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.
I'm downvoting them as I see them. Donate or contribute or offer constructive feedback, don't just complain.
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?
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.
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/
I have a lot of trouble taking Betterbird seriously... The whole thing feels like a revenge based project by a disgruntled former contributor.
All those concepts are made by people who don't use computers on iPads.
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.
People designing it but not using it is not a problem?
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
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.
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.
The fuzzy icons are because of how the image is scaled on the marketing site. If you load the image directly ( https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1... ) you'll see the icons in the UI are actually crisp.
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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.
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
Do they listen to the opinions of random newcomers?
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.