Thunderbird 78.7.0 is a security and bug fix update (for the most part)

[harlan4096]

The email client Thunderbird 78.7.0 has been released on January 26, 2020. The new version of Thunderbird fixes security issues, improves the extensions system, and fixes several bugs on top of that.The new version is already available and will be downloaded and in stalled automatically on many systems.

Thunderbird users may select Help > About Thunderbird  (press the Alt-key if the menubar is not displayed) to display the currently installed version and to run a manual check for updates.

Thunderbird 78.7.0 is a security update. The security advisory page lists a total of six vulnerabilities that were fixed in the new version. The highest severity rating of vulnerabilities fixed in the update is high, the second-highest after critical.

As far as new features are concerned, there are four, and all four extend the APIs that extension developers have at their disposal to create Thunderbird extensions.

• Extension API: Compose API now supports editing messages and templates as new messages
  
• Extension API: composeHtml is now exposed in MailIdentity
  
• Extension API: windows.update and windows.create now support titlePreface
  
• Extension API: new Accounts API functions: accounts.getDefault() and accounts.getDefaultIdentity(accountId)
  

Extension APIs received several fixes and changes next to that>

• Extension API: body and plainTextBody are now used as compose mode selectors in setComposeDetails and begin* functions in Compose API
  
• Extension API: browserAction buttons were not restored after restart if they were moved outside the default toolbar
  
• Extension API: browser.compose.beginNew could not override identity plaintext setting
  
• Extension API: browser.compose.beginForward was ignoring ComposeDetails
  
• Extension API: browser.compose.setComposeDetails did not properly handle Windows-style line endings
  

The development team fixed several theme related issues in the new release as well. The double border displayed around the task description field in the Tasks tab is removed in this release. Thunderbird's dark mode received three fixes as well; they fix a black text on black background issue in the folder properties dialog, and that the recipients were not visible when running Windows 10's high contrast dark theme. Lastly, the quickfilter bar buttons disappeared when hovering on them on Windows 10 systems with the high contrast black theme enabled.

Thunderbird's OpenPGP implementation has received several fixes in the release, including a verification issue caused by inline signed messages containing leading whitespace.

The last fix corrects an account manager issue. It occurred when a user deleted the last account in Thunderbird, as the default account would not get cleared in the process so that it still pointed to the account that no longer existed.

The release notes list a single known issue affecting users on Mac OS X. According to it, Thunderbird may perform sluggish on Mac OS Big Sur devices.

Now You: have you installed the new Thunderbird? What is your impression of the release?
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