[SOLVED] October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Discussion of features in Mozilla Thunderbird
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NginUS
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[SOLVED] October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

I'm on Mint 18.3 & today I noticed Thunderbird disappeared from my system tray, & now I see it updated. Now I don't have a FireTray working, & no other Add-Ons appear in my search to regain System Tray functionality (on KDE).

In Synaptic I see Kdocker & Alltray but neither work properly so that's out. Seems I have no choice but to revert & pin the old Thunderbird.

Also, less critical but the new Thunderbird has this awful full-line highlighting that blocks my view of whatever folder I try to drag a message to after reading it. Kindof glad with reverting I won't have to deal with trying to figure out how to disable that mess.

Screenshot:
Image

If anybody has solutions for me on these, I'd like to not have to be on an old build, just for the sake of being current. Advice is appreciated, so thanks in advance.
Last edited by NginUS on October 31st, 2018, 2:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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WaltS48
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by WaltS48 »

For the drag and drop problem.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced General Tab
Click the Config Editor button.
Search for "nglayout.enable_drag_images" (without quotes).
Toggle the setting to false.

Never used a tray extension so can't help there.
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ElTxolo
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by ElTxolo »

NginUS wrote:I'm on Mint 18.3 & today I noticed Thunderbird disappeared from my system tray, & now I see it updated. Now I don't have a FireTray working, & no other Add-Ons appear in my search to regain System Tray functionality (on KDE).

In Synaptic I see Kdocker & Alltray but neither work properly so that's out. Seems I have no choice but to revert & pin the old Thunderbird.
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NginUS
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

Fantastic, thanks! With both of your help I'm successfully on the new version & the tips provided here have restored usability.

One problem that remains is that the "MinimizeToTray Reanimated" Add-On doesn't provide an option to start Thunderbird minimized in the tray. Ideally this would happen, but it's not a deal-breaker if it's impossible.

Again, searching the Add-Ons site & Google in general for 'linux 60 thunderbird start minimized' fails to present a solution. I found this [0] talking about "-tray" which at first seemed promising, but when I tried it didn't work.

What I've done now is I set the KDE Special Window/Application settings [1],[2] to 'Apply Initially' > 'Minimized' for the Thunderbird application. The problem with this is that now no matter what I do the window won't appear at all. Stays in the tray when it should restore. In a bit of a panic at the moment.

[0]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... ne_Options

[1]
https://files.catbox.moe/ijrxkm.png

[2]
https://files.catbox.moe/vrmvpy.png
NginUS
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

Solved by starting Thunderbird in safe mode without any addons enabled:

Code: Select all

thunderbird -safe-mode
Then I was able to disable the problematic "Special Window/Application Settings" from the titlebar's context menu.

Exited & restarted & now all is well.

...Still won't start in the tray, but better than not being able to see the window at all.
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ElTxolo
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by ElTxolo »

You're welcome!! ;)
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NginUS
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

So in the end I wound up reverting back to the 38.x Thunderbird where FireTray works.

I couldn't tolerate there being no tray icon indicator when new mail arrived. I tried setting the built-in Thunderbird new mail notification bubble to remain visible for 999 seconds, but no matter what value I set there it stayed at 5 seconds.
Last edited by NginUS on October 28th, 2018, 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tanstaafl
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by tanstaafl »

https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/10/b ... h-new.html

Did you consider using BirdTray? "Birdtray checks the unread email status directly by reading the Thunderbird email search database, which makes it immune to Thunderbird API changes. As a result, Birdtray is a great Firetray alternative that shouldn't break on Thunderbird updates."
NginUS
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

tanstaafl wrote:https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/10/b ... h-new.html

Did you consider using BirdTray? "Birdtray checks the unread email status directly by reading the Thunderbird email search database, which makes it immune to Thunderbird API changes. As a result, Birdtray is a great Firetray alternative that shouldn't break on Thunderbird updates."
Thanks for your suggestion, sounded good. But I'm on Xenial & that PPA's only for Bionic & Cosmic. Googling 'birdtray xenial' failed to provide a solution. I might try to build it from git later if I'm still up.
NginUS
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Re: October 2018 Update broke stuff I liked... (Linux)

Post by NginUS »

So it turns out that BirdTray requires QT >5.6, & the highest QT Xenial can use is 5.5.1. So no hope there. However...

The maintainer of the Unofficial Mozilla Extensions PPA [0] has kindly built a version of FireTray which works with Thunderbirds up to 62.x. I've added the PPA, & upgraded everything & now all is well.

[0]
https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+arc ... tu/xul-ext
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