Thunderbird Address Books
New Thunderbird user here and just installed the v78 update. This update (from what I can gather reading various support postings) has broken any and all extensions that help with the sync of the address book (I could be wrong, my better half tells me that it happens quite often). So, the question! If Firefox can keep all my bookmarks, passwords, etc. in sync on my iMac, iPad and Windows laptop, why can't Thunderbird sync my address books on those same devices? I understand that this whole "coding" thing seems simple to those of us who don't do it for a living, but, it sure sounds like a feature that would be welcome by a great many people.
Modified by Homer712
Chosen solution
Well I would say that Thunderbird is a small company and Mozilla is a big one with lots of resources. Some of which go to operating servers that store user data. They d not however sync your contact between Firefox platforms, only passwords small data items really. Thunderbird sync would be a very data heavy thing and not at all cheap to maintain.
Most "syncs" that are used in Thunderbird via addons work via third party platforms like Gmail or outlook.com etc. They are platform and provider dependent. Having a built in sync for gmail would make the gmail users happen and we would have disgruntled apple users or mail.ru or whatever. Perhaps the best sync at the moment is tbsync. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbsync/?src=ss as it tries to create a central focus for all sync tasks. But the author started work for the Thunderbird project on Wednesday (according to an email from him I read earlier today) working on the addon team. His first priority is apparently getting the review queue of addons for 78 down. So he might be a little slow in getting his free stuff updated.
As for Thunderbird addons. We have gone through a very turbulent time with a complete change in how they are written. This is driven by the changes to Firefox to make it's addons compatible with chrome. No one at Thunderbird wanted the last 2 years of chaos where addons are concerned, but it was that or drop addons completely as Thunderbird is built on the Mozilla platform. Even as it stands Thunderbird has had to significantly extend the new addon platform as what access is needed for a browser and mail client addon really are different. However the new platform is in and the scope of addons should only get larger from here. Sure there has been pain, I lost some addons I likes in the process. But such is life. Continuing the old method was beyond the capacity of the Thunderbird development team to continue alone. So they had to go with the change.
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Chosen Solution
Well I would say that Thunderbird is a small company and Mozilla is a big one with lots of resources. Some of which go to operating servers that store user data. They d not however sync your contact between Firefox platforms, only passwords small data items really. Thunderbird sync would be a very data heavy thing and not at all cheap to maintain.
Most "syncs" that are used in Thunderbird via addons work via third party platforms like Gmail or outlook.com etc. They are platform and provider dependent. Having a built in sync for gmail would make the gmail users happen and we would have disgruntled apple users or mail.ru or whatever. Perhaps the best sync at the moment is tbsync. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbsync/?src=ss as it tries to create a central focus for all sync tasks. But the author started work for the Thunderbird project on Wednesday (according to an email from him I read earlier today) working on the addon team. His first priority is apparently getting the review queue of addons for 78 down. So he might be a little slow in getting his free stuff updated.
As for Thunderbird addons. We have gone through a very turbulent time with a complete change in how they are written. This is driven by the changes to Firefox to make it's addons compatible with chrome. No one at Thunderbird wanted the last 2 years of chaos where addons are concerned, but it was that or drop addons completely as Thunderbird is built on the Mozilla platform. Even as it stands Thunderbird has had to significantly extend the new addon platform as what access is needed for a browser and mail client addon really are different. However the new platform is in and the scope of addons should only get larger from here. Sure there has been pain, I lost some addons I likes in the process. But such is life. Continuing the old method was beyond the capacity of the Thunderbird development team to continue alone. So they had to go with the change.
Thank you for the very detailed response, appreciate it, and I wish you and the Thunderbird team success in the future. It is a GREAT client!