Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

monterail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 150 posts

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#91

Post by XorNot »

bhauer wrote: post #17
cs702 wrote: post #7

Former Thunderbird user here. Much more important than shiny new UI, what I'd like to see is seamless out-of-the-box syncing with online calendars and contacts . (At one point, I tried all the available add-ons for syncing with Google's apps; none of those add-ons worked well for me.)

Importantly, since this is a Mozilla project, that service should be self-hostable [1] to disintermediate the multi-device synchronization platform. It should not be necessary to have a third-party observe all my contacts and calendars. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/

A Mozilla stack for contacts/calendar like Firefox sync would be amazing.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#92

Post by jerrac »

If any Thunderbird devs see this, I don't mind a visual refresh, but here's my real wishlist:

* Sync accounts and settings between multiple computers. (Using syncthing only works so well...) Over my local LAN. I am not going to send my information out into the cloud if I can help it.

* Thunderbird on my Android devices, also synced with my desktop and laptop.

* Groupwise integration so I don't have to log into webmail every time I have an appointment to accept or reject.

* Integrated calendar. Why is it an addon? Seriously. I have never understood that.

Anyway... I'd also love to see an easier to understand community platform. I have no idea where I really should post this comment in the official Thunderbird ecosystem.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#93

Post by hackbinary »

jeffdavis wrote: post #88
hackbinary wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like rust is a requirement for the build process: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...

Why is that significant?

>> ... get some Rust code in.

Maybe I misread it, but to me it sounded like Mozilla did not have Rust support in Thunderbird, but it seems that there is some already ...

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#94

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

This survey is clearly manipulative and designed to get the results they want ("please give us the new shiny design").

The designs are shown at different resolutions: Note how the text on the old one is clearly readable, while the new one is completely unreadable. Additionally, the new design is given a much higher screen. This makes the old design look much more crowded, and obfuscates the fact that you can't fit more than 10 e-mail headers (with truncated subject lines!) onto a 27" screen with the new design. Additionally, they chose a plaintext e-mail with a boring text for the old design screenshot, while using a designed HTML mail for the new design.

Here's a slightly fairer mockup: https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png for direct comparison with https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/defaul... - I've redone the text on the subject of the selected entry to show how it would look like without the blur resulting from scaling the available mockup.

The survey itself has one question that is half about usability ("confusing or clear"), with the 4 remaining questions being about bullshitty feel-good/marketing attributes ("boring or inspiring", "unprofessional or professional", "outdated or modern", "untrustworthy or trustworthy") carefully picked to only care about visual appearance.

A much more attractive redesign idea would be showing full threads with sent and received messages in context like Gmail does, while maintaining the standard three-pane view (just allow to scroll up in the bottom pane to see older messages, including sent ones).

Edit to add some things I noticed while writing another response: Note how the "tasks" list is cut off because it simply no longer fits the screen (where the current version has enough space to show it), missing UI elements in the new design (the entire quick filter bar, which would reduce the available space to 3 (!) e-mail headers), the harshly truncated and thus useless subject lines in the new design, the lack of the "this is a draft" toolbar in the new design, that was added to make the old one look more crowded.

Thunderbird is forgetting their target audience. I suspect that people who like shiny over features have long switched to web interfaces. The new design would take away what used to appeal to their remaining users.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#97

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

saulrh wrote: post #23

They're cheating on the screenshots in the survey. The "current thunderbird" screenshot is taken at half the resolution (or twice the font size) of the "thunderbird redesign" screenshot, giving their redesign twice as much space with which to display the same information. Obviously it's going to look better with that advantage. I'm not sure exactly what it'd mean to "trust" a user interface, but I'm definitely sure I…

That's not the only trick they use. Note the choice of plaintext vs. HTML mail (even though current TB supports HTML just fine), interesting looking mail vs. mock-ups of bad spam, different screen aspect ratio, and of course the leading survey questions.

I've created a "fairer" mockup (same resolution/size): https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png

Note how the "tasks" list is cut off because it simply no longer fits the screen (where the current version has enough space to show it), missing UI elements in the new design (the entire quick filter bar, which would reduce the available space to 3 (!) e-mail headers), the harshly truncated and thus useless subject lines in the new design, the lack of the "this is a draft" toolbar in the new design, that was added to make the old one look more crowded.

Thunderbird is forgetting their target audience. I suspect that people who like shiny over features have long switched to web interfaces. The new design would take away what used to appeal to their remaining users.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#98

Post by shakkhar »

CJefferson wrote: post #49

How about fixing 6 year old bugs, which mean you can't search for the word "wedding"? This kind of thing is why I left thunderbird. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844 At the least do a pass over old bugs and let us know if they will ever be fixed, or close them.

Exactly. How about not losing scroll position when switching tabs? Better spam filtering? How come threaded view doesn't work for mails sent by Outlook? (I know we have Microsoft to blame for that, but a workaround should not be impossible to conceive since Outlook somehow manages that already.)

I suspect the people getting excited about a face-lift don't really use Thunderbird very often.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#99

Post by nirv »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #6

Does anyone else feel that most UI redesigns are just change for the sake of change that don't actually make anything better?

Generally not, but in this case I do. The proposed redesign[1] is essentially the same layout, but with a fancy theming. It's good practice not to break the familiar interface, but there's a lot to improve in terms of UI/UX in Thunderbird. For example:

a) presented vertical layout is the same as it is today—you need to have a really high resolution (1080p+) widescreen to fit the entire window. Messages section could have rows with multi-line inlined metadata, thus be significantly narrowed[2];

b) threaded messages feed (or so called conversations) on the same screenshot is presented too vaguely for such an important feature, I bet I'll still have to jump between Sent/Inbox folders in 2018+...;

c) replying to/composing a message is impossible to do in tabs[3] (10 years old), you have to manage separate windows. And there's nothing on this matter in current redesign proposal;

d) not a single word/screenshot on calendar/todo-lists management; etc.

Simply put, this is not the way to redesign such an important large application. Has there been any work done on analyzing user/task scenarios [4]? Any research was conducted on modern best practices? Instead of presenting a list with UI/UX features breakdown and several well-thought solutions, we're supposed to vote on "does it look exciting/professional?" beneath a single 800×500px screenshot. Answering the question: no, it doesn't. It's the very same application, hence stagnant. Do not take offense at the words about "stagnating product", this is what it is.

[1] https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/855035593289609216

[2] https://errorfixer.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/slow-mail-a...

[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449299

[4] https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/scenarios...

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#100

Post by kuschku »

hockley wrote: post #78
qznc wrote: post #10

A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant". Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger vision. What does Thunderbird want to be? The cross-platform Outlook? Then merge Lightning into core. The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. The backwards-compatible, easy, and secure mailer? Then merge Enigmail into core or make SMIME easy to use or get s…

This is just a focus group of one, but I really want to see two problems solved in email: 1) Trusted identity assertion: I want to know with confidence (at a glance) that the sender is who I think they are. 2) Secure communication: I want the visual metaphor of email (private correspondence) to match the reality of email. How great would it be if Mozilla lead the way to for email clients to adopt open standards to do…

(a) exists, just use an addon that validates DKIM, SPF and DMARC records.
Post reply on HN