I could use some beta-testers for a new Send Later release

[Jonathan Kamens]

Hello fellow Send-Laterers,

I could use your help testing a new release of Send Later before I let it loose upon the world. I am looking both for testers who have the problem this release is intended to fix, and for testers who don't, to help me make sure I haven't accidentally broken something that has nothing to do with the fix.

As you may be aware, over the past month or so I have fixed several different issues in the add-on which were preventing messages from being delivered on time. I fixed all the ones I knew about and was able to reproduce, but despite that there were still some users complaining that their messages weren't being delivered. Well, a Send Later user who was having this problem generously gave me more than an hour of his time on Zoom today so I could troubleshoot on his computer directly, and we identified the root cause of the issue for him. It turns out that when Thunderbird can't talk to a particular email account, either because the mail server associated with the account is offline or perhaps also because the user's login on that server has been deactivated, attempts by Send Later to download drafts that Thunderbird thinks are stored in that account simply hang forever. As a result, for some users with accounts like this configured in Thunderbird, Send Later gets stuck on them and doesn't finish scanning all accounts for scheduled drafts.

I've addressed this in the new release in two ways:

1. I fixed Send Later so it no longer blocks forever when it can't read a message. This means that messages will be delivered eventually, but they may still be delivered slowly and later than expected if there are a lot of drafts that can't be read.
2. To make it possible to give users the ability to get rid of even those remaining delays, I've added an "Active accounts" section to the advanced Send Later preferences. Any account unchecked in that list of accounts will be completely ignored by Send Later, so even if the server is unreachable it won't delay Send Later's work.

Can you help me test this before I release it to everyone? Specifically:

• If you're not having any problems with message delivery and you're comfortable downloading and trying out the new release without doing anything different.
• If you're having problems with scheduled messages not being delivered, and you have one or more accounts that no longer work configured in Thunderbird, then it would help for you to download and install the new release and try it out in two different ways:
• Without changing anything in Send Later's preferences, see if messages in the other, working accounts start being delivered again, albeit perhaps a bit delayed from when than they are supposed to be.
• Go into the Send Later preferences and find the Active servers section under Advanced and uncheck the accounts that no longer work, and see if the aforementioned delays go away.

Either way, if you do test, please email me or the list and let us know how it goes!

This release is not yet available for download from addons.thunderbird.net, but you can download and install it from its GitHub release page as follows:

• Download this file to your computer. (If you are using Firefox, make sure to right click on the link and select "Save Link As..." rather than just clicking on it, because otherwise Firefox will try to install it as a Firefox add-on.)
• Open the Add-ons page in Thunderbird ("Add-ons and Themes" from the corner "hamburger" menu).
• Click the gear icon at the top and select "Install Add-on From File...".
• Browse to and select the downloaded file.
• Click through the installation pop-ups.
• You can delete the downloaded file once you've installed it into Thunderbird.

Thanks,

--
Jonathan Kamens
Maintainer, Send Later Thunderbird add-on
Supported by Extended Thunder Inc.
on addons.thunderbird.net | documentation | recurring donation | one-time donation