Lightning is a project from the
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...
originally designed as an extension ("add-on") that adds
calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...
and scheduling functionality to the
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client that also functions as a personal information manager with a Digital calendar, calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix (protocol), Matrix), ...
mail client and
SeaMonkey
SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...
internet suite
An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client (often with a news client and address book), download manager, HTML editor, and an IRC client.
The diversity of Internet suite o ...
. It superseded the previous
Mozilla Sunbird and the older
Mozilla Calendar extension.
[Lightning Project Launched to Provide Calendar Features for Mozilla Thunderbird- MozillaZine](_blank)
- MozillaZine article announcing the Lightning project and its aims. With version 38 of Thunderbird, the Lightning add-on was integrated and preloaded by default;
since version 78 of Thunderbird (released 2020), Lightning is part of Thunderbird and no longer an add-on extension. Lightning is compatible with
iCalendar
The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, ...
calendars.
History
The Lightning project was announced on December 22, 2004, in an effort to integrate
Mozilla Sunbird into
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client that also functions as a personal information manager with a Digital calendar, calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix (protocol), Matrix), ...
.
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
contributed significantly to the Lightning Project to provide users with an alternative free and open-source choice to
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
by combining
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...
and Thunderbird with the Lightning Extension. In addition to general bug-fixing, Sun focused on calendar views, team/collaboration features and support for the
Sun Java System Calendar Server.
Version 0.9 was the last planned release for Thunderbird 2. A calendar was originally to be fully integrated into Thunderbird 3, but those plans were changed due to concerns with the product's maturity and level of support. Lightning 1.0b2 is compatible with Thunderbird 3.1, Lightning 1.0b5 is compatible with Thunderbird 5 and 6, and Lightning 1.0b7 is compatible with Thunderbird 7.
Lightning 1.0 was released to the public on November 7, 2011. It was released alongside Thunderbird 8.0. Following that, every Thunderbird release has been accompanied by a compatible Lightning
point release. Lightning finally started shipping with Thunderbird with version 4.0, on Thunderbird 38.0.1 released in 2015.
With the 2020 release of Thunderbird 78, Lightning is now a permanent part of the program.
See also
*
List of personal information managers
The following is a list of personal information managers (Personal information manager, PIMs) and online organizers.
Applications
Discontinued applications
See also Comparisons
* Comparison of email clients
* Comparison of file manager ...
References
External links
Mozilla Thunderbird - Lightning Calendar — MozillaLightning :: Add-ons for Thunderbird or SeaMonkey-
Mozilla Add-ons
For Mozilla software, an add-on is a software component that extends the functionality of the Firefox web browser and related applications although most are browser extensions. Mozilla provides add-ons to users via its official add-on website.
I ...
Provider for Google Calendar :: Add-ons for Thunderbird or SeaMonkey(Requires Lightning) -
Mozilla Add-ons
For Mozilla software, an add-on is a software component that extends the functionality of the Firefox web browser and related applications although most are browser extensions. Mozilla provides add-ons to users via its official add-on website.
I ...
Mozilla Calendar BlogThe Rumbling Edge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lightning (Software)
Discontinued Thunderbird WebExtensions
Mozilla Thunderbird
Free calendaring software
Free personal information managers
Free software programmed in C++
Software that uses XUL