SOFTWARE
Mozilla partitions off your on-line identities as MZLA unleashes a bumper restore job
Mozilla launched Firefox 153 on Tuesday, intently adopted by MZLA with Thunderbird 153 – codenamed “Meadow” for causes that remain obscure for now.
Firefox 153 is Mozilla’s new Prolonged Assist Launch (ESR), so it is going to obtain safety updates till a while after the following ESR in mid-2027. We lined the highlights of what’s new in this version final week.
Firefox 153 will probably be excellent news when you used the Multi-Account Containers extension: a preview version of the functionality is now in-built. Firefox already has user profiles, which allow you to hold units of settings and credentials separate. With some further effort, you may even launch a number of separate cases of Firefox with totally different profiles. Containers make related performance a lot simpler: every container has its personal set of saved credentials. So, as an example, a “residence” container may maintain a set of tabs logged into numerous websites along with your private accounts, whereas a “work” container may log into the identical websites along with your day-job credentials.
There are additionally new options for customers on cellular. Firefox 153 for Android will get tab groups, whereas Firefox for iOS customers within the US get the brand new Quick Answers characteristic. Speech recognition occurs on the system, though the transcribed query is distributed on-line to generate a solution.
Thunderbird ‘Meadow’
MZLA’s Thunderbird messaging consumer additionally has a brand new model, itself an ESR: Thunderbird 153.
This model is codenamed “Meadow,” changing the earlier “Eclipse” launch, however on the time of writing, information about what “Meadow” signifies is scant. The New in Thunderbird Desktop web page hasn’t been up to date since Thunderbird 150, which came out back in April. Not less than there’s some information there, even when it is outdated. On the time of writing, following the What’s New in Thunderbird 153 hyperlink within the launch notes provides this useful information:
Since that closing hyperlink is the one useful factor there, we have performed so. It’d even be mounted by the point you learn this.
Maybe the staff has been too busy fixing issues as a substitute, which looks as if respectable prioritization to us. Below What’s New are 32 refinements, 15 entries below What’s Modified, and a whopping 181 bug fixes below What’s Fastened.
This many adjustments is nice information for an ESR launch, and it appears just like the staff has been busy fixing issues. It does make us surprise if MZLA is struggling to maintain up with Firefox’s month-to-month launch schedule, as it has been doing since Thunderbird 138 in April 2025. Since Mozilla determined to speed up Firefox to fortnightly releases from September, maybe MZLA ought to drop Thunderbird again all the way down to annual releases.
Nonetheless, this ESR brings enhancements to folder dealing with, notifications, OpenPGP encryption, OAuth login, handle guide export, PDF dealing with, and rather more. There will not be any extra 32-bit Linux binaries – becoming a member of Firefox, which did that in September after Firefox 144. “Junk” mail is now referred to as “Spam,” and the devoted setup choice for the Russian Odnoklassniki service has been dropped, with customers directed to configure it via XMPP as a substitute.
Thunderbird provides so many alternative views that we have seen some consumer confusion about this, however they’re useful, and some of the non-default ones are improved on this launch. We typically use the “Unread Folders” view, and it is now higher at hiding folders with no unread messages. The opposite non-obvious view is “Unified Folders.” This categorizes and combines a number of inboxes into one tree: all of your inboxes, adopted by separate per-account bushes of all subfolders. It sounds complicated, however we discover it very useful. This view now permits you to color-code totally different accounts.
A number of of Thunderbird’s new choices round account dealing with concern Thundermail accounts. These are a part of MZLA’s paid e mail service, Thunderbird Pro. This hasn’t been launched but, however the brand new account kind suggests it is getting shut. Probably the most seen indicators is within the Account Hub wizard for including messaging accounts: it now has a “Sign up with Thundermail” button on the high.
This vulture is on the ready checklist, and we are going to report again after we get to the entrance of the road. ®
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