[HN Gopher] Thunderbird 115
___________________________________________________________________
Thunderbird 115
Author : patadune
Score : 510 points
Date : 2023-07-10 09:58 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thunderbird.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thunderbird.net)
| pshirshov wrote:
| > unified folders
|
| Actually that's the worst anti-feature for an email client.
| thiht wrote:
| For you maybe. This is the number one feature I want in the
| email clients I use.
| Open-Sourcery wrote:
| As long as there is a way to disable it, or there is a unified
| view along with the individual email views. I quite like
| unified views considering I have three email accounts I need to
| view, and I don't see the downside of this view as long as when
| I reply, it automatically replies from the address it was sent
| to.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Yet many users rely on it every day.
|
| You don't have to use the feature if you don't unified folders,
| but that doesn't mean other people don't want it.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| The only reason I haven't moved off Thunderbird for mac mail is
| because mac mail enforces a unified inbox.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Mail.app offers a unified inbox yes, but it also lets one
| view inboxes per-account. Just click the disclosure arrow
| next to the inbox in the sidebar, which displays each
| account's inbox of individual viewing.
|
| Mail folders are all shown under sections dedicated to each
| account in the sidebar.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Lots of people find unified folders extremely useful.
|
| They're completely pointless for me, because different email
| accounts represent different contexts for me.
|
| But there's a lot of people who've created a gmail account, a
| hotmail account, have a their ISP account, etc for no
| particular reason other than the fact that they created an
| account when these services came by.
|
| A unified folder is extremely useful for such people.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I find them very useful as long as there is a way to make it
| immediately obvious which account a particular email is
| connected to (like FairEmail does, for example).
| jraph wrote:
| I use BorderColors D, an extension which shows a color in
| the writing window specific to the selected account.
|
| https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/bordercolo
| r...
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Has Thunderbird still proper support for local mailboxes? I
| recently tried this, and all I found was local folders in maildir
| or mbox-format. But this won't recognize new mails added to them,
| making it useless for this demand. Did I miss something, or was
| this really removed at some point?
| diarrhea wrote:
| Putting the search bar front-and-center in both the application
| and this announcement, I hope the backend implementation is now
| able to keep up?
|
| The one use case I switch to my mail provider's webmail UI for is
| search. I mentally sigh a little bit each time I realise I have
| to search through my email. Thunderbird's search has been among
| the worst I have ever come across, sadly. Functional search would
| be a killer feature. As it's running locally, heck, give me
| regex. Trivial to implement and would be a huge improvement
| already.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| They can start with not hanging the UI when searching for
| keywords in body, I don't understand why this is so hard.
| berkes wrote:
| Yeah. It's been terrible forever. Either returning far too
| much, far too little, or both.
|
| I've often just resorted to grep on an export of mail
| directories to find that one email. I even once imported the
| mails (ugly bash and Ruby hacks) in meilisearch to actually
| find stuff.
|
| It surprises me that it's possible to have a search experience
| that's worse than manually grepping through directories.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I have always wondered this. When a site like "MAterial for
| Mkdocs" can implement such a featureful search (with
| autocomplete, spellcorrect and such) in a browser for a
| website, how could it be this hard for a desktop application
| with several orders of magnitude of resources at its disposal?
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| There's no technical reason, it's just a poor implementation.
|
| I use "notmuch" for email and it can index over two decades
| of emails in seconds. Search is then instantaneous.
|
| TBH, thunderbird could just use notmuch under the hood.
| rajamaka wrote:
| Looking forward to your PR
| zvmaz wrote:
| > There's no technical reason, it's just a poor
| implementation.
|
| > TBH, thunderbird could just use notmuch under the hood.
|
| You could provide us with a plugin that does just that.
| ohuf wrote:
| The only issue I have with TB search is the setting for the
| results presentation: why is there not a preferences option to
| set if the results show as list or in the current default
| 'verbose' view?
|
| switching to list view manually seems so inefficient
| dermesser wrote:
| Not to detract from Thunderbird's deserved attention, but I've
| been using Evolution for many years, and search is delightfully
| instantaneous.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| One thing i've noticed is that the search bar is awful at
| finding anything, but the search tool (Ctrl+Shift+F) works
| _much_ better.
| conaclos wrote:
| Same here. I am exclusively using the quick filter box
| (Ctrl+Shift+K). I would like that the filter bar be never
| hidden.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Filter is awesome. It's more limited in what you can search
| but it's blazingly fast and pretty much always does the job
| for me.
| no_time wrote:
| As a relatively new TB user, I thought it was me who was
| "holding it wrong" lol. Searching for my employer's name and it
| only returning my career portal applications but not actually
| their emails (that were from their domain, with their name
| appearing atleast twice in text) was baffling.
|
| I'm very hopeful about this new version. I can already see one
| of my U/X gripes fixed in the screenshot.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I prefer thunderbird _because_ of the search functionality. I'm
| not saying you're wrong, I just consider it the least worst,
| they're all horribly bad.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| I played with the beta for a bit and while it's a marked
| improvement over the old UI, it still feels remarkably old and
| outdated to use.
|
| 1. There still doesn't appear to be a threaded email view. Emails
| are grouped, but I don't see a way to view them in a thread. Just
| one at a time
|
| 2. Rich text emails that are just text look remarkably bad.
| They're just black text on white background with limited padding.
| If you use dark mode, it still displays with a white background;
| many email readers have moved away from that
|
| 3. If you click an email group, it opens a summary view instead
| of an actual email. In order to open the actual email, you have
| to expand the group by clicking a tiny arrow
|
| 4. Having a landing page for an account still seems odd. It just
| means I have to keep the account open and click Inbox instead.
| Each of my 4 accounts have about 30-50 folders each so my sidebar
| is basically impossible to navigate unless I switch to the
| Unified folder view which has a separate list of issues
|
| 5. Going back to #2, if I reply to such an email in dark mode,
| the quoted text appears as black on dark gray.
|
| 6. The composer definitely needs some love
|
| Basically, it still requires 3-4 clicks to do a ton of things
| that other clients can do in 1 click. Postbox, which forked
| Thunderbird like 15 years ago and I used for close to a decade,
| is also looking dated at this point but is much easier to use
| than Supernova.
|
| Some of these things can be improved or changed, but I couldn't
| find a good combination that created an experience worth
| switching to.
|
| It's unfortunate because I had been planning to switch to
| Thunderbird from Spark v2 since it was announced last year.
| Instead, it prompted me to re-evaluate Spark v3 which seems to
| have resolved most of its early issues. I'd prefer to use OSS,
| but not at the cost of productivity.
|
| Negativity aside, it does look much better than it did previously
| and I can see the makings of a worthwhile client in there. It's
| just not ready for me yet.
| dgellow wrote:
| Just curious, does anyone of you know if it is possible to use
| Thunderbird as a library, somehow? Or is the UI too intertwined
| with the "mail engine" (i.e something managing IMAP, mbox,
| maildir, email indexing, etc)? I would be interested to
| experiment with my own mail client, if I can rely on an existing
| project like Thunderbird that would make it way simpler to get
| started :)
| cutler wrote:
| I have Thunderbird to thank for allowing me to migrate the GMail
| accounts of several clients whilst retaining the original
| timestamps. You'd think a behemoth like Google would be able to
| handle this but Thunderbird is what you need for this.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| These guys have a steep hill to climb.
|
| One huge problem with open-source "hobby" projects is that they
| tend to not have designers when they need them. A dev sets out to
| build something, and then after it works asks a designer to help
| clean it up.
|
| If you want a polished and "nice" application, getting a designer
| involved before you code is key. Retrofitting designs to dev work
| is going to be spotty at best.
|
| It sort of looks better, but it doesn't look "good" by modern
| standards. It still looks like Frankenstein... but at least he's
| got some lipstick that matches his nails.
|
| It's a tough spot, and you see it all the time when dealing with
| things built without designers.
| zvmaz wrote:
| The tone and level of entitlement of some comments is
| astonishing. Thunderbird is a free and open source tool, used by
| many (including me). The least we can do is to be a little nicer.
| jrm4 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Derbasti wrote:
| Is it JUST WORDS if someone insults you or your work? Or does
| it still hurt?
|
| At the very least we can be constructive and civil.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I agree in the abstract. But as I have seen lately, devs
| (or dev advocates) are pretty snowflakey.
|
| Probably because I think the "average" open source dev has
| more or less "lost the plot?" A whole lot of trying to beat
| Steve Jobs at his own game and far less "lets make solid
| software that works well for people all the time."
| geek_at wrote:
| I love thunderbird but I don't understand their update
| schedules.
|
| I just now got an update (thought it would be to 115) but it's
| to 102 [1].
|
| In the release notes of 102 it says it was made public only 5
| days ago (and they say 115 is coming soon). And seemingly it
| can't update to 115? Am I missing something here?
|
| [1] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-
| US/thunderbird/102.13.0/relea...
|
| [edit] okay it seems 115 is not yet released as
| https://www.thunderbird.net/ still links to 102. But the Beta
| links to 116 (https://www.thunderbird.net/de/download/beta/) so
| I guess they are still moving things around
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| 102.13.0 was released a few days ago.
|
| 102.x has been out for a while.
|
| When you receive an update to it depends on your distro or
| whether you have it installed as a Snap or Flatpak, etc.
| jzb wrote:
| That threw me for a loop. I went to download 115 and got 102.
|
| I've mostly stuck with webmail (Fastmail for personal, Gmail
| for work) but would love to get back to a local client. So
| I'm willing to give the new Thunderbird a shot, but it's
| perplexing when they advertise 115 and give me 102 and it's
| really unclear how to get the nifty stuff they're
| advertising.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Gmail supports IMAP. Even in a corporate environment I used
| Mail as my client.
| jzb wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware. But I don't have any interest in mingling
| my work + personal / project email.
| perihelions wrote:
| The janky versioning is because Thunderbird releases are tied
| to ESR (extended-support release) versions of Firefox.
|
| - _" Thunderbird Project version numbers for releases match
| to Mozilla Firefox ESR numbers. Thunderbird also provides
| consecutive betas between the ESR numbers, for example
| 92-101, which match to Firefox (non-ESR) beta numbers. Future
| Thunderbird (ESR) releases upcoming are 115, 127, etc."_
|
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Home#Releases
| nerdponx wrote:
| I'm downvoting them as I see them. Donate or contribute or
| offer constructive feedback, don't just complain.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| As the maintainer of CoreJS (Denis Pushkarev) said:
|
| _Maintainers are the unsung heroes of the software world,
| pouring their hearts into creating vast amounts of value that
| often goes unappreciated. These unsung heroes perform critical
| work that enables all of modern technology to function - this
| is not an exaggeration. These tireless individuals dedicate
| themselves to writing new features, fixing bugs, answering user
| inquiries, improving documentation, and developing innovative
| new software, yet they receive almost no recognition for their
| efforts._
| globular-toast wrote:
| They spent 1000 credits on an iDevice with basic, inflexible,
| proprietary software that "looks good" and expect flexible,
| powerful, portable, free and open source software to look the
| same too.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| What am I missing here? I'm running "Version 102.11.0, first
| offered to channel users on May 10, 2023", and this is 13
| versions ahead?
| velosol wrote:
| As I recall the team has been jumping the main/release branch
| by larger numbers as beta moves through more polish effectively
| making release the long-term servicing/ESR branch so 115 will
| start to be offered tomorrow.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| No it is exactly one version ahead, the number is just bigger
| by 13. Firefox ESR 102 is based on firefox non-esr 102 and ESR
| 115 is based on non-ESR 115. There are no ESR versions in
| between.
|
| As an analogy think of fedora and red hat
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relat...
|
| With that same scheme it would be red hat 6, 12, 19, 28, 34
| instead of 5,6,7,8,9.
| orra wrote:
| Thunderbird major releases match up with Firefox, in terms of
| dates and version numbering. However, Thunderbird releases
| major versions less often. Hence the discrepancy.
| madballster wrote:
| I looked through the new features list, but couldn't find the
| "conversational" threads feature which was on the roadmap for Q1
| 2023. Is this will coming or am I just missing it?
| tommica wrote:
| Thunderbird is such a nice email client - it fulfills my basic
| needs and it just easy to use.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| At last !:
|
| > Card View emulates a mobile interface list with multi-line
| support, offering a more comfortable appearance to reduce
| cognitive burden.
|
| Took them long enough.
|
| And they said it couldn't be done, sheesh.
|
| Outlook 2003 had that for... 20 years.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Thanks for the downvotes Thunderbird white knights but I have
| the bug reports to back up my saltiness:
|
| - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335310 Closed
| Bug 335310 Opened 18 years ago Closed 16 years ago Suggest
| Multi-line Message List display (great in vertical view)
|
| - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 Bug
| 213945 Opened 20 years ago Closed 4 months ago Mail/message
| listing/thread pane needs more organization in 3 vertical pane
| view (column wrapping, etc)
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=307013
|
| - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307070 Open Bug
| 307070 Opened 18 years ago Updated 1 month ago Request for
| Outlook-style AutoPreview feature to see first few lines of
| messages
|
| As the guy who made a close to pixel perfect office2003 theme
| for Tbird back in the 00's this feature has sentimental value
| to me and am very happy this has finally landed.
| kekebo wrote:
| Anyone have an opinion on how Betterbird[0] compares to
| Thunderbird? I've installed it recently to circumvent a recent
| design change in Thunderbird but have a hard time assessing
| whether it's a worthwhile long-term alternative and a project
| worthy of support.
|
| [0] https://www.betterbird.eu/
| precompute wrote:
| Oh wow, it works in the system tray. Sold!
| folkrav wrote:
| I have a lot of trouble taking Betterbird seriously... The
| whole thing feels like a revenge based project by a disgruntled
| former contributor.
| https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/moz-governance.pdf
| https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/permanent-ban.pdf
| https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/RQHR3eFAYZ8
|
| YMMV
| keehun wrote:
| This might come off as quirky or weird but one of the things I
| miss the _most_ about "iCal" (Calendar.app in macOS) is the
| infinite scroll (year, month, and week views). Fastmail's
| calendar has the infinite scroll on the month view, but not any
| other views.
|
| I usually hate "infinite scroll" on say a timeline feed, but for
| calendar, it is exactly what I need as I very often move between
| months when I'm looking at my calendar.
|
| Is there an extension in Firefox that'll bring the infinite
| scroll to calendar? Anything on the roadmap officially for that
| UX?
| LeonM wrote:
| "Expanded Accessability"
|
| Looks like a typo? Shouldn't this be accessibility?
| danpalmer wrote:
| I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul.
| Text is misaligned in lots of places, the icons are fuzzy,
| spacing and padding is inconsistent even within the same areas,
| there are 3 sets of 3-dot icons in the sidebar in two different
| axes. It's just careless.
|
| Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on
| in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall
| impact. This stuff _really_ matters in aggregate.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| But I can guess how the kebab and ellipsis menus are going to
| open... Granted, if they don't actually open that way, and
| don't apply to the sections they're in, then that could be a
| problem.
| hendersoon wrote:
| After 20 years I'm still amazed they finally got multi-row
| listings working. I honestly never thought I'd see the day.
|
| New Thunderbird development is _glacially_ slow, but to their
| credit they have kept the software functional and fixed any
| security bugs over the decades. And of course, it 's free.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Good software doesn't need to look good, though. Looking good
| is just a bonus. I don't care in the slightest how it looks
| because it's still better than the alternatives.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| That's a bananas take. A good thing should be executed well
| on all fronts. Software that looks like garbage is unpleasant
| to use for most people.
|
| Tbird's ongoing lack of polish is a huge chunk of why I don't
| use it.
| andix wrote:
| Good software also looks good. Looking good can't make up for
| bad functionality. that's true. But good UX design is an
| important part of software.
| suavesito wrote:
| I think you're thinking of UI. Functionality I categorize
| it as UX and looking good as UI.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Misaligned lines are not bad UX. They are bad design/UI,
| but misaligned dots have no impact on the UX.
| danpalmer wrote:
| If software doesn't appear "trustworthy" people won't use
| it, particularly if it's holding sensitive personal data
| such as email. The worst UX is people never using the
| software.
|
| Design plays a big part in how people perceive
| trustworthiness. It implies effort and understanding. The
| reason people spot fake products on AliExpress is not
| because they're intimately familiar with the legit
| versions, but because typically there are numerous design
| aspects that are just slightly weird.
| globular-toast wrote:
| And we really want to reinforce this stupid belief that
| good looking things are trustworthy?
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Sure, this one piece of software that doesn't want to
| look perfect will change the game!
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| People using Thunderbird are not basing its
| "trustworthiness" on the alignment of ellipses.
|
| Given the laundry list of issues they need to resolve,
| and as apparent from this thread the choice by UI experts
| to complain on HN instead of leaving feedback, I'm
| absolutely fine with them prioritizing other issues which
| are easier to address and have far more of an impact on
| their users.
| andix wrote:
| Off course they do. They make (some/many) users feel
| uneasy while using it. Humans love to use things that
| look pretty and feel "right".
|
| A well designed UI also makes it easier to understand the
| UI, what belongs together, where one area ends and
| another area starts.
| thworp wrote:
| They certainly are bad UX, proper alignment and
| consistent spacing helps immensely in visual recognition
| and flow.
| rizky05 wrote:
| [dead]
| tommyage wrote:
| https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/
|
| Your professional input may be desired. Though I did not
| contribute to Thunderbird either (, yet?). Thing is, your
| critique may result in guidance to make part of these changes
| according to your skillset! But I am just a hopeless dreamer in
| the good of many things.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I think if the team are shipping it in this state then
| either: they don't have the ability to notice the issues on
| the core team, or they see the issues and ship it anyway.
| Feedback like this is unlikely to solve either of those
| cases.
|
| This isn't complex stuff either. I'm not a designer, I don't
| even do frontend/UI work, I'm basically just a backend
| engineer. If I'm spotting this stuff on first glance at the
| main marketing screenshot, which should be the best possible
| case, then this stuff must be glaringly obvious and
| pervasive.
| nerdponx wrote:
| You might have a particularly good eye. I saw none of these
| problems in the marketing screenshot.
|
| I only see one ... icon in the entire screenshot, nothing
| is fuzzy, and all text looks aligned. The only weirdness is
| a misalignment between the sidebar header and the main
| window header, but those don't need to be aligned anyway.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Look at the "+ New message"
| [deleted]
| tired-turtle wrote:
| Without context, this also describes Microsoft Outlook on Mac.
| tonoto wrote:
| I've been using Thunderbird for a couple of years, then I went
| for Icedove for a while (but honestly, I used mutt more during
| that period) and then back to Thunderbird since 2018(?) and
| honestly I don't get what is wrong with the UI? At least
| compared to Icedove it feels very modern and fresh. I've also
| tried Apple Mail for a couple of weeks but that felt it was
| lacking both in functionality and UI experience compared to
| Thunderbird. But I'm just a simple user that want's to use a
| couple of Imap-mailboxes together with GPG and S/Mime, office
| administration and/or computer gaming is not my department.
| I've been using this MUA in both Linux and Darwin environments
| and it is way above the Outlook/Office 365 experience that some
| hostile environments force upon its users.
| andix wrote:
| At least it is a step in the right direction. Let's hope they
| will continue the journey and gradually improve it. "Just"
| aligning margins, paddings and font sizes should be a much
| easier task.
| danpalmer wrote:
| That's true! And the mockups look great so hopefully they're
| still working in that direction.
| Frondo wrote:
| > Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so
| on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the
| overall impact. This stuff really matters in aggregate.
|
| Red Letter Media has a great phrase that rolls around in my
| head to describe situations like this (they use it for media
| analysis), "You might not recognize it, but your brain did."
|
| Where you might not be able to point to a problem, but you
| instinctively know something is off.
| jeffparsons wrote:
| The fuzzy icons are because of how the image is scaled on the
| marketing site. If you load the image directly (https://www.thu
| nderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1...) you'll see
| the icons in the UI are actually crisp.
| [deleted]
| danpalmer wrote:
| Loading that image at 1x on my retina display, the icons look
| fuzzy to me.
|
| I've also tried installing the beta and some of the icons are
| fuzzy, although the leftmost sidebar icons are a bit better.
| Most of the non-icon images used throughout the install
| process do not seem to be adapted for retina screens, which
| have been commonplace for over 10 years.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I installed it just for trying on my retina display, and
| all icons looked crisp. Are you sure you didn't get an
| older version, as this is beta?
| nerdponx wrote:
| I like how you conveniently left out that you're using a
| retina display until maybe your fifth post complaining
| about this. It's possible that none of the developers can
| afford to buy a $2000 laptop for testing. If the icons are
| obviously fuzzy on your machine, grab a screenshot, post a
| bug on the bug tracker, and let it be. I assume also that
| you are already a substantial monthly donor. If not, then I
| think all this complaining comes across as rather entitled.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If you are gonna make a big announcement of how great
| your icons are and they are blurry on 20% of screens..
| maybe the issue isn't with your users.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The marketing site says this:
|
| > Our new designs remain sharp and pixel-perfect at any
| density setting.
|
| Why are you having a go at someone who's just saying that
| the icons are fuzzy? If it's true it's true.
| [deleted]
| abenga wrote:
| If it's true, that's a bug. File it, don't just complain
| online as if you are being let down by a paid tool.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > as if you are being let down by a paid tool
|
| It wasn't "as if" that at all. It was a neutral statement
| of fact.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I'm not going to write feedback because I'm not a user
| looking for it to be solved. My original comment is
| critiquing the process that has lead to them shipping
| software that doesn't meet modern standards - something
| entirely within the remit of Hacker News discussion.
|
| My "retina" display is actually a 4k monitor, a very
| commonplace and cheap piece of hardware, maybe even the
| norm nowadays for software engineers.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Not sure about the criticism of marketing screenshots but
| I also have a 4K monitor, they're absolutely
| indispensable for staring at code all day and cost less
| than $100.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Good ones are around $400, really . A 4K for $100 would
| be like a 40 inch screen with a horrible PPI.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > A 4K for $100 would be like a 40 inch screen with a
| horrible PPI.
|
| My 4K monitor was $70 and is 15 inches so, not sure where
| you got that figure from.
|
| (You're right that $400 is better though, that would get
| me a touchscreen OLED. Unfortunately I don't have that
| much money yet~)
| Klonoar wrote:
| It's 2023, Retina and otherwise high res displays are
| very common and the way to serve images to them is known.
| AnonC wrote:
| You can participate in the Thunderbird UX discussions on
| Topicbox (and also through email) and provide your
| suggestions/critiques at
| https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/ux
| eps wrote:
| Do they listen to the opinions of random newcomers?
| danpalmer wrote:
| In my experience most communities like this are quite
| unreceptive to feedback - both in hoops you have to jump
| through to give it, and in terms of attitude from
| maintainers. I haven't engaged with the Thunderbird
| feedback process so this may be unfair to them, but it's a
| broad perception I have and so I think organisations that
| do want the feedback or do want first-time contributors
| need to push hard to make that happen.
| hendersoon wrote:
| I have engaged with it. They definitely aren't receptive
| and development moves excruciatingly slowly, but I
| wouldn't attribute that to being negative so much as
| strictly limited resources.
|
| Thunderbird is what it is; if you find it useful in its
| current incarnation use it (I do), but don't expect it to
| noticeably improve at the rate we've come to anticipate
| from other open-source projects. Even though Thunderbird
| is very popular by common open-source metrics for
| whatever reason it just doesn't move very quickly.
| wpietri wrote:
| I mean, I get that. It has to be the very rare open
| source project where the major bottleneck is insufficient
| opinions, especially of the very common "strident and
| underinformed" variety.
|
| I had MITMed my robot vacuum and discovered that it, like
| a disaffected teen, hung out in a chat room all day. I
| created a little python library to send it some XMPP
| messages so I could work around the app's terrible
| scheduling and put some commands in a cron file. And then
| I open sourced the code, because why not share?
|
| It was a happy day for me when that robot died. Then I
| had a legitimate reason for archiving the project and
| never dealing with a user request/opinion.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Pro tip: don't lead with "I can't believe how janky this
| still looks after a UI overhaul."
| rudasn wrote:
| So, image you're the new hire and you are welcomed to
| this massive code base with thousands of files, each
| thousands of lines long, without some clear separation of
| concerns or "basic modern best practices".
|
| And the first thing you do, is tell everyone how shit
| their code looks. The same code that pays for yours and
| everyone else's paychecks.
|
| What do you think is going to happen?
| xattt wrote:
| Most users don't have the time to gain entree into a
| developer community.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| But apparently have the time to write long insulting
| sermons.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I've no idea why you're asking me this, nor what point
| you're trying to make with your story. Can you make it
| plainly please, so I can understand what point you're
| trying to make?
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| I'm not sure, does Gnome have image preview in its file
| browser yet?
| vetinari wrote:
| It was always available in file browser. The long-
| standing issue was preview in file picker dialog, not
| file browser.
|
| It is available in GTK4 file picker. You know, major
| release, able to break ABI.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| > The long-standing issue was preview in file picker
| dialog, not file browser.
|
| I think this is semantics.
|
| Fact it, it took a decade+
| input_sh wrote:
| Yes
| kristofferR wrote:
| Agree. The differences between the mock-up [1] and the finished
| version [2] are both quite small, yet make a massive difference
| in the perceived quality.
|
| [1] https://2165533704-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-
| x-p...
|
| [2]
| https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1...
|
| The search bar looks good in the mock-up, but bad in the final
| version due to not being centered, despite being really
| similar.
| joelcipriano wrote:
| Quite small??? They're huge!
| jimaek wrote:
| Oh wow that's a huge difference.
|
| The first one looks like polished quality software while the
| second one looks like some junky app made by a solo dev on
| his free time that doesn't care how it looks like
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I like the second one better. Much better contrast and less
| useless whitespace. I can't see what's wrong with it but
| I'm also not experienced in UI/UX.
|
| Edit: Also the icons are much better in the second one. The
| first one has all monochrome icons which makes them much
| less useful for quickly scanning for the folder that you
| are looking for.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think the second one lacks polish in terms of the
| styling of the UI components. The mockup was really
| pretty and its use of color and borders/outlines, while
| the current version seems to have heavier outlines,
| leading to an overall clunkier appearance. I'll run this
| by a couple of my UX friends to see if they can express
| what I'm talking about in more professional terms so I
| can provide coherent feedback to the Thunderbird devs.
| orra wrote:
| I appreciate you doing this. I'm keen on the heavier
| outlines and squashed message list in 115, versus the
| mockups which I loved. But you feeding that back
| professionally and constructively, etc, may be
| productive; it's not healthy for us or the maintainers,
| for us to be an angry mass of users.
| orra wrote:
| Aargh, I meant _not_ keen on the heavier...
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| But the things you mention are specifically the things
| that I think works better in the second one.
|
| I can maybe agree that the first one looks more
| "polished" but at the same time I actually feel a but
| uneasy looking at it because my brain has to work harder
| to discern the UI elements due to the lack of colors and
| low contrast. Although the lines are heavier in the
| second one, I find it _much_ easier to filter out the
| data that I am looking for.
|
| Also the first one wastes screen real estate like crazy.
| I can only see 7 emails in that one, whereas the second
| one shows 14. I want all the emails that I receive within
| a single day to be able fit on a single screen so I don't
| have to scroll. Frankly, I think the first one sucks.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Fair enough, I suspect that there's no correct answer
| here short of doing extensive user studies and/or adding
| a lot of custom theme or UI configuration settings that
| the team certainly does not have time to work on. still,
| the UX/UI professionals are professionals for a reason,
| and it can't hurt to get their opinion specifically.
| arsome wrote:
| The first one looks like a massive waste of screen real
| estate. Glad they fixed it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Compare the two, and you'll see that it's not really the
| case. The first one has a narrower sidebar and much more
| space for the actual e-mail message. The main difference
| is that the e-mail list in the first shows twice as much
| in the preview, while the other shows twice as many
| messages.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Wow the mockup looks excellent. This is great work.
|
| Sure there's more whitespace than some people prefer, but
| that sort of thing can be addressed with a compact mode.
| silentsanctuary wrote:
| Speaking only on the 3-dot icons part - I actually quite like
| it the way it is.
|
| The visual metaphor is an ellipsis, and accordingly I expect
| the three dots aligned horizontally to be a continuation of
| (and hence pertain to) the buttons/options along the same row
| as it (which it does).
|
| Similarly, I expect the three dots aligned vertically to
| pertain to options that are in the same column (which it also
| does).
|
| It's a subtle visual cue that helps me understand what the
| button is for, and without it I would need to spend more time
| figuring out what container each button is in (which is a
| harder task, given that there aren't always visual dividers
| between containers, or changes in background colour).
| g051051 wrote:
| TL;DR: Thanks, I hate it.
|
| It looks like the web version of Outlook. This is not a
| compliment.
|
| Can I disable the search bar wasting that space? I can count on
| the fingers of one hand how many times I've used email search
| over the past 2 years. Three times, for the curious.
|
| Can I disable the preview pane like I can now?
|
| What's "unified" about the folders? What's being "unified"?
|
| I've never tagged an email in my life, but there's the tag panel,
| taking up loads of space. Can I turn it off?
|
| Sidebar "menus" should be considered a criminal act. Where's the
| menu bar? Why is everyone determined to force the metaphor du
| jour onto their applications?
| drpixie wrote:
| I just want to small, simple, fast, low memory browser that shows
| pages - I don't want 1,000,000 features and confusions.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Thunderbird is an email client, not a web browser.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Looks like you didnt read the article.
| jraph wrote:
| w3m would be a good fit for this description.
| drpixie wrote:
| Duh - I want the simlle browser too. I use TB daily but the
| comment still applies. I want it to do just email, simply and
| correctly.
|
| Most of the "smart" features just seem to get in th way :(
| nijave wrote:
| https://github.com/Gentux/imap-cli
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what UI framework is used here? Electron?
| something else?
|
| EDIT: On 2nd thought I'm thinking this is XUL, Mozilla's sort of
| electron equivalent for an HTML/CSS UI?
| donatzsky wrote:
| As I understand it, Thunderbird is essentially Firefox turned
| into a mail client. So whatever FF is using. There's probably
| still some XUL left here and there, but only because they
| haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Afaik https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page
| Macha wrote:
| My understanding is that part of the goal with this UX
| rewrite is to move from XUL to HTML/CSS as XUL is
| increasingly unmaintained as Firefox has made the move for
| most (maybe all by now) of it's UI years ago
| cubefox wrote:
| They did use XULRunner in the past, but probably something else
| nowadays.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Actually, Thunderbird was never on XULRunner; it always
| relied on linking all of its code into libxul. For some
| strange reason, many of the C++ string APIs are different
| depending on when you linked into or outside of libxul, which
| meant it was a lot of chore to maintain a build that worked
| on XULRunner, and the project was never completed before
| Mozilla killed XULRunner in favor of embedding stories that
| never lasted more than a year or two.
| cubefox wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
| redeeman wrote:
| i am very skeptical that this new UI is really better. I will
| give it a shot, but seriously, things should just stop changing
| things just for the purpose of changing it
| ttoinou wrote:
| Great, thanks Thunderbird Team. But please improve / fix Quick
| Search !
| papaman wrote:
| [dead]
| cosmotic wrote:
| "Beautiful Iconography" <4 icons that all have the same
| silhouette>
| jchw wrote:
| I'm sad that sync did not make it this iteration, but hopeful
| that it will next time. I love using Thunderbird again. I long
| switched off of dedicated e-mail clients and forgot what I was
| missing. I have had to retrain myself to not open a new tab when
| I'm expecting an email. Not to mention, browsing mailing list
| threads is impossibly better: it has a nice threaded view that
| you just can't get in any web interface I'm aware of. But proper
| sync would be nice to have, seriously. I would really like if it
| could sync account credentials, personally, since I have a decent
| number of machines and a handful of e-mail accounts, but even if
| it didn't it would still be useful to have some form of sync for
| preferences.
|
| I'm sure some people don't like the redesign. Personally, I think
| it's alright: it is a bit more on the "modern" side in some
| regards, but it's still reasonably pleasing to use, and still not
| too white-space heavy, and that's all I really care about.
| chinathrow wrote:
| JFC, the first image makes me turn mad. The UI was just fine,
| leave it alone.
|
| Long term (25y) of Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird user here.
| bjord wrote:
| Are you aware that you're in the minority?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Citation needed.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Any data to back this up? (Yes, I also have only one data
| point).
| Macha wrote:
| Of email users? Or or thunderbird users?
|
| I don't think looking for a majority of email users is
| worthwhile, as the majority of email users are not going to
| use anything other than the webmail from their provider, and
| maybe the one built the in to their device.
|
| As for thunderbird users, I'm not so sure. It seems those who
| feel they'd use thunderbird if the UI was different in this
| thread still seem to be unsatisfied by these changes, while
| those who like the UI the way it is are asking for the new UI
| to be optional
| bjord wrote:
| This is a fair question, and you're probably right. On
| second thought, the average user will stick to webmail,
| anyway.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Side note: does anyone know why it costs so much to make a
| donation?
|
| I'm an avid Thunderbird user and I like to support the team
| making it, but drives me crazy that sending them money costs 8%.
| So if you give them $100, they only get $92.
|
| https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/
|
| I know Mozilla is anti-crypto, but there still has to be a
| cheaper way to send them money.
| bhauer wrote:
| For whatever it's worth, you can also donate via mailed check,
| assuming you're in the US. This will avoid the 8% card
| processing fee.
| nabogh wrote:
| I hope I can opt back into the more dense display that we
| currently have. Some other parts look quite nice however.
| smarkov wrote:
| I really don't understand this. It already looks a little too
| clumped to me, what's the benefit to further putting things
| closer to one another? It's not like you're doing some kind of
| additive transformation and you need to quickly jump between
| lines, each email is its own thing and you can only read one at
| a time. If you need to find specific ones you can always
| categorize them or use the search functionality. I'm just
| confused by statements like this.
| hbossy wrote:
| _each email is its own thing and you can only read one at a
| time_
|
| That's not true. Majority of my interaction with inbox is
| scanning through dozens of automated e-mail notifications and
| spam in search of the one I'm interested in. Most of the
| messages gets deleted or marked as read without ever being
| opened. And no, you cannot solve this with filtering, there's
| just too many edge cases.
| nijave wrote:
| Apps that have too much space don't always work right when
| you "snap" them to 1/2 or 1/4 of the screen (sometimes the
| navigation components take up the entire window and the
| content section becomes unusably small)
| donatj wrote:
| Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without
| scrolling is practical and useful. All whitespace achieves is
| aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption.
|
| My work email rarely exist in a vacuum, they exist in the
| context of all my other work emails.
|
| The ability to actually cross reference and get work done
| quickly should always trump aesthetics. These modern "spaced
| out" UIs are infuriating, they achieve nothing other than
| requiring more scrolling.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Spacing is useful for me because it helps each individual
| piece of text stand out from the others. Too dense and it
| all looks like a jumble to me that I can't easily scan
| visually. Too much whitespace I agree is bad for the
| reasons you described. But everyone has different taste
| here. The ideal scenario is an option to change spacing.
| smarkov wrote:
| > Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without
| scrolling is practical and useful.
|
| Conversely, why is scrolling considered evil? We can agree
| that emails are documents. In real life, on your desk, do
| spread out all your documents so you could see them all at
| once? Or do you have a stack of them and view them one by
| one? You can still cross reference by putting documents
| side by side, just like you can with multiple emails open
| in separate windows or monitors.
|
| Admittedly depending on the amount of emails and the speed
| at which you work through them you might benefit from
| seeing many at once, though there's other ways of dealing
| with that issue.
|
| > All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are
| meaningless beyond initial adoption.
|
| I don't think whitespace is all about aesthetics.
| Personally, it makes it easier for me to read and focus on
| things. It gives individual things more value, rather than
| them being "just another thing in a gigantic list", easily
| blending in and showing no significance.
| Macha wrote:
| > Conversely, why is scrolling considered evil? We can
| agree that emails are documents. In real life, on your
| desk, do spread out all your documents so you could see
| them all at once? Or do you have a stack of them and view
| them one by one? You can still cross reference by putting
| documents side by side, just like you can with multiple
| emails open in separate windows or monitors.
|
| Do you inspect your store's inventory by having one page
| per SKU or do you get a listing with each SKU summarised
| into its title?
|
| I think the distinction here is really that some people
| (myself included) deal with so much email, that they need
| tools to deal with it in bulk, and others in this thread
| apparently do not. Maybe they're dealing with emails one
| by one as they come in, maybe they just don't get that
| much email.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't think whitespace is all about aesthetics.
| Personally, it makes it easier for me to read and focus
| on things.
|
| And for me, having too low of information density makes
| it harder to use the software.
|
| The obvious answer is to allow both sorts of UI
| aesthetics.
| Macha wrote:
| You can see entire subject lines when performing bulk
| operations like archiving email where you want to keep some
| that are still relevant in the inbox?
| zenapollo wrote:
| FTLOG yes please this. The best thing about Thunderbird IMO was
| the dense column view combined with ability to sort a folder by
| sender, which is for some reason impossible in most other
| clients.
|
| I've found it odd not everyone uses it this way. There's no
| better way to blast through an inbox that has let 500+ pile up,
| and can through and organize it.
|
| One feature I've always dreamed of was a column for sender
| domain, which could be used to sort as well.
| aorth wrote:
| Long time Thunderbird user. Love it, donate monthly, open source
| is important, blah blah blah. Having said that, does anyone else
| notice how the text editor in the email message body has a bunch
| of weird issues?
|
| For example, edit a previously sent email with a list, and in the
| new message every list has a space at the end of each element.
| Try to delete the space and it deletes the last character. You
| have to use shift-arrow to select the space and delete it. What
| is that?!
|
| Another example, sometimes I paste from a rich-text source that
| has a table and it immediately converts the body to plaintext or
| something awful. Can't Ctrl-Z to undo, and I've already written a
| bunch of text that I don't want to lose, so I copy my text and
| paste into something plaintext and start the message over.
|
| In general I avoid pasting into the message body because of these
| type of weird issues. What component is that? I haven't gotten
| around to filing a bug yet because I've never tried to explain
| these issues to anyone else before!
| sergimansilla wrote:
| I've been using the beta for some weeks, and it's fantastic.
| snappy fast, and makes me feel in control.
|
| I'm not using (and probably never will) any of the non-email
| features like the calendar, or the chat. But they are relatively
| hidden away, so they don't bother me.
| jraph wrote:
| Calendar in the mail client is very useful since invitations
| are sent by mail. You click accept, the recipient knows you did
| and the event is added to your calendar.
|
| But indeed if you don't use it it does not get in the way,
| which is perfect.
| pmontra wrote:
| I read mail first on my phone with K9 (the old UI) a few
| times per day and accept invitations there to put them on my
| phone, which is always with me. Then I download mail with
| Thunderbird a few times per week. I use my domain providers
| POP3 servers. Yes, they bundle a mailbox with each domain.
| It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use
| case.
| folkrav wrote:
| > It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use
| case.
|
| I'm curious as to why, if you don't mind! Are you
| specifically looking for "download only once then get rid
| of it"?
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes, see my reply to the other message.
|
| My mail stays on my computer, backed up locally and
| encrypted to a remote location.
|
| I lose the ability to access old messages from remote but
| it never was a problem in almost 17 years of self
| employment. Before that, I already had about 13 years of
| downloaded emails, from the times when web mail was not a
| thing. No need to upload my old messages to Gmail, if
| this is even possible. I just kept using a local mail
| client. For my personal mail I remember some emacs
| clients, Netscape Mail (bundled with the browser,)
| Outlook Explorer then Thunderbird. I might forget
| something.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, before I ran my own mailserver, I strongly preferred
| POP3 for this reason -- it let me get my email off of a
| server that I had no control over and onto a machine that
| I do have control over.
|
| But after I started running my own server, I prefer IMAP
| so that all of my email is in one place regardless of
| what machine I'm using. And it still lives on a machine
| that I have control over.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > POP3 is better for my use case.
|
| Same here. I want to "receive" each message exactly once,
| not have it synced automatically all over the place. I only
| handle my email from either my desktop computer or my
| laptop, with a simple script to copy it all back and forth
| whenever I switch the device I am using.
|
| I was on call for my jobs for decades and never had any
| problems with this method, however it was before
| smartphones became common. I do not handle email on my
| smartphone, ever.
| nerdponx wrote:
| What's better about POP3 for you?
| pmontra wrote:
| I download from Thunderbird and the messages are gone
| from the server of the provider.
|
| Of course I keep them there when I download in K9.
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's a disadvantage to me, because I pay my email
| provider in part for the reliability of not losing my
| emails, and also because I tend to access my email from
| several different devices and I want to make sure
| everything is synchronized. What's the advantage of
| downloading them all locally?
| rickydroll wrote:
| did they fix the problem where the calendar account must be
| the same as the email account? My email is on zimbra but
| since the zimbra calendar is isolated, I use a google
| calendar from another email account because I can use it with
| reclaim.ai, share calendars and use it on my phone.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I also receive pdfs via email, but I don't want a pdf reader
| in my email client.
|
| It's perfectly feasible to write an email client that hands
| off received events to a calendar application and receives
| the response to send back. It's all icalendar components
| under the hood anyway.
|
| Putting everything together in a single monolithic program
| that handles email, calendar and contacts is a design choice,
| not a technical requirement.
|
| And yes, I do use the workflow that your descube receiving
| and sending calendar events. But Thunderbird's design is
| annoying because it's a all or nothing situation: you can't
| just use it as an email client and use some other calendar
| application.
| joiqj wrote:
| I appreciate that they have maintained information density. otoh
| I think they should try and stick as much as possible to the
| looks of the OS where thunderbird is running - you are building a
| desktop application, not a website.
|
| Of course it's pretty hard when not even microsoft seems to know
| what Windows should look like.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Remind you, that Microsoft wants go get rid of its Microsoft
| Office and will make it a Website only.
| erremerre wrote:
| OneNote was the first one to go from a full office program to
| be some Modern-UI program, and I have to say that the lost of
| features is concerning. Like now, you can't easily integrated
| excels in onenote.
|
| Yet, even with those limitations, it is still the mot
| powerful note application out there. So... I still use it.
|
| I imagine that it will be a similar situation with the rest
| of the office suite.
| MikusR wrote:
| That Modern one was the version that was actually usable,
| but they discontinued it.
| joiqj wrote:
| First, I don't think they'll be able to. I have had the
| displeasure of using their web Outlook client and it was
| absurdly buggy for a software company of the stature of
| Microsoft. I can only imagine how terrible the web version of
| a complex software like Excel will be. Not to mention the
| poor performance. There's no way they will lose all of their
| finance customers like that... but, it's Microsoft, so... who
| knows.
|
| Second, Office hasn't really looked like Windows for like...
| the past 20 years.
| guessbest wrote:
| Users can't run macros or create macros in the office
| webapps. Seems like a major step backwards in usability.
|
| > Although you can't create, run, or edit VBA (Visual Basic
| for Applications) macros in Excel for the web, you can open
| and edit a workbook that contains macros. Any existing
| macros will remain in the workbook, and you can open the
| workbook in the Excel desktop app to view and edit the
| macros.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/work-with-vba-
| mac...
| tracker1 wrote:
| IIRC, there's work on a JS/TS capable macro API that can
| be used in the future. I will say, the effort MS has made
| to feature parity for Office's web interfaces is pretty
| impressive. I also say this as I've been planning to move
| my personal usage completely to self-host options
| (NextCloud, OnlyOffice, etc).
| rayiner wrote:
| "New Outlook" is so bad. And somehow still makes you go
| into _a different webapp_ to handle todos?
| toyg wrote:
| _> I can only imagine how terrible the web version of a
| complex software like Excel will be._
|
| It's actually not that terrible, but I believe it's nowhere
| near feature parity. Not to mention there is a galaxy of
| add-ons that still need to be rewritten from scratch to
| work on the web version, and a lot of people cannot live
| without them.
|
| Excel is a classic case of 80% of users requiring 20% of
| all functionality, but that 20% being _different_ for each
| user. Still, Microsoft made it very clear that the future
| is web-first.
| joiqj wrote:
| If you don't have feature parity, you really are in
| trouble, because then you are competing with Google
| Sheets, on which actually competent engineers are
| working.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Sorry, but imo Office/Microsoft 365 passed Google's
| options a while ago and have only gotten farther ahead.
| Either work for my needs, and I'm shifting to self-hosted
| OnlyOffice, but MS is definitely ahead on this one.
| speed_spread wrote:
| It's not the competence of the individuals that makes the
| difference. Microsoft is also full of Very Smart People.
| Organizational structure and ego management strategies
| drive the engineering choices that lead to bad software.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > feature parity
|
| They don't seem to care.
|
| For my part, LibreOffice Calc does all of what I want
| Excel to do, although not quite as smoothly. But I'm much
| happier donating to them than paying Microsoft.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Microsoft Outlook is already a web app at its core: "The
| point here being that Mail and Calendar are native Windows
| applications, whereas the new Outlook for Windows is
| essentially a web app at its core, from what we can tell."
|
| Native is dead as it seems, at least for he Microsoft
| Office Team.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/20/microsoft_calendar_m
| a...
| joiqj wrote:
| Someone correct me if wrong but "outlook for windows" is
| not the same as "office outlook". The first one seems
| like it was created to fill the hole of outlook express
| and the mail app that came out later. i.e. the free email
| application that windows ships with.
| dktnj wrote:
| There are actually four "outlook" implementations now.
|
| 1. Outlook desktop - old MFC / win32 crapfest
|
| 2. Windows Mail / Calendar - new WPF crapfest.
|
| 3. O365 online outlook / outlook.com - fat web app.
|
| 4. "New" Outlook - this is a fat Electron style app based
| on the web app.
|
| The latter is actually pretty good - been using it for a
| couple of months. This is apparently going to replace all
| the other ones on the desktop.
| stevedh wrote:
| 5. iOS Outlook
|
| 6. MacOS Outlook
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think they're all heading in a direction to use the
| web-app as the core.
| basscomm wrote:
| > The latter is actually pretty good - been using it for
| a couple of months
|
| You must be using a different New Outlook than me. I've
| been conscripted into trying it before the mass rollout
| to the rest of my company. It's so slow and missing so
| many features from the Old Outlook that it's only really
| usable for the most basic tasks.
| andix wrote:
| This is only half true. They are still going to provide a
| hybrid application that will be usable offline. And there is
| a huge benefit: there may finally be feature parity for all
| platforms including Linux.
|
| Microsoft positions Outlook for big corporate customers. They
| often need extensibility in their clients. Preferably you
| implement them only once to run on any client (web, Windows,
| macOS, Linux, mobile, ...)
| grishka wrote:
| Windows _is_ pretty consistent if you ignore all the .net
| stuff. Just pretend that win32 is the only way to build Windows
| apps.
| andix wrote:
| Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor for
| stress. Often a lower density is totally enough and less
| stressful to use. Providing an optional "compact mode" for
| people with smaller screens or who prefer denser layouts would
| be my way to go.
| Keegs wrote:
| I'm interested to know where this idea comes from. Is there a
| good reference you recommend? My anecdotal experience has
| been that low density websites like Medium are more stressful
| than higher density websites like Substack/HN because I have
| to do more work to read the text on the page.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| That's not really comparable though. Medium and substack
| have one main item: the text (and its headings) while a
| mail application has the mail content, the subject,
| replies, timestamps, etc. and you can see a long list of
| email in a pane plus a list of folders, then you have the
| actionable items (reply, send, find, etc.). There are more
| information and actionable items on the list that in an
| article read in a browser.
| andix wrote:
| I don't know. Not an UX expert. But I think the key is the
| right amount of information. Too much and not enough is
| both equally bad.
|
| But we have much bigger screens than many years ago when
| thunderbird was initially designed.
|
| Laptop screens stayed mostly the same sizes, so it makes
| sense to adjust density to the device type you are using or
| the window size. This is already done for smartphones,
| mobile websites usually have much smaller paddings. Same is
| usually done for iOS vs iPad apps.
| bhauer wrote:
| I agree with you. Low-density desktop applications cause me
| more unease because there's more need to scroll to make
| sure I didn't miss something. It's especially egregious
| when the designers make the scrollbars invisible (appearing
| only on hover or use), meaning there's often no indication
| of more content available via scrolling. It breeds the
| habit of ritualistically scrolling each pane to make sure
| you're not missing something.
|
| There's something psychological about the appearance of a
| low-density display as well. I can't quite explain it, but
| it causes me a bit of displeasure because it feels
| wasteful. There are so many pixels available but they
| aren't doing anything for me. I don't know why this causes
| me discomfort, but it does.
|
| Finally, it's important for an application like a mail
| client to not lose sight of the fact that the way people
| use email varies. I personally use dozens of folders,
| meaning the density of the folder list should be as compact
| as reasonably possible so that I don't need to scroll.
| tracker1 wrote:
| There's some memories I have, mostly applicable to
| text/terminal applications... that productivity generally
| falls off when you have more than a dozen or so actions on
| the screen at a time. That people are usually better off
| with sub-menus or other contextual menus over too many
| options.
|
| I find the UX for GMail, for example to be particularly
| good, not perfect but very very good for the task. The
| biggest issue I have with gmail is really folder and rule
| management.
| precompute wrote:
| > Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor
| for stress.
|
| Really? And what about tiny scrollbars?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Tiny scrollbars drive me nuts. But they're not nearly as
| annoying as almost nonexistent window frames!
| andix wrote:
| Since we have mouse wheels and touch screens scroll bars
| transformed mostly away from interactive UI components to
| scroll position indicators. Good components dynamically get
| bigger when you hover over them with your mouse or long
| press they on a touch screen.
| sangriafria wrote:
| Scroll indicators are fine if they stay visible. The
| default on mobiles and macOS is that the scroll indicator
| disappears once you stop scrolling. There was a webpage
| where I couldn't tell that an area was scrollable until I
| found out by accident, at which point I enabled the
| scrollbars to always show on macOS as I didn't want to
| get tripped up by that again
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Thunderbird, for better or worse, has always had its own unique
| look. The reason is pretty simple. They don't have the
| resources to create a "universal" design that works across
| OSes.
|
| And multi platform capabilities are one of the top goals for
| Thunderbird.
|
| I think it makes sense that they accept they're unlikely to
| achieve a decent OS specific look and therefore they're focused
| on creating its own unique style.
| jraph wrote:
| This looks good! It has not reached my distribution yet, I hope
| this refreshed UI will be more convenient than the current one
| (which has done its job for the past 20 years but has some quirks
| like not having a straightforward way to follow a mail thread to
| my knowledge - well, it has but all the mails need to be in the
| same folder but sent mails are in the sent folder and received
| mails are in the received messages folder)
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > all the mails need to be in the same folder but sent mails
| are in the sent folder and received mails are in the received
| messages folder)
|
| There is a simple setting somewhere that allows you to have all
| sent emails be saved in the Inbox. Right now I'm not where I
| can look up the exact setting for this, but I'm sure you can
| find it without looking too long. I've been using it this way
| forever, all my threads are complete and easy to follow.
| orra wrote:
| Just jumping in to say I'm also incredibly happy to see this
| change (and the other expected improvements).
|
| Thunderbird currently looks dated, and I'm glad to see it
| brought into the 2020s.
|
| Sometimes current users can be dismissive of UI changes, so
| it's good to see fellow users who are happy. Moreover, let's
| not forget the new users, who were previously put off by the
| dated UI.
| elric wrote:
| I guess I'll be that dismissive current user. I don't like
| random UI changes in a tool I use as frequently as a mail
| client. The new icons don't look too bad, even if I dislike
| their flat nature.
|
| I don't think TB looks dated. It looks functional. Which is
| exactly what I want from a mail client. If I want something
| that looks modern but is dysfunctional, I'll just switch to
| Outlook.
| orra wrote:
| I obviously don't begrudge the fact Thunderbird currently
| works for you. But there are a few issues with the current
| UI:
|
| * Dark mode didn't exist for a long time, and I'm glad it
| does, but messages are still displayed brightly.
|
| * The list of emails always has a columns and a header;
| there's no simplified vertical view.
|
| * There's a threading view, but IIRC it doesn't combine
| sent and received messages into the same thread view.
| flas9sd wrote:
| just gave it a test, the design additions are introduced
| gently. Defaults for listings are on the familiar view.
| Menu quick actions exist to go from compact to normal to
| more padding.
|
| I had the 2-line message header view on my wishlist for a
| long time. Thunderbird did pretty great.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >it doesn't combine sent and received messages into the
| same thread view.
|
| As I posted above, there is a setting for saving sent
| emails in the inbox along with received messages, so that
| threads are complete.
| orra wrote:
| Thanks, if I'm honest I had skimmed over that setting
| before, not understanding its purpose. (It also looks
| like they're now introducing a unified inbox, which is
| what I wanted.)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't think TB looks dated. It looks functional. Which
| is exactly what I want from a mail client.
|
| This.
|
| For better or worse, I've rather come to view "modern"
| flashy UI aesthetics as being indicative of poorly
| performing software. It's not fair, I recognize, but in my
| personal experience, it's a reasonable heuristic.
| jokoon wrote:
| I guess the only real purpose of a raspberry pi would be to turn
| it into an light email server, but even a raspberry pi zero is
| too much powerful for my taste. I'm still not willing to pay to
| host my emails, and I don't have anything sensitive enough that
| warrants something else than gmail, even if I really want to.
|
| Also I really wish there were more ways to allow me to "trust"
| certain domains and to filter mail manually, on top of the usual
| spam filters. Gmail filters are nice but their UX could be
| better.
|
| Also there should be ways to give my email address in a way that
| is automatically trusted. For example, some optional passcode in
| my email address would look like:
|
| john.WORK9643@domain.thing
|
| john.GIRAFFEBANANA@domain.thing
|
| This already exists but is not mainstream.
|
| The email protocol could also have a "friend request" feature to
| "ask the email client" to whitelist a domain. That way, no email
| would land in the inbox unless it's from a domain the user
| approved. Those "trust request" would discourage spammers or
| websites you give your address to you unsolicited emails.
| lousken wrote:
| I feel like half of this comment section are senior UX designers.
| If that is the case, why not pitch in and work on Thunderbird
| directly?
| nik736 wrote:
| Sorry but they announced something, hyped users (including me)
| and didn't deliver (yet). I understand this is a lot of work
| and it's free software, but it still doesn't feel right and has
| nothing to do with being senior UX designers. They already
| announced and showcased a very good looking version of
| Thunderbird.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| They announced and showcased designs, which is nothing like
| any version of Thunderbird.
| planede wrote:
| I like the new look, and even though it doesn't look as compact
| as the old layout, it might actually work better on a small
| screen.
|
| While the old list looks more compact vertically, it really
| doesn't use horizontal space well. It also wastes a lot of space
| for the message header, eating away precious space from the email
| content. Hopefully the message header can be configured to scroll
| with the whole email content in the preview.
|
| The old list really doesn't work with a vertically split preview
| on a small screen, but the new card list looks perfectly viable
| for that.
| danjoredd wrote:
| I like it! Definitely looks better than it did. I can see some
| more work needing to be done, but this is definitely a huge step
| in the right direction.
| landgenoot wrote:
| I think it is really impressing to see that they upgraded the
| interface while maintaining backwards compatibility. I have been
| running the Beta for a couple of months now, but I had to modify
| settings to keep up with the design changes.
|
| One thing I haven't found out is how to disable tabs. I think it
| is strange that you can switch between calendar, contacts and
| mail using the left menu. But the switcher opens new tabs
| instead.
| taneq wrote:
| Will there be a way to show search results in list view by
| default, instead of the useless "most relevant" view? Everything
| else about Thunderbird is pretty great but this is so annoying.
| alraj wrote:
| Nice updates from Thunderbird team.
|
| But will E-mail on the whole ever get features like other chat
| platform? Even conversation view is not good on the eye. Quoting
| is ugly in long Email body.
|
| Maybe only protocols are getting updated!? I think email is only
| still here because its a form of identification.
|
| Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc.
| for a proper discussion.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack,
| etc. for a proper discussion.
|
| They are moving for instant discussions, but not for proper
| discussions.
|
| Instant messaging is the death of knowledge. Emails aren't much
| better IMO, but there's still a bigger feeling of permanency
| and availability than IM.
| jraph wrote:
| Check out DeltaChat [1] :-)
|
| It uses emails for chatting.
|
| Though personally, I'm quite happy with this separation of
| emails and chats. They are for different stuff.
|
| [1] https://delta.chat/en/
| kleiba wrote:
| > Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack,
| etc. for a proper discussion.
|
| That must be right. I got let go from my last job because I
| refused to use 5+ different instant messaging software and
| instead stick with email. In hindsight, I guess I should have
| been wiser.
| t43562 wrote:
| email works between companies because it's based on standards
| whereas messaging companies are all trying to lock us in to
| their particular system so they can "win" and that ensures that
| we cannot "chat" to people with some other software.
| amelius wrote:
| How does search work if my mails are stored remotely, on a
| server?
| tredre3 wrote:
| Thunderbird can be configured to download all emails in full
| and index them (I don't think it does that by default).
|
| But mail clients usually use the IMAP search command and the
| server does the searching: Client: A282
| SEARCH FLAGGED SINCE 1-Feb-1994 NOT FROM "Smith"
| Server: * SEARCH 2 84 882 Server: A282 OK SEARCH
| completed
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1730#section-6.4.4
| mariusor wrote:
| Thunderbird downloads local copies. A lot of email clients do
| that actually.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Meta note about the announcement:
|
| > contextual options based on the tab or Space that is currently
| active
|
| I find it quite amusing that two whitepace keys/characters, tab
| and space, are also used to refer to areas of the UI in
| thunderbird :-)
| AnonC wrote:
| FYI, Thunderbird 115 is getting released tomorrow (July 11).
| Right now, if you visit the Thunderbird website [1] or try to
| look for updates within the application, you won't find this
| release version available (you can always get the beta release
| from the website).
|
| [1]: https://www.thunderbird.net/
| MikusR wrote:
| And the beta is for 116. So there is no (sane) way to get the
| discussed and marketed 115.
| guzik wrote:
| I would advise against installing the beta for anyone
| considering it. I was in the beta for 2 years (mostly because
| it's quite challenging to get out of the beta), and the quality
| of the beta releases leaves a lot to be desired.
| dgellow wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this, I was literally in the process of
| switching to the beta channel to see this new UI!
| folkrav wrote:
| Aaaah. So that's why I wasn't finding anything, I thought I was
| going crazy. That landing page seems to hint that it's
| currently available ("Upgrade to version 115 and experience the
| future of Thunderbird!").
| hbossy wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it.
| cheeaun wrote:
| Found a typo: s/Accessability/Accessibility
| shanghaikid wrote:
| Just be curious why are people still using email client other
| than web based one? Gmail or outlook 365 is quite good, and I
| think most people will have one web browser opened always.
| muhehe wrote:
| Gmail is quite ok-ish for me, outlook is outright terrible.
| They also take quite a lot of time to load.
|
| Besides, when you have more than one mail with more providers
| it sucks.
| indymike wrote:
| For me, speed.
| dgellow wrote:
| Mostly to keep local archives of my various inboxes.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| 1. Local copy of all emails, which is also very sternly
| separate and independent because I also use POP3 rather than
| IMAP.
|
| 2. Email in web browser is arse, particularly Gmail.
| rickydroll wrote:
| most web based email clients let me dictate and edit messages
| with dragon. desktop clients are frequently anti-accessible.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Because you have more than one email address? Or because you
| want to work offline (e.g. connectivity on trains is bad)?
|
| I am more curious why people are still using the very limited
| web based ones and one for each address, when much more capable
| and universal local clients exist.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yes, webmail is a mess if you're juggling even a few
| addresses.
|
| Having access to mail offline has saved my bacon a few times,
| especially while traveling.
| thiht wrote:
| I have multiple mailboxes, not all in Gmail, and I want a
| unified way to read and write my emails.
|
| Also a local copy of the emails is nice to have.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _Just be curious why are people still using email client other
| than web based one?_
|
| So that my emails are truly mine. I _pull them off_ the server
| straight away for anti-tampering and reducing attack exposure
| should the provider be compromised. I can then compress and
| backup my emails. If my provider should falter I can change
| providers and still have all my emails, even pushing any of
| them back up to the new server should I have such a need. The
| same logic applies for my contacts. When a web-only provider
| goes offline, so do all my emails and contacts which feels too
| much like corporate capture to me.
| gog wrote:
| Multiple reasons:
|
| * not all of my email accounts are hosted by Google/Microsoft
|
| * I want one email client to manage all of my email
|
| * I want offline access and local search
|
| Other then that, I am also not a fan of gmails web interface
| and the way it handles emails.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Because I don't want to have my Emails in the cloud. That is
| true for many companies.
| esperent wrote:
| Outlook.com only loads successfully about one time out of ten
| for me. Same as MS Teams web app. I've tried all the
| recommendations around third party cookies, no dice.
|
| Gmail has weird limitations around non Gmail accounts. You can
| only add up to five, and they get checked randomly - sometimes
| only once an hour but mostly around 20 minutes. There's no way
| to force a check. This is a ridiculous limitation - imagine
| having to wait that long for an email log in code, for example.
|
| If I only used one Gmail account there would be no reason to
| use Thunderbird. Now I have something like 7 or 8 email
| addresses across several businesses and a real, reliable email
| client is vital.
| [deleted]
| tjoff wrote:
| Gmail and outlook are absolutely atrocious. Gmail can't even
| search properly, which is what you'd expect from a cloud.
|
| Searching through gigabytes of mail is trivial on a desktop but
| way too expensive to do on the cloud.
|
| So much quicker, webmail is incredibly slow no matter what
| hardware and internet you have.
| mhitza wrote:
| Local copies of your email, your own mail servers, would be a
| couple of reasons.
| eloisius wrote:
| My operating system has quite good window management and I hate
| to have everything collapsed down into a linear row of tabs in
| one window.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| They are great for managing multiple email accounts in the one
| place. Also for me, browsers are kind of ephemeral - I open and
| close them quite a bit. Whereas I have Thunderbird open
| constantly in its own separate workspace.
|
| There's also the local backup point that others have mentioned.
| dizhn wrote:
| Gmail is good? I am not seeing it. It's a weird 90s gui which
| is hard to discover. For my use case both round cube and
| afterlogic webmail lite are better than gmail. I don't use my
| company account there. (My rspamd based spam protection is
| better too)
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| The interface won't randomly be changed from under you every
| couple of years?
|
| On a more serious note, am I using my desktop so very
| differently? The idea that a web app could even come close to
| competing with a native app for me simply doesn't compute.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| I use Thunderbird for work, for legal reasons (can't move
| sensitive data to the cloud) and also practical (no mix up of
| private mails and work). Additionally, Thunderbird has chat,
| which I use for our internal system.
| shanghaikid wrote:
| By the way, before the internet 2.0, I quite love this client:
| becky: https://www.rimarts.co.jp/becky.htm, so much faster than
| thunderbird.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I don't want my mail managed by either of those two. Many other
| providers use Roundcube but that's quite "meh". But the killer
| feature for me for Thunderbird is that I can _force_ everything
| to be plain text email, both sending and receiving.
| artogahr wrote:
| Because I like all my email in one place basically. I don't
| want to hunt for tabs whenever I'm looking for specific mail
| account, mentally all my mail is behind one icon separate from
| my browser, and they all look and work the same.
|
| Also maybe not Gmail but aside from that IMHO Thunderbird
| offers better UX than all other browser mail apps.
| kevincox wrote:
| Personally I hate GMail.
|
| 1. Threads are collapsed into a 1-dimensional list making
| moderately complex discussions hard to follow.
|
| 2. Deleting many messages is very slow. With Thunderbird I
| can mash <Delete> while scanning subjects and pause for a
| second to see the actual message body. I get a lot of email
| that I need to sort through or be aware of so my morning
| generally consists of quickly (15min) going through up to 100
| conversions and getting quick status updates or just deleting
| uninteresting threads. For whatever reason doing this in
| GMail is a complete slog. (I'm not sure why, they have the
| <y> shortcut to archive and have a preview pane but it is
| just way slower, maybe they need to precache a few messages
| on either side of the current one?)
|
| 3. Threads are based on subject meaning that unrelated
| messages get grouped together. (Apparently this was changed
| in 2019
| (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/threading-
| ch...) but I've definitely seen this issue for at least a
| year after that announcement when I stopped using GMail)
|
| I do admit that most of GMail is pretty good. But for me
| these limitations are enough to really impede my workflow.
| I've found that Thunderbird is the least-bad option for me.
| However Thunderbird's performance is quite poor. I do have
| 350k messages downloaded locally but even opening my empty
| inbox sometimes causes lockups. IIUC this is because
| Thunderbird is mostly single-threaded but apparently there is
| progress slowly being made here. For example composing
| messages used to frequently lock up for a few seconds but I
| haven't seen that in a couple years.
| palmy wrote:
| I have accounts with both gmail (personal) and outlook (work),
| and so using an external email client let's me have all those
| in one place.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| If it's free in the cloud, then you're the product. When it is
| MS, often you pay and are also the product.
| [deleted]
| petre wrote:
| Does it still crash with lots of mail? I have mail filters and
| get like 500 mail a day. Always crashes. It gives me the option
| to wait or kill the app. I blame the mbox folders.
| velosol wrote:
| I've got over 10GB in my profile and have no issue although I
| use maildir and I believe I converted precisely because it was
| so slow.
| petre wrote:
| Can you switch the thunderbird mail storage to Maildir? I've
| got Maildir on the server, but locally it stores in a regular
| Mailbox and builds an index file.
| guzik wrote:
| As a long-term Thunderbird user, it saddens me to see the
| direction in which this client's development is heading, and I am
| seriously considering making a change. There are a few things I
| am discontented with, like the rather amateurish look and feel of
| the app. On top of that, there are many basic client features
| missing, such as templates (drafts are horrendous) and send later
| functionality (right now, I think I'm using about 2 add-ons, each
| of which is awful to use).
| nik736 wrote:
| What happened to the look that was announced? [0] The
| announcement was way more modern than the screenshot that is
| shown now.
|
| [0]: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap
| redox99 wrote:
| That concept looks so much better than the result, it's not
| even close.
| lol768 wrote:
| Yeah, agree with this. The design was miles ahead of what has
| actually been shipped. It's a shame, I feel like it could've
| done with more time spent on development to translate the
| designer's vision into code. They haven't even tried to port
| over the shadows on the messages (and have instead gone with
| an ugly thick border), the left sidebar has a different
| background colour to what was in the design, they're not
| using the shorter date/time formats, it generally feels much
| more cramped and less polished than the design. Even the
| selected folders are styled in an inferior way (using a de-
| saturated grey background instead of the blue-tinted light
| background and left border).
|
| I don't want to take away from the work that has been done
| here, but like .. just copy the design? You can take
| screenshots and compare to the design until it matches. It
| looked amazing, I feel bad for the designer because their
| vision has really been lost in what's been implemented.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Designer mockups and the actual end result don't always end up
| being the exact same for various reasons. Nothing a little CSS
| won't change, from what I can tell the biggest difference is
| the contrast on the panel edges and the background on the
| read/unread/selected messages.
|
| The road map does state Q4 2022 as a target so I imagine the
| work has just taken too much time already and the version 115
| deadline wasn't made.
| andix wrote:
| If the UI platform you're using supports themes, this can
| usually be fixed with that. Provide one default theme that
| looks perfectly polished, and another more compact one for
| power users.
| velosol wrote:
| Which do you default to for someone coming from years of
| Thunderbird usage? How in-your-face is compact mode toggle
| in the ootb experience for a fresh install? And sadly how
| many people are going to be new to Thunderbird these days?
|
| If I got the 'polished' version as part of the normal
| update cycle I'd be upset that my tight, space-efficient
| and incredibly responsive productivity app had decided to
| use a design language that reduces information displayed.
| The point of email is to communicate information and I now
| have to interact with the UI more than I did before to get
| the same amount of information.
|
| The launched version hits the density that Thunderbird has
| been for about a decade and is what I'd prefer (ie the
| compact mode might be better for those being upgraded).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I'm seeing a density picker right on the announcement
| page. I don't think you need to use the calm, whitespaced
| version of the theme if you don't want to.
| andix wrote:
| Best is to ask them in my opinion. After the update: ,,we
| have a new design, do you want to use it or do you want
| to stay on the more compact design? You can change it any
| time in the settings menu <placeholder>". The dialog
| should have pictograms of both designs.
| MikusR wrote:
| All those concepts are made by people who don't use computers
| on iPads.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Which is not that much of a problem for Thunderbird, which is
| released for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, but not IOS. And
| the Android version is actually K9.
| MikusR wrote:
| People designing it but not using it is not a problem?
| andiareso wrote:
| You're speculating, so no?
| orra wrote:
| I don't think it's a world apart. But the borders are darker in
| now than in the mockup, and the message card view is way
| denser. But I'm sure they'll refine these things.
| return_to_monke wrote:
| the mock-up has very little information density. I think that
| would've pissed off a lot of folks, so they reverted it.
| cris-ward wrote:
| As a designer + developer, it always frustrates me to see a
| design not translated into code well. If this is built using
| css, there really aren't any excuses for not making this look
| as slick as the visuals. Especially when the design doesn't
| appear to contain anything which looks especially difficult to
| recreate.
|
| It's difficult to overemphasise how much this kind of thing
| gives users of your software confidence. The common assumption
| is, if it looks good, it works well (and the opposite).
| andrewgioia wrote:
| Looks like that page was edited a few minutes ago to remove the
| content/screenshots.
|
| Here's what it looked like last month:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230614035125/https://developer...
|
| Totally agreed, I was so excited when I saw these mockups and I
| hate to be negative but the shipped changes so far are much
| less exciting.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I hate that "modern" nowadays equals "looks like VS code". Give
| me a menu and a toolbar with clearly associated keyboard
| shortcuts, I don't need a second dock (or even a first, i'm not
| on Mac). Tabletified webuis are inane for power users.
| delfinom wrote:
| Welcome to the world of developers continuing to make design
| decisions based on their bubble.
| ryanleesipes wrote:
| Product Manager here. The answer is because we are tied to the
| ESR release cycle we have to release at a certain time (we are
| working on changing this). So we're shipping all the work that
| is done and stable. There is still work to be done to the
| front-end and as much as people want to trivialize it, it's not
| so simple. To make the changes we did, we had to rewrite a very
| complicated front-end with some code that has been there for 20
| years and had entire systems built upon it. We are going to get
| to what the mockup showed. But we're going to build it right,
| and that means rewriting large pieces of our codebase. We'll
| ship the remaining stuff when they are ready.
| rpgbr wrote:
| From the screenshots, 102 looks better IMHO.
| cianmm wrote:
| Given that 115 is on the left and 102 is on the right (with
| left generally meaning "old" and right generally meaning "new"
| when laid out like this), along with 102 IMO looking like a
| more modern and nicer app, I actually assumed that 102 _was_
| the update.
| tekknolagi wrote:
| At this point, whenever something says "maximize your freedoms"
| and does not explain further, I think it is adding spyware or
| otherwise restricting my choices. Decades of US policy
| doublespeak, I guess...
| account42 wrote:
| I guess this applies to TB PR too:
|
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
| impissedoff1 wrote:
| Don't worry, they just pipeline your emails directly to google
| now for 'verification' for your protection. Mozilla is a
| sellout
| bhauer wrote:
| I was prepared for disappointment, given the sad direction most
| desktop applications have been heading in the past decade. But
| admittedly, it looks pretty dang good. Looking forward to giving
| it a test drive!
|
| It hit me that they may be listening to their users more than
| most desktop app developers when I scrolled to the section about
| display density. The overwhelming majority of modern desktop apps
| have exploded the use of white-space and grossly reduced the
| information density of applications. Mind you, I suspect I will
| personally want an even more dense setting than their current
| densest option. But having density settings demonstrated front
| and center gives me hope.
|
| I'm also concerned that I will still want a traditional three-
| pane split view (folders at left, message list at top-right,
| message text at bottom-right). Many desktop users do not run
| their mail client fully maximized, so a horizontally-biased
| window size should not be assumed. I run Thunderbird on the left
| half of a single monitor, meaning it's taller than it is wide. A
| three-column view will probably not use that space well.
|
| I'm guessing this is _not_ an Electron app. If I am right, that
| alone deserves praise.
|
| In sum, I am now cautiously optimistic!
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I've been watching some of the behind-the-scenes videos they've
| put out lately about design decisions and areas of improvement.
| Pretty interesting stuff. UI design is not easy when you have
| such an old product and so many different types of users.
|
| Once they pointed out some features I had no idea existed (like
| the unified view for mailboxes) my experience was notably better.
| loufe wrote:
| This looks fantastic. I've been waiting for an open source and
| linux-compatible alternative to Mailbird for the desktop.
| faefox wrote:
| From these comments I can only assume that the Thunderbird
| project is going to have a lot of new contributors in the near
| future. :) Create the future you want to see!
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| > Upgrade to version 115 and experience the future of
| Thunderbird!
|
| How? i checked for an update and it's still only on 102
| dgellow wrote:
| According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665266 115
| will be released tomorrow.
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| thanks, I'll keep my eye out for the update tomorrow
| cortic wrote:
| Wonder what the hard-drive footprint this takes now, my version;
| 60.9.1(32-bit) takes 126MB and i consider that bloated for what
| it is. At the Thunderbird 60.9 release mark; Pegasus footprint
| was 30MB, Opera Mail was 38MB, Sylpheed was 28MB, even the Bat
| was only 50MB.
|
| I run Thunderbird portable from a data pen, which is why this
| metric is important to me (i realize it won't be for the majority
| of users).
|
| Edit; Okay i know i could buy a bigger data pen, but i also do
| weekly backups to the cloud and am limited to 7mbps upload, 2g
| takes 40 minutes, so every bit i can shave off helps. But i want
| to emphasize _i realize it won 't be important for the majority
| of users_
| Otek wrote:
| Still not sure why this metric is important when you can get
| 1tb pen drive for $100
| nijave wrote:
| In the U.S. Microcenter has an in-store only deal $3.50 for a
| 64GB USB 3.1 drive right now
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Wow, I'd take 10
| cortic wrote:
| Sure, I'm working on a much smaller data pen. I also backup
| my pen drive to the cloud at 7mbps upload, 2g takes 40
| minutes.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Oh, then surely you can send him the $100 right quick to grab
| it? The hundo is no biggie, right?
| nulld3v wrote:
| Correction: you can get a 1TB SSD for under $100. It's more
| like $50 these days.
|
| You can get 1TB USBs and hard drives for far less (e.g. $10
| used).
| [deleted]
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Edit; Okay i know i could buy a bigger data pen, but i also
| do weekly backups to the cloud and am limited to 7mbps upload,
| 2g takes 40 minutes, so every bit i can shave off helps. But i
| want to emphasize _i realize it won 't be important for the
| majority of users_
|
| Curious here: so you continuously upload your Thunderbird
| executable to the cloud? Why? Most upload+sync solutions worth
| their salt (FreeFileSync, Syncthing) have competent diffing
| algorithms that don't upload the same file twice.
| cortic wrote:
| Over the years i have run into OS problems that require
| format-reinstall, which used to take days to get normality
| back. So i moved everything i could to portable software on a
| USB pen drive, browser, email, graphics, 3d, text editors,
| PIMs, i even have xampp server _mostly_ running portable. All
| saving data locally where possible, encrypted.. then i just
| back up everything periodically and i know my entire work-
| flow can continue on a new OS, or even a different PC with
| little interruption.
|
| I have looked into Sync software, and i use this for local
| backups, but I'd only trust the cloud with an encrypted file
| container, which i have to re-upload each time.
| orra wrote:
| True. They may also wish to explore backup up only their
| settings + data, and excluding unpacked executables.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| I'm glad they aren't spending dev cycles trying to optimize on-
| disk footprint. 2TB SSD go for $100 and 4Tb go for $200. Nobody
| installs so many different software that the software itself,
| even at 200MB, could take up any significant percent of the
| storage.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Nobody installs so many different software that the
| software itself, even at 200MB, could take up any significant
| percent of the storage.
|
| This isn't true, but I agree that it shouldn't be high
| priority for a resource-constrained team.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Re: size of email clients
|
| The problem with E-Mail is always <mso> html.
| davidcollantes wrote:
| From the UI design, it seems like a step backwards to me. The UI
| on 102 is so much cleaner!
| creshal wrote:
| > More than just a refreshed set of graphics, Supernova
| introduces beautiful icons with a more consistent visual style
| unique to Thunderbird. Our new designs remain sharp and pixel-
| perfect at any density setting.
|
| Translation: We break with the established platform look&feel to
| follow the brave trend of replacing easily identified colourful
| icons with vague monochrome silhouettes.
| reocha wrote:
| Pointless complaint with no actual observation of the new look
| and feel, Thunderbird is still just as colorful as it was
| before. The focus here seems to be on making the icons more
| consistent across the application as opposed to some of the
| issues they had before.
| Jaxan wrote:
| It seems they kept the colouring the same. Coloured icons
| remain coloured and monochrome ones stay monochrome.
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