
Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface - krln_g
https://www.monterail.com/blog/thunderbird-new-interface-redesign-survey
======
qznc
A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is
being perceived as either dead or stagnant".

Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger vision. What does Thunderbird want to be?
The cross-platform Outlook? Then merge Lightning into core. The native Gmail?
Then get a conversations view. The backwards-compatible, easy, and secure
mailer? Then merge Enigmail into core or make SMIME easy to use or get some
Rust code in. The ultra-portable mailer? Then port it to Android and iOS. The
super-flexible mailer? Then somehow help plugin devs.

~~~
notatoad
Thunderbird's problem, i think, is that their userbase contains a large
portion of people who value thunderbird for it's stagnancy, but at the same
time get angry if you suggest that thunderbird might be stagnant.

Thunderbird is the email client for people who want email to work exactly like
it did ten years ago. that's their value-add, and it really should be their
vision.

~~~
mc32
There was Eudora for that.

I think one thing that maybe kept ThB from innovating was that people took
webmail to heart. It's few people who want a thick client or even want to go
thru the config. What port, what server, etc.

On a mobile device, the UI walks them through the scenarios (Google,
Microsoft, etc) so they usually don't have to guess or have "IT" set it up for
them.

Plus, what ships with MAC and Windows is good enough for most people who do
want some kind of thick client.

Regardless, ThB was the ugly child at Mozilla since ever. They should have
taken the Opp when Eudora was finally killed, but I don't think Moz had the
energy.

~~~
genghizkhan
> Plus, what ships with MAC and Windows is good enough for most people who do
> want some kind of thick client.

Airmail and Spark, among others, would like to have a word with you. Airmail
in particular started out as a Mac client before being ported to iOS. There
exists quite a market for good email clients, I would think.

------
wpietri
Hm. Surveys are really dangerous tools, especially for UI questions:

[https://medium.com/research-things/on-
surveys-5a73dda5e9a0](https://medium.com/research-things/on-
surveys-5a73dda5e9a0)

I'm not sure how they'll get much use out of this one. They show (not very
representative) screen shots and then ask broad questions, like "Would you say
this design is rather confusing or clear?" and "Would you say this design is
rather boring or inspiring?"

Setting aside that I don't understand why "rather" is in all of the questions,
they're still not great. Is the design of a screwdriver inspiring? I guess
not. Is that bad? Definitely not. I don't need my tools to be fonts of warm
fuzzy feelings. I need them to be useful.

Even if the questions were material, asking it about a whole screenshot
composed of many different design changes inevitably muddles things. And
asking it only of 1 old and 1 new screenshot invites people to judge on
novelty, not utility.

So my suspicion is that the survey isn't really testing any useful hypotheses.
We know that some people like new shiny and some people like old familiar. I
don't think much is gained here.

~~~
bigbugbag
I've been through the survey and it is quite bad, the questions are purely
marketing centered, trying to figure out the perceived image people have of
the software based of a single screenshot.

Where are the question about usability and practicality ?

Said screenshots are from much different screen resolution so one is
cluttered[1] and the other is illegible[2].

The whole survey gives the idea that the current design is bad and the new is
better. I mean when you get asked to rate an old thing vs a new one on a scale
between outdated and modern.

[1]:
[https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/defaul...](https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/default#.png)
[2]:
[https://images.typeform.com/images/7QpVmjRyBAU4/image/defaul...](https://images.typeform.com/images/7QpVmjRyBAU4/image/default#.png)

------
saulrh
They're cheating on the screenshots in the survey. The "current thunderbird"
screenshot is taken at half the resolution (or twice the font size) of the
"thunderbird redesign" screenshot, giving their redesign twice as much space
with which to display the same information. Obviously it's going to look
better with that advantage. I'm not sure exactly what it'd mean to "trust" a
user interface, but I'm _definitely_ sure I wouldn't trust any of that
survey's data.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
That's not the only trick they use. Note the choice of plaintext vs. HTML mail
(even though current TB supports HTML just fine), interesting looking mail vs.
mock-ups of bad spam, different screen aspect ratio, and of course the leading
survey questions.

I've created a "fairer" mockup (same resolution/size):
[https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png](https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png)

Note how the "tasks" list is cut off because it simply no longer fits the
screen (where the current version has enough space to show it), missing UI
elements in the new design (the entire quick filter bar, which would reduce
the available space to 3 (!) e-mail headers), the harshly truncated and thus
useless subject lines in the new design, the lack of the "this is a draft"
toolbar in the new design, that was added to make the old one look more
crowded.

Thunderbird is forgetting their target audience. I suspect that people who
like shiny over features have long switched to web interfaces. The new design
would take away what used to appeal to their remaining users.

------
cs702
Former Thunderbird user here.

Much more important than shiny new UI, what I'd like to see is _seamless out-
of-the-box syncing with online calendars and contacts_. (At one point, I tried
all the available add-ons for syncing with Google's apps; none of those add-
ons worked well for me.)

~~~
bhauer
Importantly, since this is a Mozilla project, that service should be self-
hostable [1] to disintermediate the multi-device synchronization platform. It
should not be necessary to have a third-party observe all my contacts and
calendars.

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/](https://github.com/mozilla-
services/)

~~~
nathcd
No need for Mozilla to make server software for this; Thunderbird/Lightning do
CalDav and CardDav just fine, right? Seems that cs702's problem isn't with
Thunderbird, it's with Google supporting CalDav and CardDav for sync.

If you want to self host, just host any CalDav or CardDav server software.

~~~
oconnore
Thunderbird does not support carddav. Contacts + Thunderbird is generally a
terrible experience. I switched to Zoho’s webmail because of this (at least I
can get bidirectional sync to my iPhone).

------
CJefferson
How about fixing 6 year old bugs, which mean you can't search for the word
"wedding"? This kind of thing is why I left thunderbird.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844)

At the least do a pass over old bugs and let us know if they will ever be
fixed, or close them.

~~~
shakkhar
Exactly. How about not losing scroll position when switching tabs? Better spam
filtering? How come threaded view doesn't work for mails sent by Outlook? (I
know we have Microsoft to blame for that, but a workaround should not be
impossible to conceive since Outlook somehow manages that already.)

I suspect the people getting excited about a face-lift don't really use
Thunderbird very often.

~~~
jason_slack
Can't one fork Thunderbird and make it what they want? Or at the very least
fix bugs for them? I'm not current on its development workflow.

~~~
bigbugbag
One has to be a coder, able to deal with the current state of code and the
many changes to come, while having a load of free time to maintain the fork.

I mean my 90 years old grandma is a decade long thunderbird user and she
absolutely unable to make thunderbird the way she wants. She is 100% dependent
on mozilla's good will.

~~~
jason_slack
yup. I can code but I don't know how conducive TB is for people to get started
helping out.

------
Tomte
This redesign is just playing around with colors, background images and minor
visual adjustments to the message view. Nobody needs this.

I was hoping for a redesign of the UI, the ways you interact with your mails.

This is one of those „look, I played around in Illustrator“ things, not „I
thought about the problem“.

~~~
geezerjay
> This redesign is just playing around with colors, background images and
> minor visual adjustments to the message view. Nobody needs this.

Some UI components do need rework. Redundant search fields, password dialogs
that fail to track the login state, etc.

It also strikes me as very odd that someone states that nobody needs UI work
on a GUI app, particularly when GUI components make between 50% and 75% of
thjs sort of app's code base

~~~
bigbugbag
I have yet to recover from last time they reworked the UI, so it's not that
obvious that a rework is needed or good.

I don't remember how long ago this UI rework happened that added opening email
in a tab, but to this day I still get called because "something's wrong with
the computer, I can't read my emails " and I just close the gajillions opened
tabs in thunderbird to fix the issue.

It improved through time as a significant portion of my users' email moved
from desktop to tablets.

------
AndyMcConachie
Does anyone else feel that most UI redesigns are just change for the sake of
change that don't actually make anything better?

~~~
nirv
Generally not, but in this case I do. The proposed redesign[1] is essentially
the same layout, but with a fancy theming. It's good practice not to break the
familiar interface, but there's __a lot __to improve in terms of UI /UX in
Thunderbird. For example:

a) presented vertical layout is the same as it is today—you need to have a
really high resolution (1080p+) widescreen to fit the entire window. Messages
section could have rows with multi-line inlined metadata, thus be
significantly narrowed[2];

b) threaded messages feed (or so called conversations) on the same screenshot
is presented too vaguely for such an important feature, I bet I'll still have
to jump between Sent/Inbox folders in 2018+...;

c) replying to/composing a message is impossible to do in tabs[3] (10 years
old), you have to manage separate windows. And there's nothing on this matter
in current redesign proposal;

d) not a single word/screenshot on calendar/todo-lists management; etc.

Simply put, this is not the way to redesign such an important large
application. Has there been any work done on analyzing user/task scenarios
[4]? Any research was conducted on modern best practices? Instead of
presenting a list with UI/UX features breakdown and several well-thought
solutions, we're supposed to vote on "does it look exciting/professional?"
beneath a single 800×500px screenshot. Answering the question: no, it doesn't.
It's the very same application, hence stagnant. Do not take offense at the
words about "stagnating product", this is what it is.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/855035593289609216](https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/855035593289609216)

[2] [https://errorfixer.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/slow-
mail-a...](https://errorfixer.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/slow-mail-app-mac-
os-x.png)

[3]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449299](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449299)

[4] [https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-
tools/methods/scenarios...](https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-
tools/methods/scenarios.html)

------
spystath
I get it that Thunderbird looks unhip but I feel like the heavily padded lines
waste too much space. The gmail "compact" setting is a much better compromise
between space and legibility.

But unless they move Thunderbird to WebExtensions (which would be a total
productivity disaster) it can always be modded.

Although an UI update is always welcome there are more important issues to
address in Thunderbird, like better calendar synchronisation and an overhaul
to its search capabilities.

~~~
mulmen
I disagree that UI updates are _always_ welcome. I subscribe to the
"interfaces are not intuitive they are familiar" school of design. It may look
dated and maybe it does need an update but I hope the motivation is to improve
productivity and not just to be hip.

------
tgsovlerkhgsel
This survey is clearly manipulative and designed to get the results they want
("please give us the new shiny design").

The designs are shown at different resolutions: Note how the text on the old
one is clearly readable, while the new one is completely unreadable.
Additionally, the new design is given a much higher screen. This makes the old
design look much more crowded, and obfuscates the fact that you can't fit more
than 10 e-mail headers (with truncated subject lines!) onto a 27" screen with
the new design. Additionally, they chose a plaintext e-mail with a boring text
for the old design screenshot, while using a designed HTML mail for the new
design.

Here's a slightly fairer mockup:
[https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png](https://i.imgur.com/wTLYTV6.png) for direct
comparison with
[https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/defaul...](https://images.typeform.com/images/7E2EfHaFjYdy/image/default#.png)
\- I've redone the text on the subject of the selected entry to show how it
would look like without the blur resulting from scaling the available mockup.

The survey itself has one question that is half about usability ("confusing or
clear"), with the 4 remaining questions being about bullshitty feel-
good/marketing attributes ("boring or inspiring", "unprofessional or
professional", "outdated or modern", "untrustworthy or trustworthy") carefully
picked to only care about visual appearance.

A much more attractive redesign idea would be showing full threads with sent
and received messages in context like Gmail does, while maintaining the
standard three-pane view (just allow to scroll _up_ in the bottom pane to see
older messages, including sent ones).

Edit to add some things I noticed while writing another response: Note how the
"tasks" list is cut off because it simply no longer fits the screen (where the
current version has enough space to show it), missing UI elements in the new
design (the entire quick filter bar, which would reduce the available space to
3 (!) e-mail headers), the harshly truncated and thus useless subject lines in
the new design, the lack of the "this is a draft" toolbar in the new design,
that was added to make the old one look more crowded.

Thunderbird is forgetting their target audience. I suspect that people who
like shiny over features have long switched to web interfaces. The new design
would take away what used to appeal to their remaining users.

~~~
bigbugbag
It's quite obvious that it's marketing and that the survey is biased towards
the new UI design.

Though I'm not sure it has been intently designed like this. Hanlon's razor
tells us this probably happened because of incompetence and being clueless.
IMHO it reflects the survey authors bias more than a malicious intent.

------
pmontra
The two interfaces are the same. The new one has more colors and smaller
buttons. I'll trade larger buttons for the colors.

I'll trade everything for being able to see as many messages as I'll always
did. Not another Skype like redesign with lots of useless white space around
messages, thanks.

~~~
savolai
On my laptop the default whitespace is too much, as well. The white space is
adjustable in userChrome.css, which, to my understanding from the
instructions, you need to edit anyway.

Compact spacing:

    
    
      --folder-tree-row-height: 20px;
    
      --message-list-row-height: 20px;

------
jerrac
If any Thunderbird devs see this, I don't mind a visual refresh, but here's my
real wishlist:

* Sync accounts and settings between multiple computers. (Using syncthing only works so well...) Over my local LAN. I am not going to send my information out into the cloud if I can help it.

* Thunderbird on my Android devices, also synced with my desktop and laptop.

* Groupwise integration so I don't have to log into webmail every time I have an appointment to accept or reject.

* Integrated calendar. Why is it an addon? Seriously. I have never understood that.

Anyway... I'd also love to see an easier to understand community platform. I
have no idea where I really should post this comment in the official
Thunderbird ecosystem.

~~~
chopin
As to your first point, I managed this with the user settings on a home server
via sshfs (Linux desktop and server). This could also work with shares for
Windows (although I didn't try). sshfs is mounted via a script on logon.

Has some warts, but works generally well.

~~~
jerrac
I'm able to sync some of it using SyncThing. But I ran into enough sync
conflicts, than I've ignored a lot of files in my profile. So not much
actually syncs anymore.

sshfs would work if you are on the same network all the time. I have yet to
get dynamic dns working for my home connection, so when I'm at work I doubt
I'd be able to access my home sshfs share.

------
discreditable
It's pretty meh. It looks like a simple reskin of Thunderbird which doesn't
solve any of its problems if you ask me. Thunderbird could certainly use some
design love (a conversation view like Gmail could be neat), but I like TB
beta's theme better than this.

------
mwambua
Sounds awesome! I'm pretty happy with Thunderbird as is, but a modern
interface potentially means more users... and hopefully as a result, a longer
life.

Here's a quick link to the survey: [https://thunderbird-
design.typeform.com/to/f7wiiq?utm_referr...](https://thunderbird-
design.typeform.com/to/f7wiiq?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.monterail.com%2Fblog%2Fthunderbird-
new-interface-redesign-survey)

~~~
AndyMcConachie
Those survey questions are completely irrelevant to interface design. I use TB
every day as my main private mail client and the picture they show me doesn't
even look like what I use. Then they ask a bunch of marketing BS questions
that have absolutely nothing to do with usability.

I hope these people stay the hell away from my favorite mail client.

~~~
cmiles74
I installed Thunderbird on a new machine last week and that screenshot is
pretty close to the default setup.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
My main problem with Thunderbird is that it's a poor citizen in email,
particularly with regard to its handling of plaintext. It's far from alone in
that respect, but I would really appeciate Thunderbird being a leader in
taking the problem seriously.

------
pixelbeat__
It's great to see continued maintenance of this important project, and it'll
be interesting to see the results of a visual refresh.

thunderbird has over 20 years lineage, and I've screenshots of the major
stages at:

[http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/](http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/netscape_email/)

------
nicolaslem
I have the feeling that the Open Source community left the email world a while
ago. There is almost nothing happening there.

You may argue that it's because email is a solved problem by now, but I don't
think so:

Setting your own personal email server? Still a hassle to do correctly. Full
text search a la Gmail? You can forget it. Threaded conversations across
folders? Not for you. Hosting a webmail? Good luck finding a maintained one.
Want a desktop client? The flagship Thunderbird is not the healthiest project
right now.

I would really like to see the Redis or the Golang of emails.

~~~
bigbugbag
There are work in progress right now, e.g. trojita[1], caliopen[2], kube[3],
...

Setting up your personal email server correctly hassle free: mail-in-a-box[4]

Most gmail features requires losing all expectations of privacy and as such
are not desirable or feasible. That said IINM full text search already exists
in kde's kmail.

I have no use for threaded conversations across folder, so I have no
suggestions for this, sorry.

Maintained opensource webmails do exist, e.g. roundcube[5], mailpile[6],
rainloop[7], zimbra[8], ...

Non thunderbird desktop clients do exist too: claws[9], sylpheed[10],
kmail[11], mail[12], geary[13], ...

[1]: [https://trojita.flaska.net/](https://trojita.flaska.net/)

[2]: [https://www.caliopen.org/en/](https://www.caliopen.org/en/)

[3]: [https://kube.kde.org/](https://kube.kde.org/)

[4]: [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/) and
[https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox](https://github.com/mail-in-a-
box/mailinabox)

[5]: [https://roundcube.net/](https://roundcube.net/)

[6]: [https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/)

[7]: [https://www.rainloop.net/](https://www.rainloop.net/)

[8]: [https://www.zimbra.com/](https://www.zimbra.com/)

[9]: [http://www.claws-mail.org/](http://www.claws-mail.org/)

[10]: [http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/)

[11]: [https://userbase.kde.org/KMail](https://userbase.kde.org/KMail)

[12]: [https://github.com/elementary/mail](https://github.com/elementary/mail)

[13]: [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary)

~~~
bigbugbag
I should also mention modoboa[1] which is an opensource mail hosting solution
with a web interface.

[1]: [https://modoboa.org/en/](https://modoboa.org/en/)

[1]: [https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa](https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa)

------
qznc
Why does the survey ask "does it look trustworthy"? I voted the middle "4",
because I don't understand the question.

~~~
SyneRyder
I think it means "does it look like an app that you would trust with your
email workflow".

If the design looks broken or amateurish, maybe that would lead you to not
trust the application because you feel it is poorly made and will lose your
data one day.

Or maybe the new design is so focused on stickers & gifs* that you don't trust
the application to reliably handle your professional business communications
with clients anymore.

* (I'm looking at you, Skype, with this comment...)

------
cpeterso
As a heavy Thunderbird user, my biggest complaint is offline support. An IMAP
sync will download new emails' subject lines, but not the actual message
bodies. Clicking on an email subject line then requires freezes Thunderbird
for multiple seconds while it downloads the message body for that single
email.

~~~
rainbowmverse
Right click the account and go to Synchronization and Storage. Double check on
individual folders. I know this works because my ImapMail folder (in the
profile folder) is much bigger than it would be if it only had subjects, and a
quick sampling shows full messages.

If you have this on and it's still taking seconds, the problem is probably
coming from something else.

~~~
cpeterso
Thanks. I double-checked and all my folders are checked in my Synchronization
& Storage settings. Something else must be wrong with my settings.

------
esfandia
I don't really care either way about the colors and the fonts. I care more
about functionality, and the current version still has a very annoying bug,
where there's a type of spam email that Thunderbird will choke on when trying
to download it using POP. I have to use webmail to go manually delete the
offending email so that Thunderbird can download the rest of the emails. Last
time I investigated this, it seems that others have reported this problem, but
nothing's been done about it. I'm very close to moving to Outlook now (which
would also help with calendaring, but that's a whole other can of worms), and
a simple re-design isn't what's going to keep me as a Thunderbird user.

------
butz
Do we really need new design for Thunderbird? How about reusing Photon design
system
([https://design.firefox.com/photon/](https://design.firefox.com/photon/))
from Firefox?

------
hackbinary
I see fair number of comments on here suggesting how to fix Thunderbird, or
what additional features and services it needs. Well, Thunderbird is open
source. Time to contribute more than just a some good ideas.

Or is the Mozilla development and contribution process broken?

It looks like it is realitively straight forward to compile from source:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Simple_Firefox_build/Linux_and_MacOS_build_preparation)

~~~
pmlnr
Contributing to one of the largest open source projects is not a simple task
at all, but you are right. However, they are asking for opinions and putting
up a survey, so this may not be the place and time to start this argument.

------
johnchristopher
Great. Can we have multiple lines per mail in the mail column or is that still
not possible ? /rant

~~~
mrweasel
What does that even mean? What mail column?

~~~
SyneRyder
Presumably the column with the list of emails in the currently selected inbox.
(2nd column from left.)

Some email clients have multiple rows of information in that column - the
first row might have name & subject, the next row might show the first two
sentences of the email. Or it might have the subject on a separate line, so
the column can be kept narrow but still show the full subject line.

Think of the iOS Mail or Android GMail interfaces, for example.

~~~
plopz
I hope they don't go in that direction, I like my emails compact on 1 line.

~~~
nirv
There's a sane responsive interface solution to that: you get single-line
layout on wide screen, and a compact multi-line layout on narrow screen.
Answering a nearby comment, it's doable in CSS-only[1].

This entire discussion is not about complex interface design and the lack of
technical solutions, but the stagnating product. And about questionable
actions to give it a peppy appearance.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queri...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queries/Using_media_queries)

------
kleiba
A sign of me being officially old: I like Thunderbird the way it is. Really.
For what I want to do with it, it's just fine, so I'm rather scared of that
potentially getting screwed up with a UI redesign.

(obligatory xkcd link: [https://xkcd.com/1172/](https://xkcd.com/1172/))

~~~
Silhouette
I couldn't agree more.

There are some enhancements to functionality and some bug fixes that would be
helpful in Thunderbird, and security fixes are always welcome. However, this
is essential software that I rely on for serious work. It doesn't need to be
flashy. It doesn't need a UI overhaul that shifts things around for no
particular reason and almost certainly breaks things that matter. It just
needs to work, reliably and unobtrusively, and not mess anything up.

------
reagle
No need to change UI. Proper maildir support please.

------
krono
As I entered into the survey, on the 'ooo nice' and 'getting shit done'
spectrum, the proposed redesign sits too close to the 'ooo nice' end.

So far I'm really happy with Postbox, basically a fork of Thunderbird with
loads of modern features. I absolutely hate Outlook.

~~~
bigbugbag
Postbox is commercial, proprietary and has no linux support. Not exactly a
fork of Thunderbird.

------
Animats
Behind all the blog blithering, here's the interface mockup:

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/thunde...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/thunderbird-redesign.jpg)

It has all the stuff people expect today - dim grey text on a light grey
background, large decorative graphics to fill space, little round icons for
people, images in your face for every email, and integration with calendar and
contacts. The people who send out "newsletters" (i.e. email spam) will love
it.

------
pmlnr
I think everyone needs to take a look at Evolution[^1] - it's native looking,
with a clean interface, with working contacts and calendar sync.

If that was combined with the surprisingly comfortable keyboard shortcuts of
Rainloop[^2], that would be brilliant, but the world doesn't need yet another
electron-looking app.

[^1]:
[https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/)
[^2]: [https://www.rainloop.net/](https://www.rainloop.net/)

------
harlanji
I've just started using Thunderbird again this last year, comforted by it.
It's definitely better than it used to be. The survey is a joke, I don't trust
product management/design if they're asking people to donate their time to
this survey. Is this grainy screenshot of downloading a ton of email rather
confusing or "clear"... I can't help but laugh at the confirmation that is
being begged for and stop taking the survey.

I guess a fork will come out if it goes the way of Ubuntu.

I love Mozilla's products and mission.

------
superkuh
Well that's the exact opposite of what I'd personally like in terms of
Thunderbird dev time spent. The UI is already perfect. It doesn't need to be
re-made to fit smartphone aesthetics.

------
newscracker
I don't need radical UI redesigns of Thunderbird, but I do see how a redesign
does make it look nicer and "modern", even when the underlying functionality
is the same. On that basis, my vote is for a UI redesign as long as it doesn't
offer too many opportunities for criticism (especially those that cannot be
addressed easily by customization efforts of the community). Thunderbird, like
Firefox, has had support for Themes to change the entire UI/chrome. Some
themes may have introduced issues, but I have tried a few in the past and
found them to provide the flexibility that some users like.

As for Thunderbird itself, I have only two wishes:

1\. Support Exchange calendaring natively and reliably. I've used different
extensions (like Lightning along with DavMail or Exchange Provider), and have
always had to revert back to OWA (Outlook Web Access) just to have a usable
calendar. Without this, I cannot even recommend Thunderbird within my
organization (where almost everybody else is stuck with Outlook; this is not
the only factor that makes Outlook attractive to users in the recent years —
Outlook also has good integration with Skype and Skype Meetings in the
calendar, where people start chats on Skype based on calendar events).

2\. Make it perform better. Most people who are Thunderbird users surely have
been using it for several years and use multiple mailboxes, with each being at
least a few GBs in size. Very few users adopt regular archival, folders, inbox
zero and other approaches. I have multiple mailboxes, with a couple of them
where the Inbox is about 1GB or 2GB. Thunderbird takes several minutes to
startup and show its screen. I know it uses MSF files for the indexes, but it
doesn't seem like it does an optimized load of the mail data (mbox) file or
takes a lazy approach to loading information that may not be recent.
Downloading mail content from IMAP also seems to be slow, though that could be
a combination of the servers (across providers) being slower, the protocol and
Thunderbird's design/implementation.

P.S.: I donate regularly to the Thunderbird project to show my support. Here's
the link for the English version of the donation page (the donation goes only
to the Thunderbird project and not to Mozilla/other projects) —
[https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/)

------
upofadown
I have recently been using Seamonkey as my day to day browser (Seamonkey is
good on OpenBSD). I am really enjoying the fresh take on the user interface …
but of course it actually has a very old take on a user interface … I've just
forgotten.

I think that much of what passes for user interface design is mere fashion.
While a bad user interface is eternal, it doesn't seem possible to have a good
one over any length of time.

------
mrweasel
I get that it's the modern style, but would it be so terrible to add some
colour? The left hand pane has colours, so why can't the buttons?

The menu buttons is really what make Thunderbird weird to me. The "write"
button has a drop-down that say Message, Event, and Task... So write an event?
They also never seems to line up, nor do they actually look like button. Sadly
non of this is addressed in the presented design.

------
otakucode
I would be very happy with Thunderbird if it continued functioning as it
already does, but without opening up a desktop notification listing emails I
received 2 weeks ago... emails it notified me were new every time I clicked on
the application and then off of it for the past 2 weeks. I have yet to figure
out the logic behind what messages it chooses to show there.

------
ccleve
I dumped Thunderbird some years ago because I had accumulated 10 gb of email
and it had slowed to a crawl. That, and the search wasn't very good.

My gmail interface has neither of those problems.

I would consider going back to Thunderbird because it pulls together multiple
email account better than gmail does. But they've got to get a better
underlying storage engine.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Vacuuming might help. And deleting old mail with attachments.

~~~
warkdarrior
I don't want to delete old emails or old attachments, I just want them indexed
for faster search.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The point is to have the archives rewritten, they may be fragmented.

------
jasonkostempski
I tried installing it on Windows 10 yesterday,the buttons on the ad to setup a
new account with one of their partners were unresponsive, including the Skip
button. I eventually figured out how to setup an existing account without
hitting that window but after I added the account, it wouldnt pull in any
mail. I went with Claws Mail.

------
lossolo
They should make it multi threaded, I am seeing so many places in which UI is
blocked and unresponsive while waiting for I/O or other logic.

------
JustSomeNobody
Why do they want it to look Slack-ish?

~~~
mi100hael
Because "modern"

------
bitL
2-3 row header in the list of all inbox messages is all Thunderbird needs UI-
wise to be accepted.

------
gkya
Do yourself (and to other e-mail users in the hacker community) some good and
use something like Mutt or Gnus. Sth. like Thunderbird is not worth the hassle
if you can edit a configuration file and read a man page (most folk here, I'd
guess), and who can't is using Gmail and/or the app on their phones anyways.

~~~
dest
can you read HTML emails with Mutt? with pictures?

~~~
luxpir
Feature, not bug.

~~~
dingaling
Why do so many geeks insist that markup is good for web documents but not for
e-mail?

E-mails can benefit from headings, bulleted lists and tables just as much as a
web page. It's all about communicating information in human-digestable format.

OR PERHAPS ALL EMAIL SHOULD BE SENT TELEGRAM STYLE WITHOUT PUNCTUATION SINCE
THAT IS JUST A DISTRACTION STOP ALSO ONLY IN ASCII CAPS STOP

~~~
luxpir
Am also a ham, so not completely opposed to increased take-up of CW.
Particularly in a global HF mesh network.

I'm not actually opposed to markup at all, but you know exactly the kind of
over-designed barf I'm talking about being happy not receiving. I can always
open an email from a tmp file in the browser (by hitting <v> then <enter> in
mutt) but in more than 9/10 cases that just isn't necessary. W3m renders an
approximation of the html layout just fine.

------
partycoder
I noticed it's an extension rather than just a theme.

Has someone audited this for malware?

~~~
carussell
Everything submitted to addons.mozilla.org gets audited.

