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Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#51

Post by Insimwytim »

ptx wrote: post #37

Why are they repeating the 6 key themes twice but phrased in different ways and in different order? And then there are 6 recommendations and 5 improvements which are very similar to each other, but the article doesn't say how they are related. I would suggest they first "demystify the language" and "streamline information architecture" of the article itself. Also some details would be nice. And some acknowledgement o…

The post is vibe-slop, prompted by non-technical PM who viewed the task as a chore.

The tone with which it manages to objectify the users and distance the writer from them is a cherry on top.

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#53

Post by timbit42 »

Daunk wrote: post #32

I want to use Thunderbird, but it's so... weird. And why can it not be minimized to tray? Am I supposed to sit and keep the Thunderbird window open at all times?

Why is that even something an app would support? The desktop should handle that.

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#54

Post by tim-projects »

I know it'll never happen, but it would be great to have a Thunderbird headless version that runs in the tray and handles sending and receiving.

I.e. a low memory solution so you can leave it going and only open the client for actual interactions. Thunderbird is pretty bloated to leave open all day and sending and receiving shouldn't need a web browser attached.

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#55

Post by tredre3 »

tim-projects wrote: post #54

I know it'll never happen, but it would be great to have a Thunderbird headless version that runs in the tray and handles sending and receiving. I.e. a low memory solution so you can leave it going and only open the client for actual interactions. Thunderbird is pretty bloated to leave open all day and sending and receiving shouldn't need a web browser attached.

> I.e. a low memory solution so you can leave it going and only open the client for actual interactions. Thunderbird is pretty bloated to leave open all day and sending and receiving shouldn't need a web browser attached.

I agree with you. Having my mail client still use ~800MB of memory when in the tray is not great (and I have very few emails, so one cannot blame the index or whatever).

Unfortunately since Thunderbird's IMAP stack was recently (a few years ago) rewritten in javascript (from C++), it's now dependant on the web stack to receive and send emails. I doubt firefox/thunderbird is engineered in a way that you could unload only the html rendering part on demand.

So I doubt we'll ever have our wish granted...

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#56

Post by babolivier »

extr0pian wrote: post #6

From user feedback, I wonder if they've learned how to prevent Thunderbird from creating an empty "thunderbird" folder in my home directory yet.

This is a known issue (tracked at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2007074, as mentioned by a previous comment). A fix has landed in Thunderbird Daily a couple of weeks ago, and should be released in Thunderbird 154 which comes out next month.

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#57

Post by babolivier »

sunaookami wrote: post #20

Kudos to the Thunderbird team for improving TB so much over the past few years, it really helped that they split from Mozilla. K9-Mail (which is now TB) also strongly benefitted from this. Maybe Mozilla will start listening to their users someday...

Thunderbird has actually come back to Mozilla around 2017: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-hom...

And has been operating as a fully fledged subsidiary of the foundation since 2020: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#58

Post by BoppreH »

sylens wrote: post #42
BoppreH wrote: post #41

I tried Thunderbird recently, and was baffled that there seemed to be no way to see received emails grouped with my responses to them (aka threading or conversations). Even grouping incoming emails that have the same subject seemed like an experimental feature. Surely I'm missing something? How are people using it? If someone replies to you "I think there was a problem with your attachment", do you search for your se…

It’s been there for a while https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-threading-thund...

I had tried this, but the grouping only happened among messages of each folder. And Sent is a separate folder, so it doesn't get included.

Or did I miss something? Do you see your replies in the threaded view?

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#59

Post by BoppreH »

commoner wrote: post #46
BoppreH wrote: post #41

I tried Thunderbird recently, and was baffled that there seemed to be no way to see received emails grouped with my responses to them (aka threading or conversations). Even grouping incoming emails that have the same subject seemed like an experimental feature. Surely I'm missing something? How are people using it? If someone replies to you "I think there was a problem with your attachment", do you search for your se…

Thunderbird supports threading in the message list pane (which displays replies next to the email that was replied to), but a conversation mode for the message pane is still in development: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/true-threaded-conversat... In the meantime, the Thunderbird Conversations add-on provides a conversation view that looks like classic Gmail, which is probably what you're looking for: https://a…

I had seen both of these. The add-on implementation is too complicated and affects too many systems (contacts, attachments, etc) that change frequently, so it had many subtle bugs and unimplemented features: https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-con...

As for the Message List Pane, maybe that's something I missed, I'll take another look.

Re: Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback

#60

Post by sunaookami »

babolivier wrote: post #57
sunaookami wrote: post #20

Kudos to the Thunderbird team for improving TB so much over the past few years, it really helped that they split from Mozilla. K9-Mail (which is now TB) also strongly benefitted from this. Maybe Mozilla will start listening to their users someday...

Thunderbird has actually come back to Mozilla around 2017: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-hom... And has been operating as a fully fledged subsidiary of the foundation since 2020: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

Thanks for the correction! Wasn't it under the Mozilla Corporation before? It's clear that there was a cultural shift at Thunderbird either way.
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