Thunderbird 140 “Eclipse”

Apple Mail. It covers the bases, doesn’t try to cram too much into a single app, and doesn’t lean into badly aging UI trends.

I’ve tried Thunderbird a few times over the years (including post-redesign) and it’s always felt clunky and kinda awkward. Firefox somewhat outgrew that but Thunderbird never did.

If I were to use something else, it’d probably be MailMate which is a lot like Apple Mail but with even fewer frills and more optimization.

Yes, a spec is a technicality that, ideally, should be abstracted away completely (and alas, all abstractions are leaky somewhat).

It's another thing that got me interested in DDD. Where the user, domain, business and such define what things are called, how they operate, what events they undergo or emit etc. And not a spec, language or framework

And where e.g. "the IMAP spec" is a clear bounded domain, probably a service, an adapter or even library. Within that domain, "The Spec" dictates all the naming, conventions, logic etc, but where the border of this domain is another language. E.g. in a "MessageAdapterImap" something is called "EXPUNGE" with all the intricacies of what this means in IMAP. But in the outside it's e.g. part of a "cleanup()" interface, or whatever the domain calls it when it removes messages.

Ok?

Do you ever only use one of find and grep? I think they are very similar as the search and the filter bar. I mean you can replace find with tree | grep, not sure about the other way around, but it's probably also possible.

> There is zero need

I do, so it is not exactly zero and I would be annoyed to have them gone, because it is a huge time saver when handling thousands of messages.

> if there is no result for the text entered in the textbox then switch to the search

If the filter starts to draw in messages from other directories, that would be stupid and kind of defeats the point of having a filter in a first place. If you want that why don't you use the search?

> it's just Mozilla wanted to copy-paste the idiotic solution of MS Office with a top-most search function

I don't care where the search bar is placed and I think that functionality did already exist before the current UI, either via ^K or in a menu. I (maybe) do agree with you, in that I don't like putting widgets in window frames (that's for the WM) and prefer classical (CUA-like) menubars.

Can you please criticize the functionality itself? I can't comprehend why you don't see the point of a separate filter. Do you mostly keep messages in the INBOX?

Maybe my original word choice wasn't optimal, because you can consider filtering a subset of searching, but I do consider them to be different. If you rather you use a different terminology, that's fine, but I don't think it will change my point.

> Do you ever only use one of find and grep?

It's not a CLI. More so, redundant functions eats the screen real estate, which isn't getting taller on a non-mobile platforms.

> I do, so it is not exactly zero and I would be annoyed to have them gone, because it is a huge time saver when handling thousands of messages.

You sounds like I'm advocating to removal of both the search and the filter boxes.

> If the filter starts to draw in messages from other directories

sigh

You input something in the combined search|filter box:

If you got the result you need from this folder then you just do your thing.

If you did not got the result you need then press Enter which would start the search in the whole mailbox, just like the search textbox works now.

> I don't care where the search bar is placed

Great for you, but I care. TB interface was already far from understandable by both computer illiterate and computer literate and this is just another illogical placement what doesn't add functionality, yet wastes the space.

BTW, did you provided the support to anyone by the phone? Can you be sure what the person on the other side inputs in the right textbox? I can, somewhat, if there is only one. If there are two then 70% of time they would use the wrong one even if telling you it's the right one. I provided enough L1/L2 to know it well.

> Can you please criticize the functionality itself

Yes, there is no functionality need in the two separate textboxes for, essentially, one function: searching.

> Do you mostly keep messages in the INBOX?

Thanks, no.

> because you can consider filtering a subset of searching, but I do consider them to be different

Yes, they both are the methods to find some message/s what you can't just scroll to. And those 'quick filter' buttons near the current filter textbox are quite nice, btw.

My problem is what that search textbox is a clear import from the MS Outlook[0] and it was did only to mimic the other product, without a second of actually thinking if this is even needed.

Just imagine: what if instead of that search box that space would be used for... a filter/search combo textbox, along with a quickfilter buttons, just like today, but not wasting the space for nothing in the window titlebar.

Also I finally noticed what there is even a special combo to invoke the filter so it also can be used to differentiate the usage right away: ctrl+shift+k - filtering, ctrl+shift+f - searching the mailbox.

Just for the sake of it I did a poor man's mock-up:

https://ibb.co/JjXwxhhB

And, uh, just one more thing: when you do search in TB you are brought to a separate tab with the search result. There is zero need to the search input to stay in the current search box. It's literally useless.

[0] if never even saw it then just search for the screenshots.

EDIT: and about 'heuristic' - there also two ways to do it:

1. just have a toogle buried somewhere, to enable/disable autosearch

2. just do the search automatically, with a low priority and find a way to notify the user what this are results from the other folder. Can be as simple as '--- results from the other folders ---' line.

> It is not about the invocation, search and filter bar differ in the same way as find and grep. Even if they are similar, they are still different enough to not benefit from unifying.

Well, as I said - it's very easy to do so in this case by clearly separating the way it works and presents the data. It's not the ideal solution nor it would work for everyone (case number one: you) but it would still be better than the current mess.

> I don't know the history and which program's search box predates the other. Note, that the search bar predates the current UI change, see below.

Outlook in 2020/2021, TB in 2022/2023 [0]

> The alternative way seams to be to merge the filter into the search bar

And moving the search bar somewhere sensical. Yes, this is the way I imagine what would work for the most, including me. Filter by default, search if (just like today with the search bar!) OR no results from filter with a clear identification it's the search now, not the filter results.

> Currently it is also possible to first search and then use the filter on that. This also won't be possible when you merge them.

But the search results are already on the separate tab! You can't search and filter on the same tab, or at least I never discovered how to do so, because the second I press in the search the separate tab with the results open. Nobody forbids to still show the filter bar/box there, it's a separate UI-flow anyway.

> I don't think dumbing down the UI to solely improve tech support over the phone seams worthwhile.

It's not about phone tech support of course, it's about how a regular folks interact with the UI. And in my opinion the current design isn't good for regular Joe.

> Maybe that is, because I don't have any scaling factor

4k with 1.5x, so numbers are off. Anyway, it's about comparison, not the actual px count.

This is on my notebook (1920x1200, non-scaled) main screen: https://ibb.co/qYCmwD7b ~245px tall, which still makes it 20%.

Another trouble is what with all these scaling shenanigans everything people write me is... gigantic to say at least, so I forced to have the reading pane much taller for the same amount of the content I needed ten years ago, so a 5-7 lines of text. It's not TB's problem per se (and scaling in the reading pane works) but it's still something I didn't need to bother 10 years ago and having something eat my vertical screen estate makes me fume!

> My display is 1366x768

> So this amounts to 32.5%,

Yikes!

And yes, literally 30% of the screen is not displaying anything useful (besides contents of the filter bar).

Also it's quite evident what TB developers not only do not use such screens and resolutions but don't care about it at all. Because any sensical (third time here!) person would ask "why the fuck I'm looking at my mail through a tank gun port?!".

> Note, that in both images I have the tab bar, which seams to be missing in all your mockups.

Was confused at first but then it occurred to me. Yes, if I have any searches or open messages than goes another ~50px, up to 300px:

https://ibb.co/WWFt3mnd

> Do you still have the same objections to the old UI?

Go to 115 release [1] and notice how they show 102 with the tabs and 115 without. Totally honest guys.

There are things in 102 UI which I don't like too, but at least there were no stupid mega-ultra-uber-search bar on the top.

> Do you have a proposal for placement without merging/removing functionality?

Uhm. As I said earlier - for the search you are moved to a separate search tab after hitting . There is no need to have the search bar everywhere in the app in the first place. But okay, remove the bar, leave the fucking magnifying glass icon, exactly like the 90% of stupid sites do. Bonus points: remove the 'search' button so the user is forced to press key to actually perform the search. Just like the other 90% of stupid sites do. Web 3.0! Web 3.0 is everywhere!

[0] It's PITA to search for, but TB 91 (August 11, 2021) didn't yet had the search bar, TB 102 (June 29, 2022) had it a bit more sensically but not yet a fully separate bar; and TB 115 (July 11, 2023) finally did it the current way. [1]

While Outlook had it at least on May 31, 2020 [2]

[1] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew...

[2] https://blog.rcsprofessional.com/changes-to-the-microsoft-ou...

NB:

>> Hi there was just a release where they deleted the entire task bar with useful buttons and replaced it with a search bar (ie the same thing microsoft did adding that giant search bar on top of word and excel that nobody asked for or wanted). Not exactly sure why, since there is also another search bar just below it.

>> Mar 25 2023

https://old.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/1214smv/how_to...

Heh.