Thunderbird 128: Annual ESR Brings New Features and 'a Rust Revolution'

Thunderbird's annual Extended Support Release was revealed Friday, promising 'significant' improvements to the overall user experience and 'the speed at which we can deliver new features to you,' according to the Thunderbird blog:

We've devoted significant development time integrating Rust — a modern programming language originally created by Mozilla Research — into Thunderbird. Even though this is a seemingly invisible change, it is a major leap forward because it enhances our code quality and performance. This overhaul will allow us to share features between the desktop and future mobile versions of Thunderbird, and speed up our development process. It's a win for our developers and a win for you.

More from the blog OMG Ubuntu:

I'm also stoked to see that Thunderbird 128 makes 'newest first' the default sort order for messages in message list. While some prefer the old way, I always found it strange that the oldest mails were shown first — team reverse chronology, represent!

They also cite 'a number of OpenPGP improvements,' plus a new preference option for displaying full names and email addresses of all recipients in the message list. (Plus, threaded-message views now display a 'New Message' count.)

Other new features in this release:

A new and more attractive layout for Cards View (with adjustable heights) that 'makes it easier to scan your email threads and glean information.'
The folder pane has better recall of message thread states
Improved theme compatibility. 'Your Thunderbird should blend seamlessly with your desktop environment, matching the system's accent colors perfectly.' (Especially beneficial on Ubuntu and Mint.)
You can now customize the color of your account icon.

The Thunderbird blog also mentions that 'We plan to launch the first phase of built-in support for Exchange, as well as Mozilla Sync, in a future Nebula point release (e.g. Thunderbird 128.X).'

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