Thunderbird announcement to Phase out Legacy Add-Ons

[yereverluvinuncleber]

As expected, Thunderbird is the next product from Mozilla to follow the development path they have chosen. Web extensions are the future and all the same legacy add-ons that worked for earlier versions of FF but don't now, will now also fail under TB. My reasons for using Mozilla-sourced applications are shedding so fast that soon there will be no trace of my most-loved tools on my systems.

Loathe that I am to abandon my faithful old workhorse, I suppose it is time to start thinking about a new email client too. Will be turning off updates for TB for the moment and disabling any browser functionality it provides just to retain basic email functions. I'll be able to survive on this for a while I suppose. Might be able to return more easily to the new version of TB once it stabilises and re-introduces some similar add-ons to those that I use already but we'll see.

A feeling of general disappointment toward announcements from Mozilla over the last few months but in the end, these are only tools and there are others just as good.

[JustOff]

This is not entirely true: Thunderbird is adding WebExtension support while maintaining "legacy" add-ons and hybrid add-ons.

[tuxman]

Mozilla refuses to learn.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

This is not entirely true: Thunderbird is adding WebExtension support while maintaining "legacy" add-ons and hybrid add-ons.

Happier! Thanks for that.

[Moonchild]

For Thunderbird, WebExtensions don't even make sense. WebExtensions are primarily focused on manipulating web content (hence the name) and Thunderbird extensions would almost exclusively be there to change actual application features, which you need the APIs for that "legacy" extensions have access to.

[John connor]

However, Thunderbird 57-59 and Seamonkey still support these add-ons if the appropriate modifications are done to adapt to the changed interfaces.

What does that mean? Do I need to do something in Thunderbird?