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Thunderbird 115

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Re: Thunderbird 115

#181

Post by pmontra »

folkrav wrote: post #141
pmontra wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read mail first on my phone with K9 (the old UI) a few times per day and accept invitations there to put them on my phone, which is always with me. Then I download mail with Thunderbird a few times per week. I use my domain providers POP3 servers. Yes, they bundle a mailbox with each domain. It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case.

> It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case. I'm curious as to why, if you don't mind! Are you specifically looking for "download only once then get rid of it"?

Yes, see my reply to the other message.

My mail stays on my computer, backed up locally and encrypted to a remote location.

I lose the ability to access old messages from remote but it never was a problem in almost 17 years of self employment. Before that, I already had about 13 years of downloaded emails, from the times when web mail was not a thing. No need to upload my old messages to Gmail, if this is even possible. I just kept using a local mail client. For my personal mail I remember some emacs clients, Netscape Mail (bundled with the browser,) Outlook Explorer then Thunderbird. I might forget something.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#182

Post by tonoto »

danpalmer wrote: post #92

I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul. Text is misaligned in lots of places, the icons are fuzzy, spacing and padding is inconsistent even within the same areas, there are 3 sets of 3-dot icons in the sidebar in two different axes. It's just careless. Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This…

I've been using Thunderbird for a couple of years, then I went for Icedove for a while (but honestly, I used mutt more during that period) and then back to Thunderbird since 2018(?) and honestly I don't get what is wrong with the UI? At least compared to Icedove it feels very modern and fresh. I've also tried Apple Mail for a couple of weeks but that felt it was lacking both in functionality and UI experience compared to Thunderbird. But I'm just a simple user that want's to use a couple of Imap-mailboxes together with GPG and S/Mime, office administration and/or computer gaming is not my department. I've been using this MUA in both Linux and Darwin environments and it is way above the Outlook/Office 365 experience that some hostile environments force upon its users.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#183

Post by orra »

Brendinooo wrote: post #148

What am I missing here? I'm running "Version 102.11.0, first offered to channel users on May 10, 2023", and this is 13 versions ahead?

Thunderbird major releases match up with Firefox, in terms of dates and version numbering. However, Thunderbird releases major versions less often. Hence the discrepancy.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#184

Post by Frondo »

danpalmer wrote: post #92

I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul. Text is misaligned in lots of places, the icons are fuzzy, spacing and padding is inconsistent even within the same areas, there are 3 sets of 3-dot icons in the sidebar in two different axes. It's just careless. Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This…

> Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This stuff really matters in aggregate.

Red Letter Media has a great phrase that rolls around in my head to describe situations like this (they use it for media analysis), "You might not recognize it, but your brain did."

Where you might not be able to point to a problem, but you instinctively know something is off.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#185

Post by velosol »

andix wrote: post #156
jeroenhd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which do you default to for someone coming from years of Thunderbird usage? How in-your-face is compact mode toggle in the ootb experience for a fresh install? And sadly how many people are going to be new to Thunderbird these days?

If I got the 'polished' version as part of the normal update cycle I'd be upset that my tight, space-efficient and incredibly responsive productivity app had decided to use a design language that reduces information displayed. The point of email is to communicate information and I now have to interact with the UI more than I did before to get the same amount of information.

The launched version hits the density that Thunderbird has been for about a decade and is what I'd prefer (ie the compact mode might be better for those being upgraded).

Re: Thunderbird 115

#186

Post by smarkov »

donatj wrote: post #50
smarkov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this. It already looks a little too clumped to me, what's the benefit to further putting things closer to one another? It's not like you're doing some kind of additive transformation and you need to quickly jump between lines, each email is its own thing and you can only read one at a time. If you need to find specific ones you can always categorize them or use the search functionality. I'm…

Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful. All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption. My work email rarely exist in a vacuum, they exist in the context of all my other work emails. The ability to actually cross reference and get work done quickly should always trump aesthetics. These modern “spaced out” UIs are infuriating, t…

> Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful.

Conversely, why is scrolling considered evil? We can agree that emails are documents. In real life, on your desk, do spread out all your documents so you could see them all at once? Or do you have a stack of them and view them one by one? You can still cross reference by putting documents side by side, just like you can with multiple emails open in separate windows or monitors.

Admittedly depending on the amount of emails and the speed at which you work through them you might benefit from seeing many at once, though there's other ways of dealing with that issue.

> All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption.

I don't think whitespace is all about aesthetics. Personally, it makes it easier for me to read and focus on things. It gives individual things more value, rather than them being "just another thing in a gigantic list", easily blending in and showing no significance.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#187

Post by robertlagrant »

danpalmer wrote: post #160
eps wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hap…

Pro tip: don't lead with "I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul."

Re: Thunderbird 115

#188

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

nerdponx wrote: post #166
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Thu…

But the things you mention are specifically the things that I think works better in the second one.

I can maybe agree that the first one looks more "polished" but at the same time I actually feel a but uneasy looking at it because my brain has to work harder to discern the UI elements due to the lack of colors and low contrast. Although the lines are heavier in the second one, I find it much easier to filter out the data that I am looking for.

Also the first one wastes screen real estate like crazy. I can only see 7 emails in that one, whereas the second one shows 14. I want all the emails that I receive within a single day to be able fit on a single screen so I don't have to scroll. Frankly, I think the first one sucks.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#189

Post by t43562 »

alraj wrote: post #10

Nice updates from Thunderbird team. But will E-mail on the whole ever get features like other chat platform? Even conversation view is not good on the eye. Quoting is ugly in long Email body. Maybe only protocols are getting updated!? I think email is only still here because its a form of identification. Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion.

email works between companies because it's based on standards whereas messaging companies are all trying to lock us in to their particular system so they can "win" and that ensures that we cannot "chat" to people with some other software.

Re: Thunderbird 115

#190

Post by precompute »

andix wrote: post #162
joiqj wrote: 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.

> Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor for stress.

Really? And what about tiny scrollbars?

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