This article describes the major changes in Thunderbird version 9. For a complete list of bugs that have been resolved in the release, refer to the Thunderbird Builds thread on MozillaZine. (This article is based on a late beta version of Thunderbird 9.)
Table of Contents
General changes
- Test Pilot (Mozilla's tool for running studies on how users interact with Thunderbird) is now included as a Thunderbird add-on that is installed by default. To enable or disable the studies, or to view the studies or modify study settings, select . You can also modify the Test Pilot settings via the add-on preferences (). For more information about Test Pilot, see the project page on Mozilla Labs. (That page describes Test Pilot as it pertains to Firefox, but also applies to Thunderbird.) Data sent via Test Pilot is aggregated and thus made anonymous. See the Thunderbird Privacy Policy to learn more.
- There are several cosmetic bugs fixes and improvements in the user interface, including a bug with moving indentation levels to the left in nested lists, displaying quotas in the status bar on Windows, and others.
- The compose, message and address book windows now support Personas.
- When importing address book entries from Outlook and Outlook Express, the birthday field is now included.
- Thunderbird can now handle vCard files. When you open a vCard (for example from your desktop or a web page), Thunderbird will ask if you want to add it to your address book.
Keyboard shortcut changes
- When composing a message, the Tab and Ctrl + Tab keys now move through the attachment fields.
- There is a new Mac keyboard shortcut for Get Messages / Get All New Messages: Command + Y / Command + Shift + Y. (F5 still works.)
- Windows users can toggle the display of the menu bar with the Alt key.
