
Why did we redesign Thunderbird? - szymo
http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/?utm_campaign=Thunderbird&utm_medium=social&utm_source=hackernews
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aq3cn
> Currently, Thunderbird faces the problem of simultaneously showing a vast
> amount of information on one screen and we hope we addressed that.

> Whole work was focused on adding some white space, inserting new typography
> an equalizing colors, but still keeping in mind branding and character of
> Thunderbird. That’s why the redesign was based on FirefoxOs Style Guide to
> keep its identity somehow coherent.

Please keep options open. I really don't understand why people prefer it that
way. In the world of small screen laptops, vertical space of screen is very
precious to me. I use 11' macbook air on the go and I always have preferred
the most compact one line layout. Google also recognizes this and has given
three different types of layouts.

It isn't just small screen, but some people prefer and are used to seeing lot
of information at once. I am one of them. I am not favoring toolbar or side
layouts, I always keep them disable and access everything through keyboard
shortcuts. But my requirements are:

1\. maximum number of emails on screen at once in one line, no preview pane

2\. all email account's folder with highlighted unread emails

I am glad someone is picking up this project, but please keep options open.

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ThatGeoGuy
I for one very much dislike the three column design. If you're like me and try
to maintain "Inbox Zero", and archive everything useless or not requiring a
reply in the immediate future, then a UI like this is wasted as there ends up
being a very empty column in the centre.

Further, in tiling setups (tiling WM or just having more than one full-screen
window open at once on one screen), this approach is even more wasteful, as
you may not have 100% of your screen width to accommodate such a UI. TI get
that people want more and more of their interfaces to be consistent with the
"simple" mobile app design from the last 2-5 years, however I can't help but
feel that the re-design provided by the article is more suited for people with
vastly different email usages. As another comment has said, keep options open.

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mc42
This looks absolutely wonderful.

However, Thunderbird seems to be stuck in a development limbo... I
legitimately wish that the 'Mozilla Core' approach like they originally
created Thunderbird from either needs to be done again from Firefox once
proper multi-process via Electrolysis is enabled in mainline, or for them to
simply clean-slate a new mail client.

I remain skeptical though, as there simply isn't the resources or interest to
pour into Thunderbird as they had when it was first created.

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jlgaddis
Mozilla certainly has the resources to "pour into Thunderbird" to make it even
better.

Unfortunately, they instead prefer to devote those resources towards other
projects for a couple of years, before then "giving up" on those projects and
finding something new to pour their resources into.

With just one or two full-time developers, Thunderbird could be an absolutely
awesome e-mail client. I already think it's pretty decent and I use it every
day and, unless I'm not seeing something, I don't think there's any need to
constantly introduce new features into it. E-mail doesn't really change all
that much so it would mostly be maintenance and support, fixing bugs, etc.,
instead of constantly pumping out new versions with "killer features".

What would Thunderbird be like today if a fraction of the resources devoted to
Personas, Hello, Firefox OS, and so on had instead been put towards
Thunderbird?

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Jaepa
Its worth mentioning that PostBox is a fork of Thunderbird.

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stevewillows
Postbox is great. I do wish it would minimize to the menubar instead of the
dock with OSX -- but this is a common request for OSX mail clients.

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wanderr
This looks nice, Thunderbird was certainly looking incredibly dated last time
I used it, but the reason I ultimately gave up on it was performance. Once you
have a massive amount of email it can be unpredictable and sluggish.

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shirro
I find Thunderbird unusable unless I turn off indexing. Once I do that I find
it compares well to alternatives.

I have standardised on a 13" screen and I remove as much of the Thunderbird
interface as I can. I can conceive of a UX redesign making it more useful but
it wouldn't look like anything in this article. I don't care how pretty it
looks. It is a list of folders, emails and messages not a painting.

