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Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

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Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#131

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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.

Indeed. Take a look at late 1990s software, even things with complex toolbars (Word, Corel Draw, etc).

At 640x480 resolution, the toolbar was tiny but powerful.

Now at 1920x1080 resolution the toolbar is relatively huge and dumbed down.

All the benefits of higher resolutions and larger monitors have been lost on stupid UI trends.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#133

Post by eviks »

carlosjobim wrote: post #84
huhtenberg wrote: post #76

So much padding So much wasted space Such low information density Will collect many votes on Dribbble though.

There's a lot of padding in the screenshot, but you can also see that any user can reduce it by resizing the sidebar and inbox column.

This wouldn't help with big left padding, nor with the top one

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#135

Post by berkes »

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 Tabs on top seems like an outdated layout choice.

Putting often used controls (tabs, docs, menus, etc) across the long side has a solid argument going for it too, though: your mouse pointer is almost always closer to one of the long sides.

Also, if vertical screen estate is a concern, just turn your monitor 90° A lot of professionals working with paper sized documents (legal, bookkeeping, administration) do this.

As a software engineer, I've tried it, but I prefer splitting windows (tiling, or panes or such) horizontally. So my estate is limited in width more than in height.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#136

Post by berkes »

ttoinou wrote: post #73

Do the people who style their app actually use their app on a daily basis for long amount of time ? It seems to me the basic design of app are often the best for eye fatigue, frequent usage, recognizing which information is where fast, contrast, low margin / good usage of space etc. The current design of Thunderbird is not pretty, but it's effective. I used Thunderbird everyday for 10+ years with 100k+ emails in 10+…

I've used thunderbird for over 20 years and used many others inbetween: sylpheed, the bat, evolution, kmail, Pegasus.

I still have Thunderbird installed and configured for the odd "advanced task", but my daily driver has been Geary for over 10 years now. Precisely because its so much better looking than thunderbird.

Looks, done properly, are an important part of a good UX. For me, less clutter, more whitespace, clearer focus, works far better than the "widgets thrown onto a square" that Thunderbird is (I have ADHD, it may contribute to this preference for clean, simple, focused design)

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#137

Post by dotancohen »

dingnuts wrote: post #69
pjerem wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just maybe click the arrow to sort by date ?

lol seriously, my guy didn't even wait until imap was done. what vendetta does he have against Thunderbird

Probably the same vendetta they I have against Windows. Every time I try it, I find it so frustrating. So every time I try, I afford it less and less patience.

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#139

Post by Calzifer »

MortyWaves wrote: post #138

Using CSS and not using the native implementation of the operating system is going to lead to very brittle and hard to fix problems.

It is apparently also hard to maintain over time. I heavily customized my Firefox and Thunderbird and it is annoying how often GUI components which should be equal (e.g. toolbar buttons in different places) look the same* but have multiple different CSS rules.

Some widgets, or rather the repeated reinventions of widgets in HTML+CSS, use variables and the next equally looking widget has none, or other variables with the same values.

From an outsider perspective it looks like a mess.

* or almost the same with minimal, likely unintended, differences like one button has a slight border when hovered but another button right next to it has none

Re: Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design

#140

Post by zelphirkalt »

SebastianKra wrote: post #49
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.

I'm to young for Netscape, but do you mean this [^1] interface, that's truncating the subject and hiding the body? Also, which use-cases do you have where you need to see 20 emails at once? [^1]: https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/ns_4_email.jpg

Overview, seeing threads with more than a handful of e-mails completely, selection, tagging, dragging, deleting, marking as spam, in general all kinds of bulk actions.
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