[thunderbird 68] is Virtual Identity compatible?

[despecial]

TB 68 is out now and there is a big change for extensions. Since a compatibility checker is missing, I would like to ask if this VI can be used with that version?

[kewlfft]

A conversion is necessary, these steps must be followed for conversion: https://developer.thunderbird.net/add-ons/updates

[bl00dy1837]

It doesn't work anymore.

[blueyed]

@absorb-it Are there plans to make it compatible?

[absorb-it]

Hi, currently busy I will have a look into required changes during the next months... Sorry, this will take a while.

Stay tuned, regards, Rene

[ferricoxide]

It's not until Thunderbird rolls out yet another extension-breaking update that you remember, "oh, yeah: this extension is one of the reasons why I still even use Thunderbird".

=)

[blueyed]

@ferricoxide True. It really became a must-have for me. Luckily Thunderbird allows you to "Customize From Address..." manually.

[miskovics]

+1

I love this extension, please, make it compatible.

[ferricoxide]

Yeah, but that requires actual effort ....and I'm soooooooooper-lazy. :)

@ferricoxide True. It really became a must-have for me. Luckily Thunderbird allows you to "Customize From Address..." manually.

[miskovics]

... and it is much safer and faster to do it with this add-on instead of the "Customize from Address..." function.

[absorb-it]

Hi, after looking into the development path of thunderbird (see for instance here) I can see that the only way will be to get the complete functionality into core thunderbird. This will take a while, sorry.

these are the steps:

1. add some own-server/catch-all option to accounts for composing messages with the right senders email (bugzilla-link)
2. change from-field as free-editable for own-server/catch-all accounts
3. store mail address used for recipients together with collected addresses in address-book

Lets see how this goes on, but once this is done it will last way longer than changing some extension ever and ever again.

Regards, Rene

[mcanonic]

Too bad. Can we help you Rene in some way? Thanks for your extension. I'm sure that you guys have already check if any other add-on could replace (in some way) this extension in the meanwhile.

[chris-fp]

As others have said - it's only when TB breaks VI that you remember it was there :)

It's absolutely vital that I have VI running so I've just downgraded back to v67 and won't be upgrading again until VI functionality is restored somehow - be that upgraded add-on or, even better, it's built into TB directly :D :D

[sukamenev]

Thanks for the extension! I also downgraded Thunderbird to 60.9.1. Let me know if you need a donation.

[github-normalnutzer]

Hi there,

is there any information about progress at Rene to integrate the whole thing into the TB core?

Going to an older TB version to be compatible with VI doesn't seem to be the best way for me for such a long time, now almost 3 months. I really miss the VI functionality.

If a donation could help, it would probably only need a call. :-)

[miskovics]

I really miss the VI functionality. If a donation could help, it would probably only need a call. :-)

I'm also ready to donate.

[chris-fp]

Hi,

I'd also be happy to give a donation to get this either updated or pushed into core TB as I absolutely cannot work without using VI and have downgraded to 60 as well

[sej7278]

yes whilst you can customize the from address in TB 68 its a pain when you reply to an email with a different from address to that which you received it using as you forgot to change it manually.

[mcanonic]

Ok, it seems to me that we have not any chance to see this add-on up and running on TB. My question is: is there any place in the thunderbird website, where a new feature can be asked? If all of us (and, hopefully, many others) push up this request, maybe we will have some chance to see it again available in TB. What do you think?

[St3fanBC]

I'm also ready to donate if that's what it takes. This add-on is a core reason for me using TB in the first place.

[bl00dy1837]

+1 ready to donate.

[miskovics]

+1 ready to donate.

[canihavesomecoffee]

From what I see in the linked Thunderbird issue, there are patches to implement certain functionality in the core, but discussion is ongoing on how it should actually behave and how it should be enabled/disabled...

[mcanonic]

Could you send us the link of the discussion, please?

Sent from Libero Mail for Android Wednesday, 12 February 2020, 06:41PM +01:00 from Willem notifications@github.com :

From what I see in the linked Thunderbird issue, there are patches to implement certain functionality in the core, but discussion is ongoing on how it should actually behave and how it should be enabled/disabled... — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub , or unsubscribe .

[canihavesomecoffee]

It was mentioned earlier in the issue by absorb-it, but here it is again: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1518025

[alexolog]

Willing to donate for TB68 support

[absorb-it]

Hi, thanks for all the offers for donation - it's really great to see that you are willing to support this feature. On the other hand, the implementation process is not dependent on donations and some working implementation was already proposed in the mentioned thunderbird ticket. But there seems to be no intention to let this feature be part of thunderbird. Sorry to say that there is nothing which can be done from our side. I accept the decision from thunderbird-people to not add every feature - but I'm still unsure about which mail-client can be a suitable replacement in the future.

Thanks again for all your support, Rene

[alexolog]

What required functionality is missing in the new TB?

[github-normalnutzer]

While answering/replying, choose automatically the "TO:" Address as Sender Address, if no Address is found in the TB identities.

[alexolog]

While answering/replying, choose automatically the "TO:" Address as Sender Address, if no Address is found in the TB identities.

This functionality was missing from earlier versions of TB and yet VI was able to implement it. Obviously the question is what functionality required to implement the above is missing in TB68.

[KIMWW]

some working implementation was already proposed in the mentioned thunderbird ticket. But there seems to be no intention to let this feature be part of thunderbird.

Thanks again for all your support, Rene

Thank you Rene to try to solve this issue. What can we do to make Thunderbird people to change their mind?? Would it help if all of us post a message HERE?

[absorb-it]

What can we do to make Thunderbird people to change their mind?? Would it help if all of us post a message HERE?

I have not the slightest idea if this helps, some people tried but without success. If the intention is missing to drive thunderbird that way, we can't change that.

best regards, Rene

[absorb-it]

Hi all, good news, the related modification was confirmed by thunderbirds code maintainer. Some changes are still required, which will take some additional time - I'm busy right now but I will surely implement this during the next weeks/months. Most important: the path is free for the implementation! Yeah! Thanks for all your support, Regards, Rene

[github-normalnutzer]

Make my Day. :-) This is really nice. Great.....

[KIMWW]

related modification was confirmed by thunderbirds code maintainer. [...] I'm busy right now but I will surely implement this during the next weeks/months. [...] Rene

Excellent! Donations that has been offered will help. It's amazing what thoughts power can do.

[chris-fp]

This is fantastic news and I look forward to upgrading my TB to a newer version!

I'd still like to suggest a donation for all your work and effort over the years though.

[AlexVallat]

Plenty of comments about donations, but I don't actually see anywhere to donate to support this effort. Am I missing something obvious?

[absorb-it]

Hi, there is no donation required from my side, I am interested in this feature anyway and I like to give back something for all the free software I am using in my day-to-day live - which a lot of people create without any payment. But thanks for all the offers, it really showed me how important this feature is for you. And as already said, without your support in this case we could not have convinced the thunderbird people how important this feature is for us.

Feel free to donate to some other software project which might really require this money to free some time for their development efforts. Or donate this money to some humanitarian organisation which engages to help people around the world, for instance https://sea-watch.org/ which is one project I'm engaged with.

Thanks again, I probably will need some time to finalize these patches and than it will take a while till we will get some release which has this feature included. But we don't have to look for another email client anymore :)

Best regards, Rene

[chconnor]

Donation made to sea-watch!

Thanks so much for your hard work on this plugin through the years, and for getting it in to core. I'm thrilled to hear there will be some kind of functionality coming, and I'm following the bugzilla thread eagerly.

:-)

[c33s]

@absorb-it i haven't digged through the mozilla thread and through the patch code, maybe you are so kind and can discribe the the new featureset here.

will the new implementation in the core be as safe as the current plugin? for me it's important that i simply send ("from" email) with the email i got the mail (previous "to" email) from the exact same account the message got delivered to. also it's quite important to see the (auto)-choosen email i will send from before i press the send button. the confirmation dialog of your plugin often saved me from accidentaly send from the wrong acount/email.

do i miss something or does bugzilla require you to attach patches and making code review by pasting code segments with change requests as comment instead of having a github/gitlab like pull/merge-request feature with clean code comments? :facepalm:

[absorb-it]

@chconnor, thanks for the donation...

Hi @c33s, the new thunderbird featureset won't give you all the features you had with the extension, but because of the new webex-plugin schema the extension won't work like before. With the patch 1294027 learned to send mails with some flexible senders address, with the current patch 1518025 thunderbird will be able to answer with any email which can be found in some dedicated headers ("to", "cc", "envelope-to, x-original-to"). The list of headers can be changed with some (hidden) option.

Now if this is achieved, some main functionality will be in core thunderbird. And it will be robust over all upcoming changes of thunderbird, which is great. You will see a warning once the email is modified and the email will be sent with exactly the address mentioned in the from field, but there is no warning in the moment of sending anymore.

The final step to come close to yesterdays extension will be to add some option to store the used email address together with the recipient probably in the addressbook. I will have a look at this later, it's unclear if this can or better will be done by some small extension or if this should be part of the core code as well, we will see.

do i miss something or does bugzilla require you to attach patches...

Yes, that's the way it is. But it works, the biggest problem is to build thunderbird locally and rebuild this once the underlaying mozilla changed, or some tests changed or whatever. There are options for that doing this online as well, but non of this is optimized for limited/expensive bandwidth, and that's what I usually have. Anyway, it's close to be done, yeah!

Best regards, Rene

[jfriend00]

Count me as another user anxiously waiting for the new add-on. I was a long time user of virtual identify with Postbox until they dropped support for all add-ons while back. I dealt with it by manually creating separate identifies for every "from" email I was trying to use, but that got to be quite a pain. Now, I'm back to Thunderbird and desperately in need of an ability to arbitrarily set the from address for any email I'm sending. Like some others, I use a single domain and a different mailbox name in front of the domain for every website I interact with and thus need that ability to set the From address to whatever I want. I like that virtual identify did some of this automatically, but I'd even accept 100% manual control (have to manually edit the "from" address on every email if that was all there was.

[timkgh]

@jfriend00 You can use an older version of TB. Not ideal from a security perspective, but VI works well on TB 52.9.1

[jfriend00]

@timkgh I'm aware of that from the commentary here, but I don't intend to install the older version. I am anxiously waiting to get back to using the virtual identity I started with quite a few years ago. All I really need is just the ability to type in my own custom "from address" so I can make an email be from whichever of my mailboxes I want. I don't need all the other features it had (though some are useful time savers).

[GrahamCobb]

@jfriend00 You can use an older version of TB. Not ideal from a security perspective, but VI works well on TB 52.9.1

Also works with TB 60.9.0. I have held that version on my Debian Testing system - which will, no doubt, cause a problem sometime.

[absorb-it]

Hi, this option to edit your senders address manually is already in core thunderbird and can be accessed by the identity dropdown menu with the neest thunderbird. There must be something like "Edit From Address" or the like in the identity selection dropdown menu - this only can be seen even on 60.9.1 if Virtual Identity Extension is not installed. Regards, Rene

[jfriend00]

@absorb-it - Sure enough. I had an "Identity Chooser" add-on that was blocking access to that feature. Thanks. I will appreciate the better features of Virtual Identity if you get it working again, but at least I'm up an running with "Edit From Address" for now. Thx.

[JoelAzaria]

Rene, Thank you so much for your dedication to this project after so many months of struggle. I hope this core implementation will allow to reply from whatever email address in the 'To:' field, even if this is not a configured mailbox in TB.

I hand out many bespoke email addresses with companies (makes filtering and spam control easier.) This normally works great till I forget to change the reply address then BAM! mass confusion because I reply from a strange address. The key is I use catch-all or cpanel forwarder address for this so these are not actual existing mailboxes. Hopefully the implementation will simply read whatever is in the "To:" field and send based on that.

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to this project.
I hope I can gift sea-watch in your name.

[markfilipak]

Hi! I stumbled onto this thread and I'm glad I did. I'm stuck with TBird 52.7.0 running in a Linux virtual machine. VI is version 0.9.36,

I've encountered a couple of bugs in VI, but of course that doesn't matter anymore. Before abandoning VI, I thought I'd seek the help of the good folks here. What's your advice?

Regards, and Good Health! Mark Filipak.

[cgraefe]

Hi Rene, This is probably the wrong place but I just realized that I could actually install Thunderbird 78 now without destroying my personal workflow. And after reading the Bugzilla Report I couldn't resist the the urge to send you a HUGE "thank you" for all your work to get -- against all odds -- the essence of Virtual Identity into Thunderbird core. I'm so relieved that we have a solution to this problem. Thanks again for this and of course for your previous work on Virtual Identity! Christian

[alexolog]

I am confused by the above comment.

Does VI work on TB78?