Thunderbird 3 cannot fold the sender information of the email
John Lau
thunderbird 2 that can fold the sender/receiver/subject information
into one line. It makes the interface more clear, like this:
And after it is unfolded, it look like this:
(Sorry the screenshot may contain Chinese char but I just want to demo
the fold and unfold function in thunderbird 2)
But it seems that this feature is removed in thunderbird 3 beta. Why
and can it be added back to thunderbird?
JoeS
It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new message header format.
Many disagree with that, and there is a addon in development to restore a compact view.
http://downloads.mozdev.org/compactheader/CompactHeader-0.7.0.xpi
--
JoeS Using TB3
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_Binaries
John W. Moore III
> It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new
> message header format.
> Many disagree with that, and there is a addon in development to restore
> a compact view.
>
> http://downloads.mozdev.org/compactheader/CompactHeader-0.7.0.xpi
Praise to the Developer working on this. It seems to work very nicely.
I can even exclude those annoying 'buttons' in the Header. :)
JOHN 8-)
Timestamp: Tuesday 15 Sep 2009, 00:44 --400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Thomas Stache
> It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new
> message header format.
Gosh! You guys realize that the people against a change are always more
vocal? What do you know how many nightly users are quite happy with the
advancement of Thunderbird? The mood in this newsgroup is full of "stop
energy", and plain repetitive!
Just posting to raise my hand in favor of the work done in MoMo,
Thomas
Jonathan Pritchard
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I don't think any Thunderbird user is knocking the much appreciated and
needed work that MoMo is doing - I for one think it's great.
I might have just posted a bug similar to this yesterday. However that
was from going from a Thunderbird3pre build to a Thunderbirdb3 build.
However here it seems that it was removed in Thunderbird 3. I'm puzzled.
Here's the bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=516608
Regards,
Jon Pritchard
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David Ascher
> On 15.09.2009 06:18, JoeS wrote:
>> It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new
>> message header format.
>> Many disagree with that, and...
>
> Gosh! You guys realize that the people against a change are always
> more vocal? What do you know how many nightly users are quite happy
> with the advancement of Thunderbird? The mood in this newsgroup is
> full of "stop energy", and plain repetitive!
Thanks Thomas!
Some of that reaction is unavoidable, given that Thunderbird's UI didn't
change for years. People aren't used to any change. Which is why we've
got to great lengths to make it possible for people who don't want many
of the changes we think are required to undo them.
We (TB devs, whether paid or not) are the stewards of Thunderbird. That
means we have the collective responsibility for the development of
Thunderbird, and that that responsibility includes making change happen
that we feel is warranted, even if some users don't like it. We also
have the responsibility to hear those unhappy users, listen for valid
concerns that may point to flaws in our thinking, but even if we're
still confident that change is best, to try and accommodate them
somehow, _while keeping our focus on what we feel will be best for the
largest number of users_.
And that's what we do: we hear the complaints about various changes,
and while some people may not realize it, we do adjust things as we go,
we maintain compatibility with previous behaviors, sometimes through
customizations, add-ons, configuration choices, etc.
As you say, we also know that many people like the changes but "oh cool,
nice!" doesn't lead people to to post as much as "ugh, i don't like it!"
(although we've seen great tweets and facebook messages about the new
search feature =). We have thousands of nightly users, who are only
somewhat representative of the millions of TB2 users. We gather
feedback from them, but also from other sources.
About change in nightly builds: _these are development &
testing-targeted builds_ -- they reflect whatever's in the tree at any
given day, without any of the packaging we put around full releases. It
is simply not possible to pre-flight every change, anticipate all
fallout of a given checkin, and do upgrade notifications for every
change in a nightly. Sometimes, things won't be done. That's an
unavoidable consequence of the complexity of this software. If you're
not comfortable with the fact that the UI might change unpredictably,
please don't use a nightly.
As a final point of etiquette -- advocacy or complaining in bugzilla is
hugely detrimental to our ability to get things done. Please don't do that.
We _do_ want feedback though, especially after a period of habituation,
about which changes bug you, or how it impacts your workflow/habits.
And we very much want feedback about things that used to work that don't
anymore. And creative ideas about which changes would make Thunderbird
better!
> Just posting to raise my hand in favor of the work done in MoMo,
Thanks, that's truly appreciated! Note that it's not just MoMo -- there
are lots of contributors who don't work for MoMo who've been really
helpful in shaping TB3.
I'm hoping that after things settle down on the way to RC1, we can post
a bit more in here about the new capabilities that we've added, and in
particular how people can leverage them to build exciting new add-ons.
--david
Chris Ilias
> On 15.09.2009 06:18, JoeS wrote:
>> It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new
>> message header format.
>> Many disagree with that, and...
>
> Gosh! You guys realize that the people against a change are always more
> vocal? What do you know how many nightly users are quite happy with the
> advancement of Thunderbird? The mood in this newsgroup is full of "stop
> energy", and plain repetitive!
Instead of each poster trying to speak on behalf of all (or most) users,
is there any current work being done on getting user metrics, so there
are actual stats?
John Lau
> On 9/15/2009 12:00 AM, John Lau wrote:
>
> > I use thunderbird for a long time and it has a good feature in
> > thunderbird 2 that can fold the sender/receiver/subject information
> > into one line. It makes the interface more clear, like this:
>
>
> > And after it is unfolded, it look like this:
>
>
> > (Sorry the screenshot may contain Chinese char but I just want to demo
> > the fold and unfold function in thunderbird 2)
>
> > But it seems that this feature is removed in thunderbird 3 beta. Why
> > and can it be added back to thunderbird?
>
> It was thought the compact header function was not necessary in the new message header format.
> Many disagree with that, and there is a addon in development to restore a compact view.
>
> http://downloads.mozdev.org/compactheader/CompactHeader-0.7.0.xpi
>
> --
> JoeS Using TB3http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changeshttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_Binaries
Thank you very much, it works!
BTW, I think the developer should leave the choice to the user. May be
they have good reasons to suggest user to use normal header instead
of compact header. They can set the normal header as default, but they
can still leave the compact header function exist so that another
group of user can be happy too.
On the other hand, I think the beauty of firefox/thunderbird is that
one could customize it by writing plugin and share it with others. :-)
Best regards,
John Lau
JoeS
With very little exposure, except in Mozillazine forums,
08/13/09 Through present,
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/13564 shows 2,115 downloads.
The new version is not yet on the addons site, and I don't think Mozdev keeps stats.
The old version became obsolete in current trunk on 09/09/09
New version is here: http://downloads.mozdev.org/compactheader/
Dan Mosedale
> Instead of each poster trying to speak on behalf of all (or most)
> users, is there any current work being done on getting user metrics,
> so there are actual stats?
Thunderbird. See <https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/> for more
details. If anyone's interested in helping make that happen sooner
rather than later, feel free to jump in and start the port!
Dan
Chris Ilias
> On 9/15/2009 7:12 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:
>> Instead of each poster trying to speak on behalf of all (or most) users,
>> is there any current work being done on getting user metrics, so there
>> are actual stats?
> Well, here's one for you.
> With very little exposure, except in Mozillazine forums,
> 08/13/09 Through present,
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/13564 shows 2,115
> downloads.
> The new version is not yet on the addons site, and I don't think Mozdev
> keeps stats.
> The old version became obsolete in current trunk on 09/09/09
> New version is here: http://downloads.mozdev.org/compactheader/
What conclusions can safely be drawn from that data? How many nightly
users are there? Do those downloads include updates? How many of those
downloads are from users that just don't like change vs. how many need
it for their use-cases?
What I'm thinking about is something on a more larger scale. What
purpose does the header pane serve, when headers such as 'from',
'subject', and time-stamp are usually already visible in the message
list pane? How many users use the message-list pane? How many use the
preview pane, as opposed to viewing messages in a separate tab? Why do
they use Thunderbird that way?
Same goes for toolbar buttons: Why have them in both the headers pane
and the Mail toolbar?
How many TB users have more than one email account in TB?
How many use POP vs. IMAP?
How do most people use email? Is it just for notifications from sites
like Facebook? Forwarding things to friends?
What does it take for someone to delete an email message?
How many users actually use the search function?
How many actually use the Address Book?
How many use tags?
How do most users navigate between message? (for instance, the reference
headers are back in the header pane with the names "1,2,3". If the
purpose of those links is to navigate higher in the message tree,
shouldn't it be labelled more like a breadcrumb?)
How many know how to set up an account? (This is the main reason I was
an advocate for beefing up the easy account setup feature in TB3)
How common is the need to synchronize data with other devices?
How common is it to try to back up Thunderbird data or transfer it to
another computer?
How many users have message filters?
How many know that message filters exist?
When a person wants to add a recipient, what is the most common method
they use to add a recipient?
Some of those questions may be useless, but in the end it's about not
being subjective about priorities and knowing the impact of each change.