e-mail client of choice. Also, the University of Leeds School of Computing uses Thunderbird as its main mail client for new students, as does New Zealand's [[University of Canterbury]].

-- Ddxc (talk) 20:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Thunderbird-logo-64x64.png

Image:Thunderbird-logo-64x64.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 02:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot again

Could someone with access to a free linux build post a screenshot please? Screenshots of software running on non-free operating systems are discouraged as they nullify any free-use compatibility the image has. You can see Talk:Mozilla Firefox for an extensive discussion of this and its result.--Oni Ookami AlfadorTalk|@ 06:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No Outlook mention at all?

Shouldn't this article mention Microsoft Outlook in some way? Either to give an example of another program that Thunderbird is or aims to be comparable to or better than, or it should be mentioned when discussing Thunderbird's import/export features or general compatibility. I've never used either program, so I'm not a good candidate for commenting on them, but I hope someone else can. --Gronky (talk) 11:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it should mention Outlook. I have both programs but I've never used either. :P

Usenet

Has the usenet support built into Thunderbird ever been used to create a stand alone cross-platform usenet reader? --Xero (talk) 11:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Boosterism?

The following text is found in the lead paragraph...is it non-notable boosterism? Can it be moved out of the lead?
...On December 7 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release (and 1,000,000 in 10 days). As of June 2008, Thunderbird has been downloaded more than 67 million times since 1.0 release.
    - Bevo (talk) 20:24, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm contemplating deleting those two sentences, perhaps preserving the "countdown" URL as an external link. Comments, anyone? - Bevo (talk) 17:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed this paragraph before editing. A few month ago, so maybe not that much of a problem :-) I personally find a counter increasing once per second not a usefull ressource, because it does not reflect an actual number, so I removed that. I don't know if the other milestones are notable, but in a time when basically 100% of the users use MS Windows preinstalled software, I consider it an interesting fact that a lot of geeks tried Thunderbird immediately. --Windharp (talk) 09:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template

Version 2.0.0.19 is out, the template has been updated, so why does the infobox still displays 2.0.0.18 as the latest version? 189.4.250.18 (talk) 16:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you ever bother to check back, the page needs to be edited for the updated template to be displayed. Thanks, 99.240.227.108 (talk) 14:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Updated Screenshot

I've uploaded a screenshot of the newest Thunderbird (3.0.1) which should do for now, although it is blank due to me needing to hide stuff like personal email addresses, so if someone wants to post a better version, feel free. :) --Old Marcus (talk) 12:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Logo needs updating

The current logo looks different from the real thing. Note the letter coloring. Please take action. 85.76.0.194 (talk) 21:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...but the logo used here on their official page uses the white color coding, so it's not really different. Regards SoWhy 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

your fans dajah.

youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu are a really good fans! so be good a have fun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.173.176.143 (talk) 01:03, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Image is categorized as fair use.

But it is free software. Someone should change it. --EvilFlyingMonkey (talk) 09:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The image contains copyrighted images, namely Mozilla Thunderbird artwork. -- Schapel (talk) 12:10, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yet the Firefox image is shown under the GPL/MPL. Surely the same applies here? --93.96.175.64 (talk) 23:59, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the Firefox image is miscategorized. It's my understanding that Mozilla artwork is copyrighted, not distributed under an open-source license, copylefted, or under creative commons. -- Schapel (talk) 05:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Privacy

The Privacy section looks like it's entirely original research. Editors are not allowed to add their own conclusions to Wikipedia. We need a reliable source to cite so readers can verify the information. -- Schapel (talk) 16:46, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Out-of-date Reference

Reference 11, which redirects to http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/system-requirements.html, no longer exists. There doesn't seem to be any equivalent page available.

It also looks like mozilla is not providing distributions for OS/2, eComStation, or OpenSolaris.

--Bytbox (talk) 18:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's at http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/system-requirements/ now. Regards SoWhy 18:34, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File:Thunderbird5.png Nominated for speedy Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Thunderbird5.png, has been nominated for speedy deletion at Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Other speedy deletions
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Speedy deletions at commons tend to take longer than they do on Wikipedia, so there is no rush to respond. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise consider finding a replacement image before deletion occurs.

This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 02:58, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Forcible update for 3.1 users?

I'm wondering if there has been any word about a forcible update for Thunderbird 3.1. I use Thunderbird 3.1 and Firefox 3.6, and just discovered that in about one week, all Firefox 3.6 users will be forcibly updated to the latest version. Is Thunderbird going to do the same? If so, that fact is surely encyclopedic -- forcible updates are relatively rare occurrences in the computer world. — Lawrence King (talk) 22:37, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Development Halt

http://www.zdnet.com/mozilla-scraps-thunderbird-development-email-client-not-a-priority-anymore-7000000469/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.126.131.100 (talk) 02:32, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Standards Support

POP and IMAP are listed, but not SMTP. Is there a particular reason SMTP was not included? Jayscore (talk) 16:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

news?

The lead says that it's a newsreader, but wasn't that functionality removed several years back? --76.169.116.244 (talk) 23:13, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi.
I have v31.0 around and yes, it can read both news feeds and newsgroups. So, the lead is correct.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 23:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Internationalization and Localization

Under 'Internationalization and Localization', it says, "Thunderbird does not yet support SMTPUTF8 or Email Address Internationalization."

Is SMTPUTF8 distinct from or another name for Email Address Internationalization? Because the lack of a comma here produces a bit of an ambiguity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 19:22, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6531 or read Extended SMTP#SMTPUTF8. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:30, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Known issues and limitations

The "issues and limitations" section of the article omits a lot. I'm considering adding a paragraph about issues related to sorting by date sent, date received and order received, which presumably affect many users. (Note that "order received" actually means the order in which the message was added to the folder, and changes if the message is moved to another folder). Here's my draft of the proposed paragraph:

Another issue relates to sorting mail by date sent, date received, or order received, which can result in users not seeing newly received messages because the inbox may be sorted out of order. By default, for each mail folder Thunderbird shows a column labeled Date that displays each message's "date sent" field. Because Date can be spoofed by the sender or mangled by the sender's email server, if the user sorts the inbox by Date, this can cause newly received messages to display out of order where the user may never notice them (if the date is in the past) or they may stay on top (if the date is in the future). (Other email clients have that issue too.) Users can alternatively choose to sort by two other date-related fields: Received (the date the user's email server received the message) or Order Received (the order in which Thunderbird added the message to the folder). However, a bug in Thunderbird since the 1990s has prevented it from retrieving the Received date from IMAP servers, and Thunderbird instead displays the "date sent" in the Received column (without informing the user) so the folder may still sort out of order.[1] A bug currently present (as of this writing in August 2015) can corrupt the inbox folder's Order Received counter, and messages added to the folder after the corruption are assigned a corrupt Order Received value, which means sorting by Order Received can display out of order and cause the user to not notice newly received mail. Another issue with Order Received is that moving messages from one folder to another causes Thunderbird to modify their Order Received field as if they were newly received, but this has not been classified as a bug.[2]

Comments? Suggestions about how to improve it? SEppley (talk) 15:03, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I actually think that the vast majority of users don't care at all about this issue, and some of the users who do care are exaggerating the significance of the bug and how many people care about it. The bug has been open for almost eight years and there are only 41 people CC'd on it. I really don't think that indicates a large amount of concern about it.
To be clear... I care about it, and in fact I'm the author and maintainer of a Thunderbird add-on intended to help work around it. I just don't think most people care about it, and I think there are other bugs in Thunderbird (including data loss bugs) with much greater impact than this one. Jikamens (talk) 15:23, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I attempted to check whether 41 cc'ed people is a small number indicating lack of interest, by searching Mozilla's BugZilla for bugs about 'message loss' (which Jikamens wrote are much more important than the ones I proposed adding to the article). After sorting the search results by 'last change date' (ascending) I looked at the cc counts of the first 5 bugs that really appear related to loss of messages (272527, 386306, 542723, 757328 and 861634). Their cc counts ranged from 2 to 6. Much less than 41.
Not sure how to find the average cc count of bugs open 8 years, for a presumably better comparison. Also not sure the cc count is really a good way to measure whether the issue is important enough to add to the Wikipedia article. How many users have been harmed by the bug? Of those, what percentage realized they were harmed? Of those, what percentage have been willing to search the bug reports to see if it's already been reported, find the bug report, and add their own comment that might add nothing to the thread except "me too"? Only that last fraction will be in the cc count.
Why shouldn't the Wikipedia article mention both the date-related sorting issues and the data loss issues? Are these less important than those already in the article? SEppley (talk) 20:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]


do users care about the "sent date" and what is it, anyway?

first: i would like to thank kamens for the add-on he created as a work-around to modify the date treatment problems long-existent in thunderbird (TB) and seamonkey [(SM): a wrapper, basically, that includes TB] and their antecedent mozilla suite. his action is the sole source of remedy that exists over the past 13 years of mozilla-based "discussions" on this issue.

the original bug (166254) garnered 278 comments by 63 participants over seven (7) years. it was closed in 2009.SEP because it intended to set up a boolean in 'prefs.js' in TB 1.9 to cause the date from the recipient's mailserver (MTA) to be used instead of the very unreliable sent date. however, if the patch got into 1.9 or was subsequently deleted is unknown from mozilla's record of the proceedings for that bug; but the change is not currently present. it is probably just as well because the vast majority of TB/SM users have no idea how to edit (or even find) their 'prefs.js' file.

unfortunately, the only amount of exaggeration present in these discussions is the minimizing of the concern of users over which date is used. last year i surveyed 52 TB/SM users [four (4) of which are professional email system admins]. not a single one of those thought their date column represented anything other than when they received an email. about half thought the date was when it arrived in their 'inbox' and the others thought it was when the MTA took it off the wire. uncharacteristically, i received concerned feedback from almost 60% of them when i informed them that their 'date' was actually the manipulable, unreliable 'sent' date. so, to measure concern you have to start with a pool of knowledgeable users and it appears that such a pool is infinitely small and renders any supposition re concern unsupportable until a significant number of users have been appropriately educated.

when i was first "admitted" to what is now called the internet in 1981, it was a global network, but very much a "closed" system. even though my offices were a stones-throw from the world headquarters, my connection was a 2400 baud modem and the fee was an astounding $300 per month! OK, i was -- and remain -- insanely curious about "what is out there". as an aside, $300 was the standard user fee and that is what institutions such as UCLA also paid. when network opening/commercialization made possible apps such as mozilla's original suite, the sent date still had some significance and is, undoubtedly, why mozilla's 1990's apps used that date then and for -- most unfortunately -- ever more.

originally, arpanet email was essentially limited to hosts (network-connected machines that might -- or might not -- be on-line) with a listing in sri's 'hosts.txt' file. then, those hosts had to assign user names for internal distribution. all of this was done as an "honor system" exercise so that hosts and users were completely trusted. the sent date was important then due to vagaries in how email was handled -- and when -- so it was important for recipients to know the sent date since it could be quite a bit of time in the past. obviously, we have moved well past the delays email may have suffered a couple to four decades ago and everyone is well aware that high double digits of the total email volume is from totally untrustworthy senders and, thus, the sent date should not bear any significance to communications between a legitimate sender and the recipient.

Jvonp (talk) 21:56, 28 August 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvonp (talk • contribs) 21:34, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It would violate Wikipedia policy to have this discussion in the Thunderbird article; it belongs here in the article's talk page. Eventually, one of us may decide it's time to add the important, relevant, source-cited facts to the article; I didn't want to take that action without discussing it here first, in order to avoid factual errors and policy violations.
Also, policy is that talk pages are restricted to discussions of how to improve the article, so please keep to a minimum anecdotes unrelated to how and whether the article should be modified. I think the anecdote about the 63 participants in the original bug report thread relates to the merits of the proposed modification, as does the anecdote about the 60% of survey respondents who expressed concern about Date Sent. The arpanet history, not so much.
Regarding Jvonp's questions "what is Date Sent and do users care about it?"... By default, Thunderbird displays the Date Sent column in each mail folder, which forces the least savvy users to 'care' about it in the sense that they rely on it if they want to display the newest messages in their inbox. In other words, any user who sorts his/her inbox by Date Sent 'cares' about Date Sent. Savvier users who discover they can display and sort on Date Received instead, may not care about Date Sent, until they learn Date Received doesn't function as expected with IMAP and is simply a copy of Date Sent. In other words, any IMAP user who sorts his/her inbox by Date Received 'cares' about Date Sent too. Since the option to display Date Received is hidden behind a tiny odd-looking icon, and since Date Received doesn't work as expected for IMAP users, Thunderbird forces many users to rely on Date Sent. Which is an issue. In my case, the issue isn't made important due to spammers spoofing Date Sent. (If I see spam I'll delete it, and if I don't I'll hope it doesn't consume much disk space.) The issue is important because some senders' email servers mangle outgoing messages' Date Sent, causing Thunderbird to bury their messages out of order, and I either never see them or, if I'm lucky, discover them weeks or months later. That's a reason to care about the bug that causes Date Received to be a copy of Date Sent, and a reason to care, for the sake of the least savvy users who stick with default settings, that Thunderbird by default hides the alternatives to Date Sent.
The real question is not whether users already care about it, but whether it's important enough to inform them about it (and the related issues) in the article.
Shall we delete reference #4 that Jvonp added? It's just a link to the article, which is already linked by the 'Article' tab atop the talk page. SEppley (talk) 00:06, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

johann 00:28, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

i removed the main-article ref.

please, feel free to edit any of my [d]arpanet anecdotes. i merely added them to explain how the sent date was once important and why -- it seems -- mozilla originally used that date and has not progressed with the times as that date has become superfluous and even meaningless when in the hands of miscreants.

johann 00:41, 29 August 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvonp (talk • contribs)

References

  1. ^ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402594
  2. ^ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1183490

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Limits

[5] So apparently the 4Gb limit is removed since 51, should that line be removed once and for all?--Justincheng12345 (talk) (urgent news here) 16:58, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We should update the 32-bit section, but not remove it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:50, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well my point is, as the issue is resolved, it is no longer a "Limits and known issues", and therefore shouldn't go into that section, but where should it go?--Justincheng12345 (talk) (urgent news here) 17:16, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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