[HN Gopher] Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design
___________________________________________________________________
Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design
Author : skipnup
Score : 201 points
Date : 2025-07-13 11:07 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| paintbox wrote:
| I understand that search bar position is not changeable by
| theming, it's a Thunderbird team's decision, but it irks me to
| see it take up so much premium space. It was the same with
| browsers, it took many years and iterations to get where we are
| now (tabs on top, no wasted space) and I think those lessons
| should be carried over.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| I agree with you but it irks me more that the search doesn't
| find the content I'm looking for. Apple Mail search feels much
| more useful.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| Quick filters have almost completely replaced search for me.
|
| While that does speak to the strength of TB's Quick filters
| it's also an indictment of its search
| runxel wrote:
| That we can search at all is nearly a miracle given the old
| and bad infra. At least they work hard (I hope) on replacing
| the old system with a real database. That should enable the
| conversation view (Gmail-like), too!
| 1718627440 wrote:
| How would that look like and how does it differ from the
| conversation view Thunderbird already has?
| runxel wrote:
| The current "conversation view" is misnomer. There really
| is nothing like that. Again, just think of Gmail and how
| it's handled there. This is how it would look like, e.g.
| you actually see your own response, too. Currently this
| is impossible because Thunderbird does not actually know
| what messages belong together. It just applies some ugly
| hacks to even find the ingoing emails. It's a trainwreck,
| but I believe it will get better and we will finally have
| some decent mail software out there.
| diggan wrote:
| > where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space)
|
| Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the
| side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide,
| and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of
| tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but
| for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated
| layout choice.
| criley2 wrote:
| Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I
| fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most
| don't). My (multiple) browser windows on my very big wide
| screen are all roughly in 4:3 ~square shape and top tabs make
| a lot more sense.
|
| And unless you have a browser full of tabs, vertical tab
| lists usually have massive amounts of purely wasted white
| space and are generally much less space efficient overall.
|
| Every once in a while I wouldn't mind for a specific window
| to have vertical tabs with nested tabs, as a psuedo live-
| bookmark organization system for a current project. But it's
| not a daily driver for me.
| pbmonster wrote:
| > Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I
| fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most
| don't).
|
| Are you kidding? I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their
| browsers fullscreen.
|
| Using the drag-and-drop feature that splits the screen
| between two GUIs already marks the office power user, a
| third windows on a single screen brings us into the
| territory of the hardcore nerds running tiling window
| managers.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers
| fullscreen.
|
| I've never had my browser in fullscreen unless it's media
| content.
|
| I too prefer tabs at top than to the side, as I have four
| screens, 2x32' and 2x27' -- having the tabs at the top of
| my top screen feels more natural.
| bombela wrote:
| It used to be possible to run web pages and applications
| not full screen. But moderne UIs are so wasteful of
| space, with massive icons, it has become almost
| impossible.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers
| fullscreen.
|
| 99% of the folks I interact with usually just use
| whatever size the browser opens in initially, then
| _maybe_ resize it if they 're reading for a while, or
| need to see more info. If half a pic shows up, they might
| try to fumble to grab a handle to resize to see more of
| the pic; sometimes it works, sometimes they end up giving
| up.
|
| Going 'full screen' may be different than just 'as wide
| and tall as the monitor', because 'full screen' mode gets
| rid of the window chrome, which causes confusion.
|
| The only folks I know who consistently use browsers 'full
| screen' are on mobile devices where that's generally the
| only option.
| rascul wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers
| fullscreen.
|
| Do you mean maximized? I might agree if you do. I almost
| never see browsers full screen except when playing
| videos.
| ShadowBanThis03 wrote:
| The only things I run full-screen on a big monitor are
| drawing programs and development tools.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers
| fullscreen.
|
| I have no idea what the statistics are, but I certainly
| never run the browser fullscreen and I rarely see others
| do so.
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| FWIW, I run my browser full screen. I run most apps full
| screen. By full screen, I don't mean that weird macos
| thing where it removes everything and locks you into a
| single app in a single workspace but the more standard
| one where the window is just expanded to fill the screen
| space.
|
| The only time I run an app without fullscreen-ing it is
| if I don't have to do much in it or it doesn't have
| enough content to use up all the space anyways. Like
| system settings. Otherwise, I am using the app -> I am
| focusing on it -> I want it to take all the space it
| wants and show me everything going on inside it. My
| browser and my text editor are apps where I spend 99% of
| my time so they are always full screen.
| panzi wrote:
| People don't maximize their windows? I have a 16:9 4k
| monitor and I maximize everything (browser, IDE, image
| editor, terminal, mail client) except for the rare occasion
| when I need something viewed side by side (editor+browser,
| terminal+browser, 2 file browsers, etc.).
| _flux wrote:
| Is the web not a terrible experience in 16:9? My main
| browser window is closer to 1:1, and even then I have
| tabs on the left.
| rascul wrote:
| It's not.
| dotancohen wrote:
| One of my monitors is 9:16 - I've rotated it 90deg. It's
| terrific for reading PDF documents, web pages, a
| terminal, and the IDE.
|
| The only thing it's not really good for is the email
| client, video, and pictures. For those I have another
| monitor in the standard landscape configuration.
| _flux wrote:
| I used to have a similar setup, but I replaced the dual
| head setup (24" 9:16 and 30" 16:9) with one ultrawide
| one.
|
| I suppose just as wide 16:9 display would have been even
| nicer, but it's fine. There are some benefits in window
| placement in having just a single screen, even if window
| managers could work better for this use (e.g. have a
| "second screen" region where there are separate
| workspaces).
| qingcharles wrote:
| I run everything maximized on my 32:9 and it's fine to
| me.
|
| (I've never had overlapping windows in my life -- I find
| seeing more than one thing super distracting and it
| annoys me that this seems to be the default on Macs)
| panzi wrote:
| Most websites handle it just fine, for the advanced
| interface of Mastodon the screen could be even wider! For
| the rare website that doesn't handle 16:9 well I have
| this bookmarklet:
|
| javascript:var%20b=document.documentElement;b.style.width
| ='900px';b.style.marginLeft='auto';b.style.marginRight='a
| uto';void(0)
| layer8 wrote:
| While the majority probably does, I don't maximize
| anything that doesn't have subpanels by default (like
| IDEs). In particular, I generally size application
| windows such that their main text content (if any) takes
| up a suitable middle column on the screen. That also
| means that I often have application windows with fixed-
| sized side panels _not_ fill the whole width of the
| screen. My browser windows are by default something
| between 5:4 and 4:3-sized. Even with vertical tabs, the
| added width wouldn't be enough to make them full-width.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > And unless you have a browser full of tabs, vertical tab
| lists usually have massive amounts of purely wasted white
| space and are generally much less space efficient overall.
|
| The Firefox and Edge implementations have a collapsible
| panel for the vertical tabs. I agree if they didn't, it
| would be worse than horizontal tabs.
|
| However, my pet peeve is that it's now impossible to
| disable tabs altogether, say when using a tiling WM that
| implements tabbing itself, controllable with the usual
| shortcuts. Firefox has an extension that always moves tabs
| to a separate window, but it's janky.
| perching_aix wrote:
| This is a popular argument, just one small problem with it:
| the 4:3 displays of old (640x480 et al) were also "wide"
| rather than "tall". So by this logic, there would have never
| been a time where horizontal tabs (or indeed, a horizontal
| taskbar) would have "made sense".
|
| So I think it's reasonably easy to see that this is not and
| was never the actual driver behind this decision. It's
| completely retconned.
| layer8 wrote:
| The driver was that unless you have a large number of tabs,
| vertical tabs waste more space than horizontal tabs, due to
| the width of the tabs column for vertical tabs vs. the
| height of the tabs row for horizontal tabs. Like in this
| [0] random example with just single tabs, there is a lot
| more wasted space on the left and right (below "My
| Notebook" and "Phonetics") than on the top (to the right of
| "New Section 1"). If we used a vertical writing system
| instead of a horizontal one, we'd have had vertical tabs
| from the start.
|
| Widescreen monitors _afford_ that wasting of space better.
|
| [0] http://www.onenotegem.com/uploads/allimg/191124/12310QH
| 9-3.g...
| ragnese wrote:
| Well, 4:3 is _less_ wide than 16:9 or 16:10 or whatever
| else we 're doing these days.
|
| But, I do agree that this was likely never the driver. In
| fact, I've always thought the "obvious" explanation is
| simply that window controls and title bars are at the top,
| and since tabs are like nested windows inside a window,
| they would follow basically the same patterns...
| eumenides1 wrote:
| Tree Style Tabs! Tree Style Tabs! Tree Style Tabs!
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I have Tree Style Tabs on my personal computer, and
| Sideberry on my work computer. Sideberry is much better and
| much faster.
| danbruc wrote:
| There are browser - Vivaldi for example - that allow you to
| place the tab strip on any edge you want. To me personally it
| just looks and feels wrong, maybe just because of years of
| exposure to tabs on the top, but I can not get used to it,
| even though I have to admit that the tab labels are much
| nicer to read on the left if you have sufficiently many tabs
| open.
| encom wrote:
| Not only does Vivaldi allow you to do that, but you can
| customise every menu in the program. I've modified the
| context menu to have exactly the things I want, in the
| order I want them. This is what Firefox should have been.
|
| It's too bad I'll have to dump Vivaldi soon, now that
| Google is killing adblockers.
| ShadowBanThis03 wrote:
| Not if you're using side-by-side windows.
| yoz-y wrote:
| This. Side by side windows and horizontal splits make it so
| vertical tabs are not that useful.
|
| TBH in general I find tabs less useful as they multiply.
| Most of the time I just Cmd+A in chrome to search for the
| tab I need.
| ShadowBanThis03 wrote:
| Not to mention that many Web sites are not optimized for
| modern screens, let alone truly large ones. There are
| still far too many absurdly narrow vertical text columns,
| riddled with tiny non-expandable images, on sites that
| appear to cater to 640 x 480 screens of yore.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Options are good. I hate having tabs or other controls
| vertically on the side. I like them at the top. There's no
| reason we can't both be happy.
| naysunjr wrote:
| Yeah this. What should irk about search bar is cannot be
| moved. The static nature of UI these days stinks when back
| in the day we aimed for more composable user facing apps.
| Mod games by dumping a model file in a dir; boomed
| recomposed the experience.
|
| Now it's all micro transactions so an MBA doesn't have to
| work anymore.
|
| Now those are power user and dev tools and users get what
| they decided was the just right info dense or sparse
| design.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I want both via a single button-press, or defaults per-
| monitor.
|
| What I want on an ultrawide isn't what I want on a portrait
| 16:9 side monitor.
| conductr wrote:
| I generally have the same hatred but oddly on Mac OS I
| prefer the Dock on the right side. I've been dual Win/Mac
| user and have had this preference on Mac for a long time.
| Not sure why as it goes against almost everything else I do
| LOL
| ordinarily wrote:
| Horizontal space is still a premium regardless of monitor
| size when designing/building for responsive viewports.
| Vertical space is almost zero cost in terms of design
| constraints.
|
| Even on large monitors you'd be surprised the number of
| people at 150% zoom with small windows opened instead of
| fullscreen.
| conductr wrote:
| Being able to scroll on unfocused applications has been a
| game changer for non-fullscreen uses. I never zoom though,
| except HN
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Tabs at the top is wasted space
|
| Not if your screen is in portrait orientation.
|
| But that wasn't the point of the person you are responding to
| anyway. The point is all the empty wasted space that was
| above the tabs before it was removed and the tabs moved to
| the top.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I've always been sad "tabs + browser bar + title bar" (i.e.
| in a single row) at the top never seems to stick around as an
| option. On larger monitors this results in a near perfect
| utilization of space while still being able to have
| reasonably wide tab titles.
|
| Vivaldi & Floorp offer this through being highly customizable
| but they tend to have cracks around the edges of their use
| for the same reason.
|
| I was first introduced to this with a Chrome flag back in
| 2011 https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-new-compact-
| navigation-f... but they ended up backing out for various
| reasons (the largest of which was probably the specific
| design used a pop-down url bar which went over the page area,
| so could be spoofed).
|
| In 2021 Safari became the largest browser I've seen roll this
| out as a 1st party feature to general users, but it faced
| some backlash https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-get-more-
| space-in-safar... I'm not a big fan of their particular
| styling choices but the layout was pretty decent.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Tabs visible at all is wasted space. I only need to see the
| options when I'm actively trying to change tab. I don't need
| to see them on the screen at all times.
|
| This is one of the things I love about my Emacs config. I
| just hit a key to get things like buffers or file trees up
| when I need them, then they disappear.
|
| I'd love to have a keyboard driven browser but whenever I've
| tried I always end up with one hand on the mouse anyway so it
| doesn't work.
| greyshi wrote:
| Have you tried vimium? It's amazing. You can press a single
| key to search tabs, a single key to search history,
| bookmarks, and many other functionalities. Not using a
| mouse is also pretty easy with the link navigation feature
| (f by default), but even with one hand the commands are so
| succinct that it works well.
| braiamp wrote:
| Since nobody mentioned, Firefox and I think Chrome has
| vertical tabs, Firefox is just released
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/140.0/releasenotes/
| chartered_stack wrote:
| The Thunderbird search bar really sucks. Advanced search with
| the actual functionality is hidden away behind some weird menu
| while the big honking bar at the top of each page does basic
| text search and offers nothing more.
| laxd wrote:
| The search bar does filtering in the current folder. Fast,
| simple, and what I most commonly want.
| Calzifer wrote:
| > I understand that search bar position is not changeable by
| theming,
|
| It is changeable. With enough dedication you can go a long way
| just with CSS.
|
| In this case it is even rather easy because the "unified
| toolbar" the thing containing the search box, the menu bar (if
| shown) and the tab bar are three elements in the same flex box.
| They can be reordered by setting the order property.
|
| Only downside in this case is that (if client side decoration
| is not disabled in the settings) the window buttons (close,
| minimize) are also part of the unified toolbar and would end
| (without further fixes) below the tab bar.
|
| As a quick (and dirty) experiment I moved the tab bar left to
| the search bar in the same row just with:
| #titlebar { flex-direction: row; > unified-
| toolbar { order: 2; width: 50vw; } #tabs-toolbar {
| order: 1; width: 50vw; } }
|
| And a hacky way which often works good enough is to reposition
| and hardcode stuff with position:absolute/fixed/sticky.
|
| Finally Thunderbird's own customization dialog can be used to
| fill the empty space around the search bar. By default it has a
| spacer left and right but that is easy to change even without
| custom CSS.
| hulitu wrote:
| > tabs on top, no wasted space) and I think those lessons
| should be carried over.
|
| hell no. I want the title bar, the scrollbars and the window
| border back. I work with more than one window.
| eviks wrote:
| How do scroll bars help manage multiple windows?
| userbinator wrote:
| Makes it much easier to see where one window ends.
| eviks wrote:
| There is plenty wasted space in browser tabs, from close
| buttons to padding to rounded/non-rect corners
| hk1337 wrote:
| 1. Didn't realize Thunderbird was still available
|
| 2. Windows 11 design on macOS would be trippy.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 1. There is no better open-source alternative for Windows for
| mail/calendar/contacts client.
| nopcode wrote:
| betterbird has "better" in the name
| wongarsu wrote:
| because barely anybody is making desktop
| mail/calendar/contacts clients anymore. There is very little
| development in that market as most people have moved to web
| interfaces
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And even Outlook is a web app these days, with
| "performance" to match.
| yuters wrote:
| There really isn't even if you don't need all the bells and
| whistles. I want my email client to be as simple and minimal
| as possible and Thunderbird seemed like the last candidate
| for this. Surprisingly it's the only one I could theme and
| strip down enough to meet my need.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Plain and simple is why I like macMail but it's a bit too
| simple and really mostly useful if you use iCloud email
| primarily.
|
| macMail is _okay_ with fastmail
| RockstarSprain wrote:
| I am using Mailspring (0) and it's pretty good.
|
| (0) https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring
| nosioptar wrote:
| Claws is available for windows. For my tastes,I'd call it
| "better" than Thunderbird.
|
| https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/
| dartharva wrote:
| Honest question, what do you even need a native client for?
| What can you do on Thunderbird that you can't on a browser?
| dolmen wrote:
| Store e-mails offline.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It's a good looking theme, and definitely fits the design, but
| I'll never understand why people want to make Thunderbird look
| like Outlook.
| detectd wrote:
| I'd say to make it aesthetically consistent with other apps on
| the platform, but (especially) Windows is a hodgepodge.
| ape4 wrote:
| Maybe I am the only one who didn't know this. It seems "fluent"
| doesn't refer to a fluent interface in programming
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface but rather its a
| name of a Microsoft style https://fluent2.microsoft.design
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| Perhaps embarrassingly, I knew the second one, but not the
| first.
| tummler wrote:
| Love the theme.
|
| Now if only Thunderbird weren't a clunky POS. I've lost track of
| how many times I've given it another chance after people swear
| "it's really better now" again.
|
| Still refuses to follow chosen settings for how much mail data to
| download/store locally (it always eventually downloads
| everything).
| nailer wrote:
| JMAP support has been open for 9 years now:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322991
| sylens wrote:
| It's wild to me they won't prioritize this. We have good JMAP
| providers like Fastmail, we just need client support
| RussianCow wrote:
| Isn't Fastmail basically the only one? What other well
| known provider supports JMAP?
| StalwartLabs wrote:
| Soon Thundermail by Mozilla!
| snozolli wrote:
| _it always eventually downloads everything_
|
| I have the opposite problem: I absolutely _cannot_ get it to
| download everything. What it does do, however, is constantly
| re-download mail, to the point that it 's extremely slow and
| regularly pops up "folder cannot be compacted because another
| operation is in progress" errors when I'm just trying to click
| on folders.
| Dennip wrote:
| Why oh why can't the search default to "view as list" _weeps_
| bluedino wrote:
| Had you told me back in 1995, that in 30 years we'd have 4K
| screens and I would only be able to see 10 emails in my inbox at
| one time...
|
| Netscape 2.02 or Microsoft Mail client from back then looks
| amazing by comparison.
| dotancohen wrote:
| This isn't Thunderbird. This is a Thunderbird theme.
|
| Normal Thunderbird still gets two to three dozen email subject
| lines on the screen. I absolutely love it, I've been using it
| for over 20 years through the rough and through the good. We're
| in a good period now, and it's been a good period for quite
| some time.
| nullgeo wrote:
| Not a fork of thunderbird. It's custom CSS that renders the
| thunderbird "chrome".
| dotancohen wrote:
| Corrected, thanks.
| markasoftware wrote:
| just tried installing it in case last time I tried it >5
| years ago was during the "rough".
|
| I was impressed that it correctly inferred the IMAP and SMTP
| settings for my custom domain name, but after using it for
| ~30 seconds random old emails started appearing at the top of
| the email list, above my latest emails.
|
| Maybe I'll try again in another 5 years.
|
| edit: someone thinks i didn't wait for imap to finish. I did.
| My latest email appeared at the top. Then 30 seconds later
| some ancient emails popped up above it, seemingly triggered
| by scrolling in the email list pane.
| pjerem wrote:
| Or just maybe click the arrow to sort by date ?
| dingnuts wrote:
| lol seriously, my guy didn't even wait until imap was
| done. what vendetta does he have against Thunderbird
| xnorswap wrote:
| I'm going to be controversial and say that if sorting by
| date isn't the default in an email client, it's a broken
| client.
|
| That's beyond just breaking "Have sensible defaults", and
| is well into, "Your defaults are broken".
| pjerem wrote:
| That's the default.
|
| But it sounds like OPs mails were sorted differently for
| an unknown reason.
| accoil wrote:
| I get something like that in the initial IMAP sync. Some of
| my old emails will surface to the top with the current date
| as today. Never really bothered looking into as it only
| happens once, but I've been assuming that the date header
| on those emails were missing.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Yes, I also had that problem and this is exactly the
| cause. When you resync the mailbox later it gets redated
| again. It is actually really stupid, because there are
| only TWO mandatory headers: Date and From. Getting this
| wrong seams to be really incompetent of the sender
| software.
| markasoftware wrote:
| i see, this likely happened to me.
| ShadowBanThis03 wrote:
| Did he say it was Thunderbird?
| SebastianKra wrote:
| I'm to young for Netscape, but do you mean this [^1] interface,
| that's truncating the subject and hiding the body?
|
| Also, which use-cases do you have where you need to see 20
| emails at once?
|
| [^1]:
| https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/ns_4_email.jpg
| bluedino wrote:
| Well, you can have a higher screen resolution than 640x480,
| resize those columns, hide the ones you don't use...
|
| Look at the Thunderbird 1 and 3 screenshots on that page
|
| http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/
| wpm wrote:
| That interface is probably 640x480, so of course it's
| truncating things.
|
| And I'm sorry, you really can't fathom why someone who gets a
| ton of email would want to see more of them in their inbox at
| the same time?
| graphememes wrote:
| time to make an email client...
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Thats just a setting in thunderbird. Indont see the problem
| with personal preference to show less emails
| citrin_ru wrote:
| A couple years ago I did run one of early Thunderbird versions
| in a Windows7 VM and it did look amazing too. TB designers are
| likely trying to improve UI but most updates are just change
| how it looks not necessary making it look better or improving
| UX. Though quick filter is a relatively recent addition if I'm
| not mistaken and I use it a lot.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Let me tell you then that you can see 9 lines of text in the
| e-mail which is currently opened.
| throwaway915 wrote:
| Change it yourself then. It's right there in the documented CSS
| file. Not even overobscured SCSS!
|
| And Netscape in 1995 look good in comparison to.. Pine?
| accrual wrote:
| I agree with others about the search bar, kind of looks like a
| fallen tree in an otherwise pristine field of aero grass.
|
| I love the translucency look of "Fluent" design though. Windows
| Terminal has a "Use acrylic material in the tab row" which I like
| to enable. It feels like a callback to Windows 7's Aero which I
| miss.
|
| Perhaps together with Microsoft's Fluent/acrylic design and
| Apple's WIP Liquid Glass UI, and with projects like this
| Thunderbird theme bringing the design to OSS projects, we can
| bring back some of the optimism and beauty of those early glass
| designs.
| Jean-Papoulos wrote:
| I love how much unused spaces this adds, I really needed more
| blank pixels in my mailbox instead of distracting text.
| Calzifer wrote:
| > Also, note that some areas of ThunderBird are rendered outside
| of the influence of userChrome.css in a "Shadow DOM" - as such,
| it is not possible to fully theme all elements of Thunderbird.
|
| With some limitations it is possible to restyle Shadow DOM
| elements. It is just a lot harder to select the right element if
| it is inside a shadow dom.
|
| I found a workaround (don't remember where I found it) which I
| use extensively in my personal userChrome.css.
|
| The basic concept (afair) is that you can write selectors which
| match inside the shadow dom as long as they do not need to
| "cross" the shadow dom "boundary".
|
| A good starting point for me is often to select by tag and part
| attribute, e.g. image[part="icon"] { ... }
|
| Now the trick to style a particular instance of a web component
| (shadow dom instance) is to use variables and defaults.
|
| With a selector which targets the "root element" of the shadow
| dom I set variables for any value I want to change and with a
| selector which is fully inside the shadow dom I add styles using
| the variable (which is then only defined for that particular
| instance) or a default which effectively cancels my custom style
| anywhere else.
|
| As concrete example the dialog to create new calendar events has
| a drop down box to select the calendar where each entry is
| prefixed with a dot with calendar color. The menulist has a
| shadow dom and the menupopup another. I styled those dots as
| squares (for fun and because I think the modern web is to round).
| So to set the variables on the "outside" I have:
| menulist#item-calendar { --parthack-boxmarker-radius: 0;
| --parthack-boxmarker-image-size: 1em; --parthack-
| boxmarker-border: inset 0 0 0 1px color-mix(in srgb, black 20%,
| transparent); }
|
| and to apply it menuitem.menuitem-iconic >
| hbox.menu-iconic-left > image.menu-iconic-icon { border-
| radius: var(--parthack-boxmarker-radius) !important;
| width: var(--parthack-boxmarker-image-size, revert-layer)
| !important; height: var(--parthack-boxmarker-image-size,
| revert-layer) !important; box-shadow: var(--parthack-
| boxmarker-border, none); }
|
| (the variable prefix "parthack" has no special meaning; it just
| evolved because I initially used it to hack styles onto shadow
| dom elements over the part attribute)
|
| Now this will change only the icons only in the menulist with id
| 'item-calendar' and leave others unchanged. Whether I use revert-
| layer as default or something else depends on what style the
| element has by default and try and error.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Would it be possible to make a PostCSS plugin for this?
| Calzifer wrote:
| Don't know what exactly PostCSS is but with a JavaScript
| addon it would probably be wiser to inject the custom css
| directly into the shadow dom instance if possible and
| avoiding such hacks.
|
| Also, by the way, when JavaScript addons get involved:
| userChrome.css is applied quite unfortunate in the css
| cascade. It gets low priority that is why they are usually
| full of !important rules. With JavaScript it is possible to
| add custom css instead as so called author stylesheet which
| makes it easier to override default styles. (never tried it
| myself)
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/msoqte/how_can_.
| ..
| Calzifer wrote:
| Also
|
| > it is also not possible to theme the settings areas.
|
| I don't see a reason why this should not work. If by settings
| area the author means the settings page which in modern
| Thunderbird is more or less a web page in the content area, it
| should be stylable with userContent.css instead of
| userChrome.css.
|
| The hard part is to find the right @-moz-document selectors for
| each individual content page.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I'm still using the Monterail theme for Thunderbird [0], which
| sadly seems to have never really progressed beyond the proof-of-
| concept stage and hasn't been updated in eight years.
|
| [0] https://github.com/spymastermatt/thunderbird-monterail/
| ttoinou wrote:
| Do the people who style their app actually use their app on a
| daily basis for long amount of time ? It seems to me the basic
| design of app are often the best for eye fatigue, frequent usage,
| recognizing which information is where fast, contrast, low margin
| / good usage of space etc. The current design of Thunderbird is
| not pretty, but it's effective. I used Thunderbird everyday for
| 10+ years with 100k+ emails in 10+ email boxes, never once did I
| think about changing the design
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > It seems to me the basic design of app are often the best
|
| Considering the plethora of options, I'd say it's impossible to
| say what is better until an alternative is tried. And then you
| can only say that particular alternative is not better than
| basic, but you still can't say basic is best.
|
| People that style their apps try many alternatives, and often
| find things that work better than basic _for them_.
| KetoManx64 wrote:
| Yes, I style my LibreWolf/Floorp desktop applications to suit
| my preferences/workflow and I spend 8+ hours a day using them.
| I hide elements I don't need, make my sidebar tabs auto
| collapse/expand when I hover over them, change the scaling
| factor. While yes, the basic design is good and works for 90%
| of people that use Firefox, I have over the last decade
| developed a personal a workflow that works very well for me,
| and i would argue is much more efficient than the average
| users. The advantage of open source software is that you can
| mold them into the shape that suits your preferences.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| If you ever document it, I'd love to read about your
| workflow. me@hammyhavoc.com
| bshacklett wrote:
| I would love to know what software Atlassian uses to maintain
| documentation, because I have a hard time believing they're
| eating their own dog food.
| girvo wrote:
| Confluence, and DAC mostly
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Generally if I care enough to style/mod an app it's because I'm
| using it a lot and its stock UI isn't doing the trick.
|
| Sometimes it can also drive me to switch to a different app,
| like with Firefox. FF used to be my secondary browser, but Zen
| (a Firefox fork) aligns with my needs and preferences better
| and doesn't require userChrome mods and addons that are likely
| to break after some random update some day, so I switched.
|
| Thunderbird would benefit from its own Zen-like fork in my
| opinion. Its UI has always felt clunky and awkward, and the
| "new" design just shifts around the awkwardness.
| encom wrote:
| As someone who thinks browser UI peaked in 2008, Zen just
| feels like Firefox UI designers on ritalin. Had to
| about:config hack it to show the KDE system titlebar. This
| software is not for me.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Since a couple of the machines I use regularly have small
| screens (12-13"), hiding the standard titlebar and
| collapsing browser UI elements into the titlebar area were
| among the userChrome mods I had been applying to Firefox,
| so that particular bit of UI design in Zen is desirable for
| me.
|
| On desk-bound machines hooked to 27" displays, this isn't
| really necessary, but the UI being built around vertical
| tabs as the standard (as opposed to most browsers, where
| vertical tabs are a tacked-on afterthought if they're even
| supported without addons) is still a relevant selling
| point.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Something not making my eyeballs bleed is part-and-parcel to me
| actually wanting to use it. I value function over form, but
| Thunderbird has never been a looker. Plenty of UX friction too.
| It's just convoluted and messy.
| conductr wrote:
| > Do the people who style their app actually use their app on a
| daily basis for long amount of time ?
|
| yes, I'm not wasting my time customizing something unless I use
| it frequently.
|
| Not a Thunderbird user, but the Outlook default looks similar
| to the screenshot on the linked page. Initial things that drive
| me crazy; 1) left pane is a complete waste of screen real
| estate. I have mine collapsed to just be icons, it's about
| 1/6th the width as what's shown. It expands if I need it to (on
| tap/hover). 2) I like my inbox above my message preview not
| next to it. On the inbox pane, I get From & Subject on line 1
| and initial message text on line 2. Same real estate with more
| content and context. I really like having the message preview
| line without actually clicking on the message.
|
| Also, by having the message preview pane wider than tall, long
| paragraphs do not wrap so abruptly and I get more content on
| the screen. This lessens my need to scroll unless the message
| has a lot of paragraphs or images. Same for the initial message
| preview that's visible in the inbox line 2, if it's wider I can
| see more text. For a lot of emails, I find they are short
| enough that I can read it all in the inbox without even looking
| at the message pane. This means I can scroll/scan my inbox
| quickly without opening each item in the message pane to view
| it.
|
| Anyways, I wouldn't care if I didn't use Outlook daily. For
| some people, maybe the defaults work but I feel like I get a
| lot of productivity out of these minor customizations
| huhtenberg wrote:
| So much padding So much wasted space
| Such low information density
|
| Will collect many votes on Dribbble though.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Screens these days are huge and high resolution, and my eyes
| aren't getting any younger. I'm finding that I like more white
| space and padding as time goes on.
|
| For normal Thunderbird, I swapped from the more compact options
| to the most loose/padded options.
| creshal wrote:
| Screens are huge, that's why I want to take advantage of it
| and fit more windows on them, not less. But with how foamy
| modern apps are, it can be a struggle to have two windows
| side by side on a 2560px wide 27" screen and not have content
| cut off that would've been perfectly visible on an 800px
| screen 20 years ago.
| eviks wrote:
| For your eyes you'd better have larger text instead of
| wasting the same space with floating
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I do both.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There's a lot of padding in the screenshot, but you can also
| see that any user can reduce it by resizing the sidebar and
| inbox column.
| userbinator wrote:
| Much padding, such space. Wow.
|
| (Couldn't resist...)
| guluarte wrote:
| Looks cool, but the last thing I want to do is have my
| Thunderbird look like Outlook.
| kookamamie wrote:
| > Thunderbird
|
| Ahh, does it still have the bug that may accidentally
| delete/corrupt all your emails?
| neogodless wrote:
| At first glance, it's visually pleasing... but I need to see a
| screenshot with 20-50 folders next!
|
| (I use a modified https://johnnydecimal.com/ for email folders,
| and have probably close to 100 folders, though most stay
| collapsed so you might see ~20 at one time.)
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Is there any extension for Thunderbird that can handle "External
| Accounts" per-address signatures and sending identities already
| configured on a Gmail account?
|
| I always go "I'll check out Thunderbird again" then "nope" out
| when I see it can't handle this kind of set up in the OOBE and
| most extensions don't receive ongoing support and thus stop being
| compatible.
|
| I use Gmail on my phone and Pixel Watch, so ditching this setup
| is a non-starter as reconfiguring something as basic as email
| every time I get a new device or switch distros isn't my idea of
| a good time.
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