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Thunderbird 115

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Re: Thunderbird 115

#161
post #142
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure, does Gnome have image preview in its file browser yet?

Re: Thunderbird 115

#162
post #8

I appreciate that they have maintained information density. otoh I think they should try and stick as much as possible to the looks of the OS where thunderbird is running - you are building a desktop application, not a website. Of course it's pretty hard when not even microsoft seems to know what Windows should look like.

Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor for stress. Often a lower density is totally enough and less stressful to use. Providing an optional "compact mode" for people with smaller screens or who prefer denser layouts would be my way to go.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#163
I feel like half of this comment section are senior UX designers. If that is the case, why not pitch in and work on Thunderbird directly?

Re: Thunderbird 115

#164
post #116

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.

As the maintainer of CoreJS (Denis Pushkarev) said:

Maintainers are the unsung heroes of the software world, pouring their hearts into creating vast amounts of value that often goes unappreciated. These unsung heroes perform critical work that enables all of modern technology to function – this is not an exaggeration. These tireless individuals dedicate themselves to writing new features, fixing bugs, answering user inquiries, improving documentation, and developing innovative new software, yet they receive almost no recognition for their efforts.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#165
post #116

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.

They spent 1000 credits on an iDevice with basic, inflexible, proprietary software that "looks good" and expect flexible, powerful, portable, free and open source software to look the same too.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#166
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow that's a huge difference. The first one looks like polished quality software while the second one looks like some junky app made by a solo dev on his free time that doesn't care how it looks like

I like the second one better. Much better contrast and less useless whitespace. I can't see what's wrong with it but I'm also not experienced in UI/UX. Edit: Also the icons are much better in the second one. The first one has all monochrome icons which makes them much less useful for quickly scanning for the folder that you are looking for.

I think the second one lacks polish in terms of the styling of the UI components. The mockup was really pretty and its use of color and borders/outlines, while the current version seems to have heavier outlines, leading to an overall clunkier appearance. I'll run this by a couple of my UX friends to see if they can express what I'm talking about in more professional terms so I can provide coherent feedback to the Thunderbird devs.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#167
post #6

I hope I can opt back into the more dense display that we currently have. Some other parts look quite nice however.

FTLOG yes please this. The best thing about Thunderbird IMO was the dense column view combined with ability to sort a folder by sender, which is for some reason impossible in most other clients.

I’ve found it odd not everyone uses it this way. There’s no better way to blast through an inbox that has let 500+ pile up, and can through and organize it.

One feature I’ve always dreamed of was a column for sender domain, which could be used to sort as well.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#168
post #28
post #8

I appreciate that they have maintained information density. otoh I think they should try and stick as much as possible to the looks of the OS where thunderbird is running - you are building a desktop application, not a website. Of course it's pretty hard when not even microsoft seems to know what Windows should look like.

Remind you, that Microsoft wants go get rid of its Microsoft Office and will make it a Website only.

This is only half true. They are still going to provide a hybrid application that will be usable offline. And there is a huge benefit: there may finally be feature parity for all platforms including Linux.

Microsoft positions Outlook for big corporate customers. They often need extensibility in their clients. Preferably you implement them only once to run on any client (web, Windows, macOS, Linux, mobile, ...)

Re: Thunderbird 115

#169
post #97
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Outlook is already a web app at its core: "The point here being that Mail and Calendar are native Windows applications, whereas the new Outlook for Windows is essentially a web app at its core, from what we can tell." Native is dead as it seems, at least for he Microsoft Office Team. https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/20/microsoft_calendar_ma...

Someone correct me if wrong but "outlook for windows" is not the same as "office outlook". The first one seems like it was created to fill the hole of outlook express and the mail app that came out later. i.e. the free email application that windows ships with.

There are actually four "outlook" implementations now.

1. Outlook desktop - old MFC / win32 crapfest

2. Windows Mail / Calendar - new WPF crapfest.

3. O365 online outlook / outlook.com - fat web app.

4. "New" Outlook - this is a fat Electron style app based on the web app.

The latter is actually pretty good - been using it for a couple of months. This is apparently going to replace all the other ones on the desktop.

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