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Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

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Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#101

Post by boznz »

Silhouette wrote: post #26
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…

"Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant" Some of us spell that "stable and reliable" and consider it the single most important property of our essential day-to-day software. If it ain't broke...

Stable and reliable is why I use it, please dont f* it up guys.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#102

Post by ccleve »

I dumped Thunderbird some years ago because I had accumulated 10 gb of email and it had slowed to a crawl. That, and the search wasn't very good.

My gmail interface has neither of those problems.

I would consider going back to Thunderbird because it pulls together multiple email account better than gmail does. But they've got to get a better underlying storage engine.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#103

Post by jason_slack »

shakkhar wrote: post #98
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.

Can't one fork Thunderbird and make it what they want? Or at the very least fix bugs for them? I'm not current on its development workflow.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#104

Post by nirv »

plopz wrote: post #58
SyneRyder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the column with the list of emails in the currently selected inbox. (2nd column from left.) Some email clients have multiple rows of information in that column - the first row might have name & subject, the next row might show the first two sentences of the email. Or it might have the subject on a separate line, so the column can be kept narrow but still show the full subject line. Think of the iOS Mail or…

I hope they don't go in that direction, I like my emails compact on 1 line.

There's a sane responsive interface solution to that: you get single-line layout on wide screen, and a compact multi-line layout on narrow screen. Answering a nearby comment, it's doable in CSS-only[1].

This entire discussion is not about complex interface design and the lack of technical solutions, but the stagnating product. And about questionable actions to give it a peppy appearance.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queri...

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#105

Post by Animats »

Behind all the blog blithering, here's the interface mockup:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/thunde...

It has all the stuff people expect today - dim grey text on a light grey background, large decorative graphics to fill space, little round icons for people, images in your face for every email, and integration with calendar and contacts. The people who send out "newsletters" (i.e. email spam) will love it.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#106

Post by mixmastamyk »

notatoad wrote: post #72
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…

Thunderbird's problem, i think, is that their userbase contains a large portion of people who value thunderbird for it's stagnancy, but at the same time get angry if you suggest that thunderbird might be stagnant. Thunderbird is the email client for people who want email to work exactly like it did ten years ago. that's their value-add, and it really should be their vision.

It needs maintenance and minor improvements. Keep your “redesigns” to a new client.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#107

Post by callahad »

zerokernel wrote: post #43
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…

> The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. Thunderbird has had a ML/usenet-like conversations view forever.

Threaded, hierarchical "ML/Usenet-like" views are great, but they're not what people are asking for when they request a "conversation view."

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#108

Post by mixmastamyk »

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.

Still doesn’t save window position on a second monitor, have to use wmctrl. :-/

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#109

Post by mixmastamyk »

ccleve wrote: post #102

I dumped Thunderbird some years ago because I had accumulated 10 gb of email and it had slowed to a crawl. That, and the search wasn't very good. My gmail interface has neither of those problems. I would consider going back to Thunderbird because it pulls together multiple email account better than gmail does. But they've got to get a better underlying storage engine.

Vacuuming might help. And deleting old mail with attachments.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#110

Post by warkdarrior »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #109
ccleve wrote: post #102

I dumped Thunderbird some years ago because I had accumulated 10 gb of email and it had slowed to a crawl. That, and the search wasn't very good. My gmail interface has neither of those problems. I would consider going back to Thunderbird because it pulls together multiple email account better than gmail does. But they've got to get a better underlying storage engine.

Vacuuming might help. And deleting old mail with attachments.

I don't want to delete old emails or old attachments, I just want them indexed for faster search.
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