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Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

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Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#121

Post by luxpir »

dingaling wrote: post #80
luxpir wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feature, not bug.

Why do so many geeks insist that markup is good for web documents but not for e-mail? E-mails can benefit from headings, bulleted lists and tables just as much as a web page. It's all about communicating information in human-digestable format. OR PERHAPS ALL EMAIL SHOULD BE SENT TELEGRAM STYLE WITHOUT PUNCTUATION SINCE THAT IS JUST A DISTRACTION STOP ALSO ONLY IN ASCII CAPS STOP

Am also a ham, so not completely opposed to increased take-up of CW. Particularly in a global HF mesh network.

I'm not actually opposed to markup at all, but you know exactly the kind of over-designed barf I'm talking about being happy not receiving. I can always open an email from a tmp file in the browser (by hitting then in mutt) but in more than 9/10 cases that just isn't necessary. W3m renders an approximation of the html layout just fine.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#122

Post by bigbugbag »

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…

You'll probably be interested by caliopen[1] then.

[1]: https://www.caliopen.org/en/

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#123

Post by chopin »

kuschku wrote: post #100
hockley wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any recommendations?

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#124

Post by bigbugbag »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #50
qznc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the difference between dead and stable is if you encounter bugs all the time. I find Thunderbird stable (only triggers a bug roughly once per month and nothing critical) while the Lightning plugin for calender functionality is dead (fails to sync with Google for months).

I had to stop using Thunderbird because it became ungodly slow and just unusable. I consider that a bug.

I consider that a local problem that only you have. None of the several person using TB daily for more than a decade have encountered this kind of performance issue.

What have you tried to find the cause of your performance issue ? Have you tried making a new user profile to test if your local profile got somehow corrupted ?

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#125

Post by bigbugbag »

boznz wrote: post #101
Silhouette wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I second that.

I've had to find a non google replacement for firefox, I don't want to go through this again to replace thunderbird.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#126

Post by bigbugbag »

wbl wrote: post #34
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, we would all still be using Pine.

I used to love pine but managing it well with Gmail was terrible as I would have to clean up the inbox and this couldn't be done automatically.

Using gmail is a terrible choice. At the collective level it's taking part in destroying the internet and privacy.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#127

Post by chopin »

jerrac wrote: post #92

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 webmai…

As to your first point, I managed this with the user settings on a home server via sshfs (Linux desktop and server). This could also work with shares for Windows (although I didn't try). sshfs is mounted via a script on logon.

Has some warts, but works generally well.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#128

Post by bigbugbag »

wpietri wrote: post #62

Hm. Surveys are really dangerous tools, especially for UI questions: https://medium.com/research-things/on-surveys-5a73dda5e9a0 I'm not sure how they'll get much use out of this one. They show (not very representative) screen shots and then ask broad questions, like "Would you say this design is rather confusing or clear?" and "Would you say this design is rather boring or inspiring?" Setting aside that I don't under…

I've been through the survey and it is quite bad, the questions are purely marketing centered, trying to figure out the perceived image people have of the software based of a single screenshot.

Where are the question about usability and practicality ?

Said screenshots are from much different screen resolution so one is cluttered[1] and the other is illegible[2].

The whole survey gives the idea that the current design is bad and the new is better. I mean when you get asked to rate an old thing vs a new one on a scale between outdated and modern.

[1]: https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/defaul... [2]: https://images.typeform.com/images/7QpVmjRyBAU4/image/defaul...

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#129

Post by bigbugbag »

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…

I noticed that too, but I don't think they're actually cheating, they're just incompetent and have no clue what they are doing.

Hanlon's razor.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#130

Post by bigbugbag »

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.)

Are you sure that's not a google's apps problem but a thunderbird one ?

See Cardav and Caldav.

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