Launchpad up-to-date official blueprint: Add overlay scrollbar support for Thunderbird and Firefox (probably Ubuntu 12.10)

Ubuntu is definitely a place where "real" actual innovation plays an important role, consequently, the developers are constantly landing new exciting technologies, exciting for both regular users (Dash, launcher, Alt+Tab Switcher, etc) and the whole world (Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu One, etc).

Bringing creative innovations naturally triggers an accommodation process, where "things" are progressively shaped and put in order, thus touching (first) the frequently/most used applications that play a critical part in both the Ubuntu values and users' usage patterns.

Months ago, Ayatana Overaly Scrollbar landed in Ubuntu, introducing a minimalistic yet fancy and full-of-features scrollbars, gradually adopted by default applications (Nautilus, Gedit, GNOME Terminal, etc), landing approach that gradually per-Ubuntu-release minimized the difference between Ayatana Overlay Scrollbar-enabled apps and Ayatana Overlay Scrollbar-disabled apps.

In the latter category, fits, at the moment, Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox, applications that, due to their code "identity", haven't received the fancy scrollbar in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Judging by an official launchpad blueprint, Ubuntu 12.10 is to probably receive support for Ayatana Scrollbar in both Firefox and Thunderbird, "Add overlay scrollbar support for Thunderbird (and Firefox)", labeled as TODO.

The interesting part is that the launchpad page and whiteboard description have been recently edited and the mentioned work items have not been postponed and/or blocked.

While the mentioned official bits are not a solid prove that the overlay scrollbar is going to land in Ubuntu 12.10, it definitely expose the developers' clear intention to work on implementing the long-awaited support for Firefox and Thunderbird, removing the latest months' indecision related to various "psychological" postponements (like for instance, Firefox support to arrive if Mozilla is willing to implement it, is not a bug in Firefox itself, etc).