I suggest you contact the firetray addon author and ask when an updated version might be released. Given it was not updated for V52, it is quite a long time since an update.

This appears to be the current situation with firetray https://github.com/foudfou/FireTray/issues/238

The author has posted a blog entry voicing his disappointment in Mozilla’s strategy of focusing on the web as a platform and placing less importance on email. It’s linked to in the Github issue you mentioned but I am quoting from memory (the server seems to have been down in the last few days). If I remember correctly, the author said in that same post that they had stopped working on their extensions. Which is not surprising, given that soon TB will refuse to run „old“ extensions completely. I have had the same response from the autor of another extension I like, Folder Accounts.

That is why I posted this question in the first place – Thunderbird is frustrating its volunteer add-on developers (and my subjective impression is that this is hitting Thunderbird more than Firefox), I have no hope of FireTray being revived. However this functionality seems so basic that it really should be an option within TB itself. I tried to describe why in my original question.

Personally I have now gone back to 52.9.1 and will try to hold on to it as long as my Arch Linux installation will support it. Which is what I am doing with Firefox (ESR) as well.

You appear to be under some misapprehension that Thunderbird is brought to you be Mozilla. Thunderbird is the result of a very small group of volunteers that took it over when Mozilla ceased development in 2012.

For the last 2 years we have been in a situation where mozilla is ripping the support for Thunderbird from their geko engine and leaving it only as a browser, ths leaves the Thunderbird group on a rather difficult situation and many compromises have had to be made to keep the product growing at all. Thunderbird 60 is a major departure from the Mozilla Firefox ecosystem of add-ons which have gone entirely to web extensions. Unfortunately, or fortunately. many further changes have been made the the programming API and many many more will be forthcoming in the coming years. Thunderbird has so far resisted the move to web extensions, which would break everything. Although some form of support is envisaged. Instead Thunderbird is using a hybrid solution based on XUL but in the coming couple of years that will be removed from the engine by Mozilla. Eventually an entirely new add-on API will emerge. If add-on developers are not happy, that is not something that I can change. But I think Thunderbird may be more affected that Firefox as it is a smaller market and has more legacy add-ons that have not been updated for many years, but continued to work. Now they will not. Firefox bit that bullet some versions ago when they announced nothing would work after XXX version.

The Thunderbird team has no choice in some of these things, being responsive to changes undertaken by Mozilla. Sometimes after our build simply breaks following some change. It is not as if we always know what they are doing. But there is a plan. If addon developers do not come along that is unfortunate, but it is go this way or give up on Thunderbird completely.

Thanks. I was aware of the basics (Thunderbird having been split off and a “hybrid” XUL/WebExtensions phase) but some details were new. The blog post I mentioned was directed at Mozilla, not the Thunderbird community and I was aware that it’s Mozilla that is making those decisions. Sorry, I said at the beginning that I wanted to avoid a debate about all this and I’ve now let my frustration at the whole development slip into this all the same. Initially I wanted this to be more constructive by trying to explain at the top why I think some of FireTrays functionality would be necessary in the main app, given that FireTray is not going to survive, it is already not working in TB 60 (and I did actually try to tinker with the code to see why, but with my limited knowledge I could not gain any useful insights). I would really appreciate if someone inside the development process would take some time to think about what I said about the user experience in the initial question. Let’s ignore the lament about XUL going away.

If you want the product enhanced, file a bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

This forum is not a place you will encounter anything more than your peer support folks like me. We are involved, and passionate in some cases, but not in a position to actually change anything. If we were Thunderbird would have a menu bar turned on by default in Windows and a compact header message view without an add-on. (Both are support nightmares)

Oh yes, CompactHeader, another of my long-time “always install” add-ons that has recently caused problems, but I found it easier to let go of that than FireTray. CompactHeader is now disabled … I also routinely activate the menu bar. But let’s not digress. :-) I have been using Mozilla’s Bugzilla instance for many years but this was my first real experience with the support forum. So another thanks for giving me a chance to get to know it better and understand what I can and can not hope to find here. I will file that enhancement request.

A bug report has been submitted.

Unfortunately in this case bug report is not likely to help:

a similar bug report was submitted about 15 years ago,

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208923

and I was on its watching list. It was closed about an hour ago with resolution "want fix" and the following comment from a thunderbird developer:

"I think reality is this is not going so happen. Sorry, it's a thing of the past."

Hey all, a nice person updated Firetray so that it works in TB 60.

foudfou/Firetray

There is also another program, not an add-on, called Birdtray available. At the moment you'll have to compile it from source, and not as user-friendly as Firetray, IMO.

Birdtray

Unread Badge is a Firetray alternative that work in TB 60:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1236088