Thunderbird
I've written a lot of post segments about Mozilla Thunderbird, in large part because it's been my primary desktop email client for more than a decade. I do have a licensed copy of Outlook but am wary of the effort in migrating things like folders and related filters.
There are a number of usability issues I've experienced over the years. One is the problem of pop-ups, e.g., noting a long-running process and providing an option to stop the program. I've generally found the application is in an unusable state when that happens (in fact, the popup itself is often hard to use and can crash the application), so I'll often just restart Thunderbird.
Another usability issue involves defaults, especially in the context of add-ons. I'll give examples of 2 add-ons I have implemented over the past year or so: Enigmail and Send Later. Enigmail enables a user to digital sign and/or encrypt emails using PGP (pretty good privacy). The configuration isn't difficult but beyond the scope of this post (see here for more information). Functionally, you'll generate a key/certificate for a given email address with a passphrase/code. In practice, you'll supply the passphrase in signing an outgoing email. (A digitally signed email can be verified by the recipient as coming from you, using your related public key.) I've so far configured 3 of my external email accounts registered in my Thunderbird client to use with Enigmail, mostly using them to test PGP functionality among accounts.
The problem I have in using Enigmail is almost no one I correspond with (including my family/siblings) is set up with their own public/private key pairs for email encryption. Basically I don't really want to enable emails for default digital signing or encryption. There are ways of setting up the email compose (send-attach) toolbar with encryption and digital sign icons/toggle switches (right click/customize) if necessary in conjunction with Account Settings/Open PGP Security settings for relevant email accounts. (Note: there is also a "protect subject line" toggle-switch icon you can drag/drop into the toolbar.) So if I want to encrypt and/or sign individual emails, I can click default(s) off (red x), which should then show green checks.
This is just to set up the anomaly I experienced. I'm not sure when it started happening, maybe after Thunderbird and/or add-on updates, but all of a sudden I started getting queries for passcodes in trying to open up existing email drafts, e.g., to my mother. It wasn't clear why this was happening; I hadn't set up the emails for encryption or signing, and I wasn't getting prompted for passcodes on quick emails to Mom. Long story short, there was a (default?) checked parameter to encrypt email drafts on saving in Account Settings/Open PGP Security.
The second nonintuitive setting on the Send Later add-on. (I misunderstood the purpose of the add-on; I thought it might be a scheduling function (e.g., send this birthday email to my relative at the scheduled time).) Actually this works similar in nature to drafts, except the message is stored in my local outbox (and if I want to edit before sending, I have to right-click, edit (as a new message)). The add-on, however, does not set up the compose email with a "send later" button. As described above for the PGP icons, you have to right-click on the (send-attach) toolbar, and select the customize option, then drag/drop the send later icon to the toolbar
Zombie Windows Installs
To provide context, every once in a while I'll scan Control Panel/Programs on my workhorse PC to scan for unused programs or odd quirks like multiple versions. This recently was motivated by a software update scan, which suggested that I had an old version of Thunderbird. Familiar readers may recall I ran into Thunderbird 68 version update issues, and one thing that I became aware of is a 64-bit version alternative to my legacy 32-bit version. In the process of installing the former, I forgot to check if the legacy version was still installed. But my 64-bit install is patch-current.So at any rate, my software update software said my x-86 Thunderbird 68.3.1 needed updating. So I went to Control Panel/Programs to right-click/uninstall the relevant client when it became clear it wanted to uninstall from the path of my 64-bit install. HELL NO! I went to Program Files X-86 and noticed, sure enough, the old client was still installed. I manually located and executed the uninstall binary, later clearing away residual traces. But whatever the uninstall binary did, did not affect the relevant listing in Programs. What the hell? As I wrote this segment, I did a regedit and located/deleted any residual references to Thunderbird 68.3.1; I subsequently refreshed Control Panel/Programs and this time the old listing is gone, and my software updater no longer flags it. Generally speaking, though, I don't like having to regedit to maintain programs.
iTunes
Familiar readers may recall a couple of quirks I've referenced in terms of iTunes. One is during the update process where it can't find a target MSI file in the user AppData hierarchy; the other is somewhere after October, I suddenly found my backlogs for most podcasts suddenly disappeared after the most recent 3 episodes and continued to roll-off the oldest episode when downloading the most recent. This didn't happen for 2 or 3 of my feeds, like Cato Institute, but most of them. I couldn't see a podcast setting where this was being set.So I just updated to iTunes 12.10.4. Easier said than done: it seemed to hang looking for the MSI file again. I clicked the cancel button and assumed it would rollback its changes, like in the past. But at some point I got a message the update completed and I needed to reboot. Say what? Sure enough, when I later relaunch iTunes and check for updates, it tells me I have the latest release installed. I'm not sure what that stutter step was all about, but I shouldn't have to manually cancel that MSI step.
But now when I right-click on my podcast feeds, I notice a podcast settings option. And sure enough, there's a limit episodes parameter, set to a default of 3 episodes. I quickly turned off that parameter for my podcasts and noted that I should now be able to redownload unheard episodes that rotated out.
