Mozilla Messaging release the scheduled update for Mozilla Thunderbird on March 14, 2012. Changes/fixes in Thunderbird 11.0:
- Tabs on top – facilitates navigation and make it more contextual
- Various security fixes
- (Mac) Fixes issue with Thunderbird notifications may not work properly with Growl 1.3 or later (Bug 691662)
- (Windows) Fixes a crash seen during importing of Microsoft Outlook profiles (Bug 723105)
- Unresolved Known Issue: If you are unable to view content for your RSS feeds in the Wide View Layout, you may need to disable the Lightning Calendar add-on if you have it installed or switch to Classic View and restart Thunderbird. (see Bug 531397)
Thunderbird 10.0.X user can update via Help > About Thunderbird or user can download and manually install Thunderbird 11.0 via getthunderbird.com. Next release will be Thunderbird 12.0 on April 24th, 2012.
Tabs on top do not make it easier to navigate. I’m not sure what “contextual” means. The tabs are better where they were. They were more visually available to the eye by being next to the message and also closer to a closing click than by reaching all the way to the top. Putting them on the very top takes them further from the main work area where you are already visually focused. This smells like a change for change’s sake to me and not a step forward at all.
It is badly unfinished (at least compared to Firefox), it is almost as if they were in the process of redesigning the Thunderbird UI and ran out time before the release cut-off. Sadly, this not the case.
Geez! A horrible thought just occurred to me. You don’t think they’re going to move the tabs in Firefox too. That would be even worse ’cause I usually have many more tabs open at one time in the browser and want them closer to the page.