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Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

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Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#121

Post by zamadatix »

diggan wrote: post #4
paintbox wrote: post #2

I understand that search bar position is not changeable by theming, it's a Thunderbird team's decision, but it irks me to see it take up so much premium space. It was the same with browsers, it took many years and iterations to get where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) and I think those lessons should be carried over.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

I've always been sad "tabs + browser bar + title bar" (i.e. in a single row) at the top never seems to stick around as an option. On larger monitors this results in a near perfect utilization of space while still being able to have reasonably wide tab titles.

Vivaldi & Floorp offer this through being highly customizable but they tend to have cracks around the edges of their use for the same reason.

I was first introduced to this with a Chrome flag back in 2011 https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-new-compact-navigation-f... but they ended up backing out for various reasons (the largest of which was probably the specific design used a pop-down url bar which went over the page area, so could be spoofed).

In 2021 Safari became the largest browser I've seen roll this out as a 1st party feature to general users, but it faced some backlash https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-get-more-space-in-safar... I'm not a big fan of their particular styling choices but the layout was pretty decent.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#122

Post by conductr »

JohnFen wrote: post #74
diggan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Options are good. I hate having tabs or other controls vertically on the side. I like them at the top. There's no reason we can't both be happy.

I generally have the same hatred but oddly on Mac OS I prefer the Dock on the right side. I've been dual Win/Mac user and have had this preference on Mac for a long time. Not sure why as it goes against almost everything else I do LOL

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#123

Post by conductr »

ordinarily wrote: post #77
diggan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Horizontal space is still a premium regardless of monitor size when designing/building for responsive viewports. Vertical space is almost zero cost in terms of design constraints. Even on large monitors you'd be surprised the number of people at 150% zoom with small windows opened instead of fullscreen.

Being able to scroll on unfocused applications has been a game changer for non-fullscreen uses. I never zoom though, except HN

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#124

Post by globular-toast »

diggan wrote: post #4
paintbox wrote: post #2

I understand that search bar position is not changeable by theming, it's a Thunderbird team's decision, but it irks me to see it take up so much premium space. It was the same with browsers, it took many years and iterations to get where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) and I think those lessons should be carried over.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Tabs visible at all is wasted space. I only need to see the options when I'm actively trying to change tab. I don't need to see them on the screen at all times.

This is one of the things I love about my Emacs config. I just hit a key to get things like buffers or file trees up when I need them, then they disappear.

I'd love to have a keyboard driven browser but whenever I've tried I always end up with one hand on the mouse anyway so it doesn't work.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#125

Post by markasoftware »

accoil wrote: post #87
markasoftware wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just tried installing it in case last time I tried it >5 years ago was during the "rough". I was impressed that it correctly inferred the IMAP and SMTP settings for my custom domain name, but after using it for ~30 seconds random old emails started appearing at the top of the email list, above my latest emails. Maybe I'll try again in another 5 years. edit: someone thinks i didn't wait for imap to finish. I did. My l…

I get something like that in the initial IMAP sync. Some of my old emails will surface to the top with the current date as today. Never really bothered looking into as it only happens once, but I've been assuming that the date header on those emails were missing.

i see, this likely happened to me.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#126

Post by braiamp »

diggan wrote: post #4
paintbox wrote: post #2

I understand that search bar position is not changeable by theming, it's a Thunderbird team's decision, but it irks me to see it take up so much premium space. It was the same with browsers, it took many years and iterations to get where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) and I think those lessons should be carried over.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Since nobody mentioned, Firefox and I think Chrome has vertical tabs, Firefox is just released https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/140.0/releasenotes/

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#127

Post by throwaway915 »

bluedino wrote: post #36

Had you told me back in 1995, that in 30 years we'd have 4K screens and I would only be able to see 10 emails in my inbox at one time... Netscape 2.02 or Microsoft Mail client from back then looks amazing by comparison.

Change it yourself then. It's right there in the documented CSS file. Not even overobscured SCSS!

And Netscape in 1995 look good in comparison to.. Pine?

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#128

Post by greyshi »

globular-toast wrote: post #124
diggan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where we are now (tabs on top, no wasted space) Tabs at the top is wasted space, I much prefer my tabs on the side instead, as most web content is taller than it is wide, and I have a widescreen monitor. I understand the choice of tabs on top when 640x480 was the most common resolution, but for desktop usage today? Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Tabs visible at all is wasted space. I only need to see the options when I'm actively trying to change tab. I don't need to see them on the screen at all times. This is one of the things I love about my Emacs config. I just hit a key to get things like buffers or file trees up when I need them, then they disappear. I'd love to have a keyboard driven browser but whenever I've tried I always end up with one hand on the…

Have you tried vimium? It's amazing. You can press a single key to search tabs, a single key to search history, bookmarks, and many other functionalities. Not using a mouse is also pretty easy with the link navigation feature (f by default), but even with one hand the commands are so succinct that it works well.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#129

Post by runxel »

1718627440 wrote: post #96
runxel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That we can search at all is nearly a miracle given the old and bad infra. At least they work hard (I hope) on replacing the old system with a real database. That should enable the conversation view (Gmail-like), too!

How would that look like and how does it differ from the conversation view Thunderbird already has?

The current "conversation view" is misnomer. There really is nothing like that. Again, just think of Gmail and how it's handled there. This is how it would look like, e.g. you actually see your own response, too. Currently this is impossible because Thunderbird does not actually know what messages belong together. It just applies some ugly hacks to even find the ingoing emails. It's a trainwreck, but I believe it will get better and we will finally have some decent mail software out there.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#130

Post by 1718627440 »

runxel wrote: post #129
1718627440 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that look like and how does it differ from the conversation view Thunderbird already has?

The current "conversation view" is misnomer. There really is nothing like that. Again, just think of Gmail and how it's handled there. This is how it would look like, e.g. you actually see your own response, too. Currently this is impossible because Thunderbird does not actually know what messages belong together. It just applies some ugly hacks to even find the ingoing emails. It's a trainwreck, but I believe it wil…

> just think of Gmail

>> How would that look like?

I wouldn't describe it as a hack, it uses the references in the messages themselves, as long as they are accurate it will work perfectly. This is the same way, Thunderbird knows if you have replied/forwarded messages.

> you actually see your own response

I do see the response, why wouldn't I that's what the feature is for. Not sure if there is a bug for you.

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