Testers

[wsmwk]

Greetings. Two questions:

1. Is there any estimate of the number of Thunderbird Daily users/followers of this forum that are using the nightly builds??
2. Who here also uses Beta? (AFAICT there doesn't seem to be much beta action in any channels here in mozillazine)

Thanks
Wayne

[Snake4]

i only uise Daily, some use Beta.

[morat]

I use the Beta to test the new extension API.

[WaltS48]

Release, Beta and Daily installed here on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04.4 Linux.

[DN123ABC]

Thunderbird really needs to up its "Beta" game.

There are a lot of good things out there which would benefit many, but I think people are skittish on an unsupported "Beta" release.

I have been burned in the past by a test version wiping out email, so don't do it on a production computer.

Why are you asking?

[wsmwk]

Thunderbird really needs to up its "Beta" game.

There are a lot of good things out there which would benefit many, but I think people are skittish on an unsupported "Beta" release.

What improvements can you suggest to address these two points?

I have been burned in the past by a test version wiping out email, so don't do it on a production computer.

How long ago was that?

Anecdotally, in 15 years of testing Firefox and Thunderbird, across many versions and profiles, and thousands of restarts, I have lost a profile probably only twice.

Why are you asking?

Because it's good to understand your user base (how people use Thunderbird), and I'm also curious about the size of the readership of this board. And I have to say the lack of responses definitely isn't encouraging.

[Tin Smith]

DN123ABC wrote:
Why are you asking?


Because it's good to understand your user base (how people use Thunderbird), and I'm also curious about the size of the readership of this board. And I have to say the lack of responses definitely isn't encouraging.

A comment or two?

I have seldom seen a "user" of any kind write a post saying 'That everything is beautiful and I am so happy.'

I have often seen a "user" post that you broke my "pick something" in my really old, not-updated setup when I updated 10, 15, 20 releases.

And I have to ask 'the powers that be here' to correct me but my impression is that the traffic, in general, on the site is down. I hope that means that all is well.

And as for me? Personally? I have no complaints. All is well in The Shire.

[wsmwk]

My questions and my posting has nothing to do with complaints or user satisfaction.

[Tin Smith]

My questions and my posting has nothing to do with complaints or user satisfaction.

I was aware of that sir. I was trying to be nice and polite. I was not in any way trying to insult you or your efforts. ALL of you in the team.

Plainly said? From the activity I have seen here everything is a complaint and you don't appear to have any public "tester" comments. They must be going elsewhere? Maybe something is blocked for me from <tb-planning@mozilla.org> where the 'RC' releases were talked about originally. I have not seen anything there either.

I apologize if I offended you in any way.

I back out here.

[wsmwk]

No offense taken.

Regarding tb-planning, that is not a place for discussing nightly builds, which is what this forum is for.

[Tin Smith]

No offense taken.

Regarding tb-planning, that is not a place for discussing nightly builds, which is what this forum is for.

Thank you for that information. And since I stopped using nightly builds sometime ago when it was seriously unstable (to be expected, it is an Alpha) I will no longer follow this forum after today.

You have a good day

[DN123ABC]

Thunderbird really needs to up its "Beta" game.

There are a lot of good things out there which would benefit many, but I think people are skittish on an unsupported "Beta" release.

What improvements can you suggest to address these two points?

I have been burned in the past by a test version wiping out email, so don't do it on a production computer.

How long ago was that?

Anecdotally, in 15 years of testing Firefox and Thunderbird, across many versions and profiles, and thousands of restarts, I have lost a profile probably only twice.

Why are you asking?

Because it's good to understand your user base (how people use Thunderbird), and I'm also curious about the size of the readership of this board. And I have to say the lack of responses definitely isn't encouraging.

Improvements:
Don't just "announce" a "beta version" to insiders. Make it an actual program, with fanfare and get the word out better. Have clearly defined expectations of "beta users", and give them something as a reward for helping. That something could be earlier access to features and fixes, it can also be a promise that you'll listen to feedback and bring a more competitive product in the future. It needs to be clear, solid, and interesting if you are going to get buy-in.

The data loss was somewhere probably over 5 years ago. The profile wasn't lost, but many emails were. I think it had to do with indexing or some sort of files disappearing. If you closed your Thunderbird in time, it would stop deleting emails at that point, and then you could wait for the fixed version to come out. It was bad.

On your "lack of responses", maybe it is "too little, too late" with respect to fixing the calendar and making "Lightning" a part of "Thunderbird". Also the whole .dat file issue is a BIG ONE. It seems to be the whole issue wraps around being compatible with Exchange and Outlook. I'm just the messenger here, so take it as that. I think there used to be tags in the bugs for "Outlook equality" or something like that. If not, there SHOULD BE.

Hope this helps.