Email client follows Firefox onto two-week release treadmill
Thunderbird is moving to fortnightly releases to keep pace with Firefox's accelerated schedule.Mozilla and its subsidiary MZLA updated their flagship apps this week, releasing Firefox 154 and Thunderbird 154, respectively.Since last month's version 153 releases are the latest Extended Support Releases, users who prefer a slower pace can remain on them for the next year. "ESR" is Mozilla's term for what Canonical calls LTS, Long Term Support. The new 154 versions are therefore short-term, or interim, releases. As we reported, the Mozilla Firefox release schedule speeds up from next month to new versions every two weeks, instead of every four weeks.
According to a message from MZLA's Corey Bryant, Thunderbird will adopt the same cadence in September.
Firefox picks up a few extrasFirefox does get some new features, although most are of little interest to FOSS fans. Several of the additions are Windows-only for now, including the ability to give Firefox a custom app icon.Also reserved for those who like to pay for their OS, Firefox 154 now supports GeForce NOW. The Register covered its launch in 2018. It is a subscription service that lets users play supported games remotely, with the rendering handled by cloudy Nvidia hardware.Outside the Microsoft world, Mac users can now back up their Firefox profiles.The prompt-fondlers out there may enjoy playing with the new Smart Window, which lets you use artificial idiocy to interact with the browser. Sounds awful to us, as AI in general now does to more than half of Americans.Thunderbird brings the bigger payloadThis time, Thunderbird gets more new features – and, to this vulture's eye, more useful ones.Thunderbird 154 enables Microsoft Graph support for Microsoft 365, using the API that the company announced in 2015 to interact with Microsoft 362.5 services. The addition is timely because the Exchange Web Services API is on the way out for Redmond's cloud products. That makes Graph support a useful addition – although EWS will still work for outfits that host their own Exchange Servers.
