As a long-time (15-20 years) Thunderbird user, I am dismayed and appalled by this truly awful 115 upgrade. So buggy, I never got a chance to evaluate what felt about the actual, intended changes here. Reverting to 102 took a few tries (make sure you back up first -- I briefly thought I had lost my entire profile), but in the end I was able to get back, minus a few corrupted settings.

15 or 20 years for me also. And I am having major problems reverting. I started a new thread describing what I did:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1427633?utm_campaign=questions-reply&utm_source=notification&utm_medium=email#answer-1611221

I've been using Thunderbird for 12 years or more. It's one piece of software which I was happy to update, because it didn't force me to relearn how to use it or change the style with stupid flat borderless Windows and invisible buttons or other nonsense.

Now Mozilla has broken Thunderbird for me. I hate the new look and the single toolbar, etc. I am about to downgrade and will be looking at alternatives.

Shame!

This normally works: - exit thunderbird, then click windows key and 'r' key Enter: thunderbird.exe -P --allow-downgrade click on 'OK' I do not recommend this, as 102 will miss all upgrades.

This didn't work for me

Help!

I just installed 99.02b to revert back to what I'm familiar with, but none of my archives, or accounts appeared.

When I tried reverting to the latest again, everything has gone from there too.

How do I recover everything?

This latest version of Thunderbird is a S***fest!

Help! I just installed 99.02b to revert back to what I'm familiar with, but none of my archives, or accounts appeared. When I tried reverting to the latest again, everything has gone from there too. How do I recover everything? This latest version of Thunderbird is a S***fest!

Sorted... start Thunderbird with the -p switch, then select the old profile.

Phew!

Back to trying to revert to the old version... grrr!!!

Now Mozilla has broken Thunderbird for me. I hate the new look and the single toolbar, etc. I am about to downgrade and will be looking at alternatives. Shame!

As I posted on another thread, after 20+ years of managing software and hardware projects I learned one basic thing, "There comes a time in the history of every project when it is necessary to shoot the engineers and start production" TB 115 went past that point

lisa112 said

Now Mozilla has broken Thunderbird for me. I hate the new look and the single toolbar, etc. I am about to downgrade and will be looking at alternatives. Shame!

As I posted on another thread, after 20+ years of managing software and hardware projects I learned one basic thing, "There comes a time in the history of every project when it is necessary to shoot the engineers and start production" TB 115 went past that point

Well I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but 115 has broken my productivity. 102 and before just worked and I never even had to think whether or not I should update. I am just wasting time looking for how I'm supposed to do things now and I hate the clunky look. Even the toolbar icon changed (wtf!!!) and can now be easily confused with the Chromium and Discord icons when trying to work rapidly. I am a professional embedded SW engineer, using PCs to write software for things which generally don't look like computers and I'm old enough to have started my career before even MSDOS was the main OS around. Since the MSDOS days I've tended to use mostly Windows, because that's what the companies I have worked for use. MS SW is what everyone loves to hate. As an engineer, something between W2K and W7 had probably the best UI and things have just gone downhill since then, e.g. flat look with nothing to show what is a button/clickable, borderless windows with tabs which merge into each other, disappearing scroll bars, highlight colours which are so faint as to be invisible, etc. I HATE MS's pushing crappy changes and productivity degradation with each new release. The MS ribbon replacing menus is a microcosm of MS's attitude to users and I manage to mostly avoid it at all costs. I like Linux's approach to UIs. I.e. the underlying OS is not tied to any particular look and feel. I can choose which UI suits me. Why can't other software work like this? I.e. an underlying engine which does the work and a UI layer / shell which is not fixed by corporate user experience children who think they know best. Sorry for the rant, but I've been around long enough to have experienced way too many software updates which break things or reduce my productivity, not because of bugs, but because of ignorant companies pushing crap to users. Thunderbird was a long term exception to this, but looks as though is now broken.

@lisa112 I totally agree with your point of view and I wish users could microbill companies for every unnecessary click or mouse move. The TB115 GUI is a totally uncalled-for change and in-line with the Windows 11 task bar degradation. I went back to TB102 and hope the developing dudes will eventually fix their degraded design. Unfortunately older revs will not get any updates and the recent security issue with the webp library may force me to switch to TB115.

Lisa, you bring up an interesting point about UIs. Yes, Windows has gone the wrong way, I think trying to emulate the Macintosh, which is more about abstract design than actual capability. (And Mac users say that it is going down fast too.) I can see three distinct approaches to how a program selects its UI. 1) Native to the OS environment. That is, the T'bird on Windows looks like a Windows program, on Mac like a Mac program, and on Linux imports the style. 2) Platform independent. The program looks the same everywhere, not like a platform-native program. 3) The program has no specific style, and the user can select.

Most programs nowadays are type 1, adapt to the environment. Windows users expect Windows UI. Type 2 was popular 30 years ago when you use a terminal tied to some distant computer. Lotus Notes was a good example of bringing this onto PCs, and was thus bad on everything. Type 3 is how Linux works, and geeks like it, but it makes support and learning hard for many users.

T'bird 115 is apparently an attempt to move from Type 1 to Type 2, recoding its internals so that it is platform independent, with a smaller platform-native code base. Hence it's broken on Windows because it's no longer a Windows program; it's basically a web mail program with a built-in server. Unix geeks think this is cool. Users don't. Unix geeks don't give a flying fleak what users think, since "lusers" are assumed to be stupider than them. They're not; they just don't waste precious brain cells on the obscurities and boys' club geekery of Unix.

T'bird developers obviously don't pay attention to this forum. They are proud of what they did to us "lusers". They do read Bugzilla though. And they are probably spending more time polishing their resumes to show all of the hot-in-the-marketplace skills that they exercised in 115, recoding using the most resume-friendly tools. Even though it wasn't necessary or helpful. MZLA is apparently more of a grad school program for coders than a software business. The source code is their thesis, and they don't care how well the executable runs.

I wish somebody would take the sources to 102 and build a fork. I'd pay for it. I do have 115 mostly tamed by now but I don't trust it and I no longer trust MZLA.

@Fred37

I'm not sure Windows 8/10 etc. was all trying to emulate the Mac. Flat UIs were an industry wide fashion, following on from earlier GUIs which used 3d to get a more real world user friendly look as display resolutions improved. I think it was more an attempt to make it more usable on tablets when tablets were fashionable, e.g. big buttons, the HUGE calculator, etc. Unfortunately non tablet users also had to put up with a degraded UI.

Thinking of which, when will 3d buttons etc. become fashionable again??? I think flat UIs must have been around long enough to be boring.

I've also used older versions of Thunderbird on Linux Mint and Ubuntu and I can't remember significant differences to the 'doze appearance.

I have no idea what's been done internally and don't really care, so long as it keeps working. I'm surprised that the code was significantly different between platforms. I'd only expect significant differences in the GUI and OS interface and there's various developer resources out there to do that for you. I'm sure Mozilla must have their own. I try to avoid getting involved in 'higher level' software dev. I'm most comfortable when my code is waggling pins etc. ;)

I wholeheartedly second your comment about a fork of 102.

I read (almost) all messages. In a sense I am glad other people have problems - I wasn't seeing my emails either for a while, thought I was the only one having this problem, and switched to Mail.app (less nice). Now I downloaded the version 115.3.3 (after deleting all my older profiles), am able to see my messages, but since I cannot change the window layout (and therefore find it difficult to read messages and see the list of messages at the same time), I'll go on using Mail for a month or two. I also am unable to download dictionaries, which is annoying. I hope they will do something about it. 102 was so much friendlier.

Has anybody already looked at betterbird? They pretend to be more consistent with the old profile and even allow testing without corrupting anything. It's possibly time for a change.

I just looked at betterbird. Its current release is in the 115 series, based on T'bird 115, and while they have reinserted a few display features that were broken in T'bird 115, it is still just a tweaked version of the MZLA 115 code base. They've retired their own 102 branch too. So it sounds like a missed opportunity to keep a 102 fork alive.

I just downloaded and ran Betterbird 115.3.2-bb15 (64-bit).

Firstly no menu bar appeared as standard, without right clicking and selecting the option. Then on attempting to import my Thunderbird profile (in use with TB 115), it stops responding.

So, doesn't look good to me!!!

I just downloaded and ran Betterbird 115.3.2-bb15 (64-bit). Firstly no menu bar appeared as standard, without right clicking and selecting the option. Then on attempting to import my Thunderbird profile (in use with TB 115), it stops responding. So, doesn't look good to me!!!

Just tried Betterbird 102 with same result, expunging Betterbird now

The first problem "I" found with Betterbird is that the only version you can download is 115.

The instructions clearly state that you can "share" your current TB profile with Betterbird - if they have the same version number.

The version for what "I" have in TB is 102... So they are clearly 2 different versions and, apparently, they will NOT use the same profile.

Even following the instructions to manually select the profile used by TB, Betterbird will not use that profile. I've restarted Betterbird several times and it still will not recognize the TB profile.

Thumbs down on whomever suggested Betterbird - it's not. Those who created the documentation did "too much" assuming and not enough careful review to see if the specific instructions work, or, what do do when they do not work.

I'll stick with TB 102.... until I know for certain that Supernova has been well tested and has no bugs. At this point, only TB 102 will load correctly and use the correct profile.

When I get some time I'll test with variations using Win 11 - which is a POS and I don't mind turning that thing upside down.

Win 10 and TB 102 don't interrupt my work!

No guarantees, Exit Thunderbird if running.

Try:

    computer search type: 'Run'
    select the 'Run' app
    Enter: thunderbird.exe -P --allow-downgrade
    click on 'OK'  

Please remember that the overall design of 115 will not revert to the view of 102. My encouragement is to stay with 115 and work through the transition.

It doesn't work for me. What location does this need to run at?

@ deadwaxmusic and others

Impossible to click "Helpful" button (well, one can click away but nothing happens). I wonder if angry /caustic / disappointed messages are being downgraded ? Seems improbable given the high ideals of FF, but something has gone seriously wrong for such a dreadful "upgrade" - i.e. complete redesign - to be pushed out rather than tested as a Beta version.

Good luck to fellow suffers - personally I have to read e-mails on my 'phone, ad Firefox still looks peculiar even after tweaking. o.g.