Sample Thunderbird UI redesign

[Dave Koelmeyer]

Interesting post:

http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/

--
Dave Koelmeyer
http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz
GPG Key ID: 0x238BFF87

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[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I like the idea. Even if that is not the final, I think they are in the right path. I hope that the "status quo" don't stop an idea like that.

Regards

--

Martín Itúrbide

http://www.os2world.com

mar...@os2world.com

martini...@gmail.com
Quito - Ecuador

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 17/11/2016 21:12, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:

Interesting post:

http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/

This has already been discussed on the "TB Council" mailing list, perhaps Kent can share his views. In a nutshell: Nicer looking is not necessarily more functional. I remember when the folder icons in Windows 7 suddenly became upright instead of landscape in Windows XP. Suddenly the rows were much higher and a lot less fit onto the screen. I have a registry hack to turn them back ;-) [1]

[1] http://www.jorgk.com/win7/ (first item on the page).

--
Jörg Knobloch - jo...@jorgk.com - www.jorgk.com
Thunderbird Developer (Thunderbird, Compose and Mailnews Editor and MIME peer) - Member of the Thunderbird Council

[Sean M. Pappalardo]

On 11/17/2016 02:24 PM, Jörg Knobloch wrote:
> In a nutshell: Nicer looking is not
> necessarily more functional.

That article argues that users tend to consider it so however, and
worries that Thunderbird might be dismissed out-of-hand if its interface
is perceived as outdated.

> I remember when the folder icons in Windows
> 7 suddenly became upright instead of landscape in Windows XP. Suddenly
> the rows were much higher and a lot less fit onto the screen.

That bothers me too, but current design trends focus on "negative
space": that which is intentionally left blank to reduce clutter and
call attention to important items.

I'm not saying I agree (I hate the trendy message lists that show icons
for the senders. So much vertical space wasted!) but just that these are
points worth considering. (My vote is always to allow the user to
customize either way.)

Sincerely,
Sean M. Pappalardo
Sr. Networks Engineer
Renegade Technologies

[R Kent James]

On 11/17/2016 2:24 PM, Jörg Knobloch wrote:
> This has already been discussed on the "TB Council" mailing list,
> perhaps Kent can share his views.

I'm not actually the guy in charge of UI, that is more Richard and
Magnus these days. But with that caveat, here's my response, it is not
intended to be private:

Hi Szymon,

You've managed to hit us at a very inconvenient time relative to other
deadlines for releases, but I'll try to give some comments, without
spending large amounts of time looking in detail at what you have done.

... (response for feedback on specific wording of a prototype to their
original blog post)

On the user interface proposal itself:

I would welcome a change in the look of the product while keeping the
existing functionality. The kinds of changes and polish that you are
proposing would be very helpful with new users who are more used to a
different look. But accept this just as my personal comment, realizing
that I am not the guy who typically does or approves user interface changes.

But I have some cautions.

I think that there is an assumption that "It looked like a modernized
product straight out of the 90’s" is obviously bad, without giving
specific reasons that the current design impedes the workflow of people.
Yes look matters, but people use an email client to get real work done.
The interaction of look with functionality also needs considering.

One example: Including picture icons in the thread pane is a challenge,
as they are typically larger than the text, and that results in fewer
lines of viewable messages. This is particularly a problem in our
default Classic view, where the space available to the thread pane is
more limited (you have shown what we would call the "Vertical" view,
that takes three columns rather than our default of two columns. So the
available space for viewing of the thread pane is reduced in your design.)

We at Thunderbird unfortunately do not have a good idea of why and how
people use our product, nor whether our existing design is causing them
problems. But as your blog post shows, you are proposing to modify
Thunderbird so that it effectively looks like very other email client
out there. Like you said, there are "TONS of email clients" yet somehow
we cling to 25,000,000 users. I do not think that it would be wise to
change the existing functional design radically without a better
understanding of why, if there are "TONS of email clients", our users
cling to us rather than switch.

So what I would like to see is a good understanding of the functionality
of the existing user interface (particularly the thread pane), and what
additional functionality is lost or gained by proposed changes other
than "looks more modern" and making it look like every other client. I'm
not saying that what we have is perfect, or that what you have done is
not possibly an improvement, but you have not actually answered the
questions that I think are the most important.

...(comments on how valuable it would be if their organization engaged
more directly with Thunderbird).

R Kent James
Treasurer, Thunderbird Council

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

My personal opinion is that Thunderbird GUI is outdated. When I got back to use it after some years it took me several minutes to find out that the calendar needed the be opened from the top right icon (near the window minimize icon). Sure that you can customize where the icon goes, but by default it shows up at the top-right.

The chat function was very hard to configure and at the end I preferred not to use it anymore before it was making Thundebird unstable. It may sound weird but even Lotus Notes has a better chat integration on the application than Thunderbird. The Thunderbird address book looks like a disconnected application that was bundle together with the package.

I think that Thunderbird's GUI requires an important update. If there is fear of what can think 25M users can think about changing the GUI maybe it can be interesting to try to poll some of them. Or maybe fork the project and make a more experimental change of GUI to see the user's reaction.

I liked the fearless authors of that blog to try to think outside the box and try a different concept.

Regards

[Jim]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Martin Iturbide <martini...@gmail.com> wrote:

I like the idea. Even if that is not the final, I think they are in the right path. I hope that the "status quo" don't stop an idea like that.

As far as I can tell, the only real new UX is that they added profile pictures for senders and a couple more folder icons. Everything else is just reskinning the current UI to look more "modern". However, one of the nice things about Thunderbird is that it fits in nicely with your host OS; if your host OS looks modern, so should Thunderbird. :)

There are a lot of UX improvements that Thunderbird desperately needs, but I don't think this mockup is a significant improvement upon what we have. There might be a few small things we could take from this to clean things up (e.g. Lightning's Today Pane, the multi-message summary), but I think it would make more sense to focus on *UX* improvements. Here's a list of things that I think would be really helpful:

* Seamless iframes so we can scroll the message headers along with the message bodies

* Improving our tab UI (compose/address book in a tab, fixing scrolling issues with messages in tabs, etc)

* Multiline items in the thread pane

* Deciding on a better UX for global search/quick filter (e.g. merging them somehow?)

* Merging Mail Summaries into TB proper

- Jim

[Graeme]

Hi

Everytime Microsoft upgrades Windows or Word I get several comments from users who groan and say, "Why don't they leave it alone? Why do they always change how things are laid out so that it takes forever to find things again?" I hear very few, "Yeh, isn't this better and cleaner and more modern." Generally speaking it feels like computer geeks like trying new things out and the majority of computer users wish they'd leave it all alone... Do we want to please the larger group or the smaller...

There are of course the new users... I guess for them it's a case of how easy it is to learn the new UI. I don't know how many of those there are.

Graeme

[Blake Winton]

To be fair, the people who dislike something are way more likely to comment about it.  We know that Firefox has a reasonably high user-satisfaction score, but if you look at input.mozilla.org, the amount of negative feedback ranges from 80%-90%.  And, as you imply, we don't hear from any of the people who aren't using Thunderbird because they feel it looks old and outdated…  🙂

Later,

Blake.

-- 

Blake Winton   UX Engineer

bwi...@mozilla.com

[Klaus Hartnegg]

Am 18.11.2016 um 17:04 schrieb Blake Winton:
> And, as you imply, we don't hear from any of the people

> who /aren't/ using Thunderbird because they feel it looks old and
> outdated…

Ok, I'll try to kill this trend once and for all. Not generally making
the UI nicer, or making features easier to use, but the aspect of
wasting desktop space:

Since a few years we are seeing large players in the market applying two
opposite strategies when it comes to desktop UI elements.

One strategy is to keep the desktop UI more or less the same, and
desktop UI strictly separate from mobile UI, by putting larger icons
only on devices with touch screens. Because on touch screens the icons
just have to be larger. That's for technical reasons: capacitive touch
detection is not very precise. Much less precise than the older touch
detection method, that was used before the iPhone.

The opposite strategy is to give the desktop UI also larger elements. To
make the desktop look less cramped, and similar to what people have
become used to see on their smartphones. Because using the same UI on
all devices is nicer ("modern") and easier than having to switch between
two different UIs.

Is it?

The first strategy is the one that Apple has decided to apply.
The second strategy is what Microsoft was following in Windows 8.

The result was an epic desaster for Microsoft. It was so bad that today
just hearing "tile" or "charms panel" makes blood pressure go up.

The had to paddle back, completely redesign everything, and even skip a
version number.

But even with less tiles and no charms bar, Windows 10 still is in many
places a mixture of desktop (small elements) and mobile UI (large elements).

As result, Windows 7 keeps to be much more successful than versions 8
and 10 combined. Even with growing market share for Windows 7. Whow!

Microsoft got all that pain for putting the same UI elements into
Windows 8, which they had designed for Windows Mobile. To make both look
the same.

Usually Microsoft does have the power to push into the market whatever
they want, just by putting it inside Windows. Everything. Except larger
UI elements on desktop computers.

DESKTOP USERS KEEP USING DESKTOPS, BECAUSE THEY WANT TO USE THE CLASSIC
DESKTOP UI FOR CERTAIN TASKS.

Once capacitive touch gets better resolution, it will become possible to
shrink the UI elements on touch displays. My prediction is that they
then will actually shrink. The future is small icons, not large ones.

Copying large icons from smartphones to desktops, because it is
'modern', means going in the wrong direction. We do not have large icons
on mobile phones because it looks great or is better to use, we have
them purely for technical reasons.

The Palm Treo keeps having the much better organizer functions than all
todays smart phones. Because for example its calendar view can fit much
more on one screen, eventhough the screen is smaller. And every item is
precisely selectable. You cannot reproduce that much better UI on a
capacitive touch display, because its display lacks the required touch
precision. Todays smartphone users have no idea how much better a
calender on a smartphone could be, if the screen did not have that
technical limitation. Unfortunately capacitive touch is cheaper.

Please don't touch the desktop.

sincerely,
Klaus Hartnegg

[ace]

Kudos, I wouldn't say it better.
In addition to making icons and elements unnecessary bigger on desktop,
I also hate the low contrast trend (grey text on white background), no
visual separation between widgets (they are no longer buttons, but white
areas with not color between them) and no indication what is an widget
(you don't know what you can click on, you just have to blindly try).
And Windows 10 takes this to new levels when it got dumbed down to
basically use 2 colors, think the new taskbar or the new control panel.

----- Pôvodná správa -----
Predmet: Re: Sample Thunderbird UI redesign
Od: Klaus Hartnegg <hart...@uni-freiburg.de>
Pre: tb-pl...@mozilla.org
Dátum: Fri, 18 Nov 2016 18:22:40 +0100

[R Kent James]

On 11/17/2016 12:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> Interesting post:
>
> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/
>

I think you can see from the responses that there never seems to be any
way to come to a common ground in user interface changes. I'll long
since given up trying to propose changes, as inevitably what I propose
gets shot down. I suspect that others have given up as well. I am also
guilty of being the shooter in many cases, after all we all have opinions.

The only answer that I think we have agreed with is to pick someone who
has a clear vision of a unified design to be the user interface czar,
and just do what they want. The only thing that I would ask is that we
get input from our donors and take seriously their opinions, as we are
being quite successful in fund raising, and they are the ones who are
likely to be funding whatever changes we want done. I would strongly
argue against a proposal that tries to claim that some hypothetical new
user's needs should be considered over existing users who are actually
willing to give money to support a cause they believe in.

:rkent

[Jim]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 7:42 PM, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

On 11/17/2016 12:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> Interesting post:
>
> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/
>

I think you can see from the responses that there never seems to be any
way to come to a common ground in user interface changes.

There are a lot of UX features that I think we agree broadly on. The problem is that many (perhaps the majority?) of them are actually very hard to implement. Multi-line thread pane rows is a great example; if we added that as an option, I don't think anyone would complain. Sadly, the implementation is very involved and requires a lot of expertise with XUL/XPCOM. We have the same problem with making message headers scroll with the body, as well as MIME parsing changes and many others.

As a related problem, Thunderbird just doesn't have enough developers. Many of the folks who've worked on Thunderbird in the past just don't have time to help out much anymore (e.g. me), so it can be hard to make significant forward progress. Compounding this is the fact that *reviewers* often don't have much time, meaning patches sit idly and bitrot without landing. I don't know how to fix this (and probably wouldn't have time to do so even if I did know), but I think it's something Thunderbird will need to address going forward. With a few paid developers to drive the project, I think a lot of these issues would be more tractable.

- Jim

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 19/11/2016 05:29, Jim wrote:

As a related problem, Thunderbird just doesn't have enough developers. Many of the folks who've worked on Thunderbird in the past just don't have time to help out much anymore (e.g. me), so it can be hard to make significant forward progress. Compounding this is the fact that *reviewers* often don't have much time, meaning patches sit idly and bitrot without landing. I don't know how to fix this (and probably wouldn't have time to do so even if I did know), but I think it's something Thunderbird will need to address going forward. With a few paid developers to drive the project, I think a lot of these issues would be more tractable.

That's exactly right. Currently the we have about 10 volunteer developers who try to keep the ship afloat, dealing with bustage originating from Mozilla core on a daily basis. Apart from that, they try to fix some long-standing bugs, plug security holes and at times even implement a small improvement here and there.

There isn't enough manpower to address burning issues like seach/filter and Gloda issues, finally porting the send pipeline to JS, a job which Joshua Cranmer started with JS Mime, getting rid of Mork and also an address book rewrite, just to name a few.

The Thunderbird Council has been discussing to hire three staff members: Someone dedicated to "continuous integration" of a flood-wave of Mozilla core changes, an infrastructure/build engineer overseeing an infrastructure transition away from Mozilla and a CEO-style person to deal with leading the project to a new financial home and relating to donors. Watch this space for more information. These three staff members would only guarantee the bare running of the project without relying on the draining effort of some of the volunteers. Filling these positions would not mean any major new features. Especially the at times dire review situation wouldn't change.

[Benjamin Kerensa]

Thunderbird should evaluate what users want and right now TB doesn't have an effective way to analyze user feedback like Firefox does.

Firefox has an entire user advocacy team that analyzes data from input and other sources and regularly does reports and watches for trends. It also looks at ADI trends along the feedback.

This shouldn't be a little listening to other devs shooting stuff down but instead listening to your users.

You also don't to things like heartbeat surveys which Firefox does.

Serve the users not your own wants and desires.

If new UI wasn't important to users then Postbox would be out of business. The reality is there are Mozillians who have switched from TB to Postbox including Mozilla employees.

[Kent James]

On 11/19/2016 7:21 AM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
> Firefox has an entire user advocacy team that analyzes data from input
> and other sources and regularly does reports and watches for trends.
> It also looks at ADI trends along the feedback.

Firefox, with three orders of magnitude more resources than Thunderbird
(though only one order of magnitude more users), is not a good example
for Thunderbird. If anything, we need to shake off trying to act like
Firefox and instead try to emulate other small, successful open source
projects.

Having led small companies for years, this has been a constant source of
personal irritation. People come in from a Boeing to a small operation
like I used to run, and expect that we have all of the same methods that
they do. We don't and can't, and trying to emulate them is not the right
way forward.

[Kent James]

On 11/19/2016 4:58 AM, Jörg Knobloch wrote:

These three staff members would only guarantee the bare running of the project without relying on the draining effort of some of the volunteers. Filling these positions would not mean any major new features. Especially the at times dire review situation wouldn't change.

While this is accurate, at the moment we are raising over $50,000 per month from donations. As treasurer I have to be cautious so we do not overspend our ability, but if this trend continues I think we could definitely begin to see some solid forward motion in Thunderbird including both eliminating technical debt, as well as improving the user experience.

The future is starting to look exciting.

:rkent

[Benjamin Kerensa]

On Nov 19, 2016 9:20 AM, "Kent James" <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/19/2016 7:21 AM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
> > Firefox has an entire user advocacy team that analyzes data from input
> > and other sources and regularly does reports and watches for trends.
> > It also looks at ADI trends along the feedback.
>
> Firefox, with three orders of magnitude more resources than Thunderbird
> (though only one order of magnitude more users), is not a good example
> for Thunderbird. If anything, we need to shake off trying to act like
> Firefox and instead try to emulate other small, successful open source
> projects.
>

I think your missing the point which is you shouldn't be shooting down ideas without user feedback and data to support shooting it down. Your needs aren't a good measure for all TB users needs.

Absent data to support sticking with a UI or modernizing the UI you would be shooting in the dark.

> Having led small companies for years, this has been a constant source of
> personal irritation. People come in from a Boeing to a small operation
> like I used to run, and expect that we have all of the same methods that
> they do. We don't and can't, and trying to emulate them is not the right
> way forward.
>

One common trait among successful open source projects or even startups is understanding the users needs and frustrations. If you don't do this and start identifying what's important to the end user but instead do what you or other contributors think is best then you could see user attrition.

Look at any number of open source projects that have failed and you will see a lack of listening to the end user.

Are you making a product for yourself or for everyone?

[ISHIKAWA,chiaki]

On 2016/11/20 0:21, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
> Thunderbird should evaluate what users want and right now TB doesn't
> have an effective way to analyze user feedback like Firefox does.
>
> Firefox has an entire user advocacy team that analyzes data from input
> and other sources and regularly does reports and watches for trends. It
> also looks at ADI trends along the feedback.
>
> This shouldn't be a little listening to other devs shooting stuff down
> but instead listening to your users.
>
> You also don't to things like heartbeat surveys which Firefox does.
>
> Serve the users not your own wants and desires.
>
> If new UI wasn't important to users then Postbox would be out of
> business. The reality is there are Mozillians who have switched from TB
> to Postbox including Mozilla employees.
>
>

The above sounds attractive but there is manpower issue, and until that
issue is solved nothing like the above can be seriously done.

I think the point rkent and jorgk made is that as of now
there is no manpower to take care of this additional workload.

That is the status quo of TB.
And as jorgk noted that just staying afloat (being able to compile and
build binary) takes much of contributors' time: not much can be done
additionally. So the three additional hands (two of them are technically
involved with being afloat on a possibly new build infra) would be a
great addition.

Seriously, the kind of UI change probably entails the rewrite of toolkit
library. To me, that sounds like pipe dream. This only shows that many
people are UNAWARE of the plight of TB as of today.

rkent and jorgk may want to make this point LOUD and CLEAR so that more
people understand the current sad state of the bottom line of TB
"development" or just trying to be afloat. The build efforts alone suck
a lot of man-power and not much is left for other niceties.
I am not kidding. I hope rkent and jorgk can add perspective from the
view point of TB council.

I think if there were no build issue problems, maybe serious bugs would
have been fixed a lot faster.

Just my 2 cent worth.

[Disaster Master]

On 11/19/2016 1:17 PM, Benjamin Kerensa <bker...@gmail.com> wrote:

Absent data to support sticking with a UI or modernizing the UI you would be shooting in the dark.

The best way forward for 'modernizing' the Thunderbird UI is very simple - just make it extremely skinnable.

Then Users can scratch their itches to their hearts content by developing 'modern' Themes, without bothering those of us who think the current UI is just fine.

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 19/11/2016 21:47, Óvári wrote:
>
> Hi Jörg,
>
> What else needs to be done to enable CardBook to become the default
> Thunderbird Address Book?
> https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/cardbook/
>
> Thank you
>
> Óvári
>

Frankly, no idea. Maybe ask the author to integrate it into TB.

Jörg.

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 11/17/16 9:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> Interesting post:
>
> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/
>

Hi All,

there have been a lot of negative comments on what we can't do about
this, and under the current circumstances I can understand it may look
like an impossible feat. Lets try not to mix up too many other issues
into this thread (governance, addressbook, user research, ...) and also
consider the good parts.

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

Philipp

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 19/11/2016 22:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I'm just and old guy: Current TB 52/53 works for me. I like the look, and it looks a whole lot more modern than - say - TB 24 (which I have to start from time to time).

And since we don't have infinite manpower, and never will since all mankind is limited, I'm more in favour of fixing *functional* issues. I'd like, for example, to be able to find words in base64-encoded body text, just to give an example. No fancy look can ever replace a good *functioning* program. Anyway, that's the constant battle between me and my wife: I want things to *work*, she wants them to *look good*.

BTW, Postbox 5 is based on which TB version exactly? Ever since TB 38 we've made good progress in fixing some very old and annoying bugs, so if Postbox is based on anything pre-38, to me it would just be unusable regardless of how many fancy UI it offers. Any Japanese using it? Until TB 45 you couldn't write e-mail in Japanese without spurious spaces getting thrown in here and there.

I'm with:

On 18/11/2016 18:22, Klaus Hartnegg wrote:

Please don't touch the desktop.

On 19/11/2016 19:17, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:

Absent data to support sticking with a UI or modernizing the UI you would be shooting in the dark.

This is a very valid point. We have *no* idea how users are using Thunderbird. We waste many resources on UI discussions and in the end implement nothing. Most recent example: Improving the quickfilter for tags to include untagged messages (see discussion on tb-planning and a survey with a turnout of 16 votes). We delivered new features in TB 45, like the Correspondents column (which was forced upon the conservative user community) and created an out-cry and had to back-paddle. Switching to paragraph mode was also not well received by some. Surely Kent is right that TB is a whole lot smaller than FF, but we should indeed be more in touch with our user's needs. In general I have the impression that desktop users are rather conservative, we have a lot of small companies or research organisations using it (that's looking at people reporting bugs), and these people are change-adverse. They want things to work. Also, whichever feature we change, there is someone complaining. But once again, that's just second-guessing scattered interaction with users and no real data to confirm or deny.

[Klaus Hartnegg]

Am 19.11.2016 um 19:17 schrieb Benjamin Kerensa:
> I think your missing the point which is you shouldn't be shooting down
> ideas without user feedback and data to support shooting it down.

One could equally well argue that those, who want to change a
surprisingly successful project, have to provide data to support their
suggestions.

Yes, a few years ago, we have seen an increase in size of icons,
compared with previous touch displays. However: the reason was purely
technical, because plain and simple capacitive touch detection is
cheaper, but a lot less precise. That's why we can exactly specify the
day when this trend started: it was the introduction of the iPhone. This
was the first mass-market device that used capacitive touch detection.

But recently we see the trend in the opposite direction: tablets get
pencils, stylus, or whatever you want to call them. Their purpose is not
to keep finger prints off the glass, but to provide finer control.
Interstingly both Apple and Microsoft are doing this same thing, despite
otherwise following opposite strategies as to how similar the UI of
mobile and desktop should be.

In the light of these facts, I would like to see some really good
arguments for a suggestion to increase icons, and insert whitespace into
a desktop UI. I must admit that I haven't looked at the rest of the
suggestions. I'm not generally against improving the UI.

Note that I am not generally against whitespace. Regarding the too
similar direction-icons for incoming/outgoing emails, I was the one who
suggested that the bigggest contrast to some symbol is not another
symbol, but whitespace. However in that case the whitespace would no be
added, but it is replacing a symbol with whitespace. Whitespace is a
great design element. But I would not add unneccesary whitespace to an
UI, except when necessary because technical limitations of the hardware.
We do not have this situation on the desktop.

Klaus

[Klaus Hartnegg]

Oh, and by the way:

Those who were amongst the first to use internet email (back then when
it started to become available in universities), now come precisely into
that age where they should start wearing glasses. For those who do not
want to admit that just yet, a larger UI does appear nicer and much
preferrable. But we should not use that as reason to change the UI for
everyone. Get glasses and judge the UI while wearing them. Supermarkets
have reading glasses with 2 dpt for $20. I happen to know, because,
well, recently the text on my iPod became hard to read...

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 19/11/2016 21:36, Klaus Hartnegg wrote:
> Supermarkets have reading glasses with 2 dpt for $20.

I'm using some with 1 dpt for 3€from the local "two dollar/Euro shop" ;-)

Jörg.

[Benjamin Kerensa]

I'm not suggesting a specific UI but rather that when making decisions to dismiss a UI as to flashy or modern it seems new UI is being dismissed for personal reasons not focusing on the end user.

Yes you are right the first email users are getting older but I'd doubt you'd find that most TB users are old.

Again learn who the users are and their demographics and needs. Right now anything said here is speculation without any user research.

And I do not agree with the statement that TB doesn't have the ability to improve UI die to limited resources. Postbox is a two or three person part-time operation. TB is nearly a dozen people plus casual contributors.

TB needs to be looking at the future and continuing to create a compelling reason for users to remain loyal and not go to alternatives like Postbox or even webmail.

I personally use Postbox these days because it's more stable, modern and feature rich than TB (and actually built by some of the folks who built TB in the past)

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 11/20/16 12:10 AM, Jörg Knobloch wrote:

On 19/11/2016 22:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I'm just and old guy: Current TB 52/53 works for me. I like the look, and it looks a whole lot more modern than - say - TB 24 (which I have to start from time to time).

And since we don't have infinite manpower, and never will since all mankind is limited, I'm more in favour of fixing *functional* issues. I'd like, for example, to be able to find words in base64-encoded body text, just to give an example. No fancy look can ever replace a good *functioning* program. Anyway, that's the constant battle between me and my wife: I want things to *work*, she wants them to *look good*.

Not the point I am trying to make. I have understood from past posts that a lot of you would like to keep TB like it is and we shouldn't be making random changes. But there must be something positive about the mockups? Please try to find those 2% you may like. If the result of this thread is that everyone posting agrees that there is not one thing to like about it and that we should stay with our current UI, then we might as well close the thread.

As you mention, there are users that want things to look good. So, what do you think looks good about it and still works? Technical reasons like gecko version aside please. Lets try to turn this from "Yes, but", into "Yes, and" :)

Philipp

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 20/11/2016 09:44, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
> Postbox is a two or three person part-time operation. TB is nearly a
> dozen people plus casual contributors.

Surely those two to three people build on the work of the TB team
without ever giving anything back, at least not to my knowledge. They
don't even comply with the legal requirement to make the Mozilla source
they use available, see: https://www.postbox-inc.com/coveredcode

As I said, much of the work of the TB team goes into catching up with
M-C changes. On a static fork this problem goes away immediately. But it
creates the bigger problem of perhaps never integrating with trunk
again. That said, it's of course easier to rebase a few Postbox
add-ons/additions than the entire code base.

Jörg.

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 20/11/2016 11:20, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Please try to find those 2% you may like.

It starts with a completely bloated sentence "why did we redesign Thunderbird?" which already puts me off. Depending on your definition of "redesign" that's a mind to severe exaggeration. To me, redesign would mean addressing some of the "legacy" technical problems we have: Mork, XUL, C++ to JS, etc.

So they created a nice looking skin. Let's take a look:

The folder pane now has a dark background. Oh boy! It wastes a lot of space and shows two Gmail accounts. No feeds. Everything they have fits on the screen, how lucky. My folder pane is one kilometre long in comparison, I have six accounts and a heap of local folders.

Next they are using the "Vertical View". Nothing new about that. The icons look nice, but they waste a lot of space. As far as I can see, it's neither conversations nor threads. Oh yes, the header pane looks different and also wastes more space. So what's new apart from the icons? What am I missing?

On the right, they changed the "Today Pane" a little. Nothing to get excited about.

As they said in their own words: "Whole work was focused on adding some white space, inserting new typography an equalizing colors".

I don't have space for extra white-space, and yes, the colours are nice. I don't mind the fonts.

I'll tell you what makes my live with Thunderbird easier: Some additions to userChrome.css. In the folder/thread pane I have white and grey rows alternating and I use more distinct colours for the selected row and the drop target. That's functionality that helps me every minute. Right now. No "redesign" necessary. See below.

Jörg.

[Richard Marti]

On 20.11.2016 12:34, Jörg Knobloch wrote:

> The folder pane now has a dark background. Oh boy! It wastes a lot of
> space and shows two Gmail accounts.

I like the color of the folder pane and titlebar. But yes, not this much
of white space.

> Next they are using the "Vertical View". Nothing new about that. The
> icons look nice, but they waste a lot of space.

That's the big issue of "Vertical View". We have no multiline treerows.

> As they said in their own words: "Whole work was focused on adding some
> white space, inserting new typography an equalizing colors".

But equalizing colors shouldn't mean reduce contrast as you can see on
the main toolbar with the grey icons/text.

> I'll tell you what makes my live with Thunderbird easier: Some additions
> to userChrome.css. In the folder/thread pane I have white and grey rows
> alternating and I use more distinct colours for the selected row and the
> drop target. That's functionality that helps me every minute. Right now.
> No "redesign" necessary. See below.

That's the great advantage of TB. You can easily change the appearance
with some CSS code. :)

Richard

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 11/20/16 12:34 PM, Jörg Knobloch wrote:
> On 20/11/2016 11:20, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
>> Please try to find those 2% you may like.
>

> The folder pane now has a dark background. Oh boy! It wastes a lot of
> space and shows two Gmail accounts. No feeds.
>

Sarcasm is not putting things positive. I've tried to state this in
multiple ways and it doesn't seem to resonate. I would like to find some
encouragement for Monterail to continue to contribute. With some minor
changes our UI has been the way it is for ages. Not moving forward is
not an option. It is clear that the design should not be implemented
1:1, a full redesign is surely not the goal, and that some user research
would be helpful. I think this is also clear to Monterail, but putting
ideas out in the open that go a bit over the top are the only way to
spark discussion and make progress.

The open source process should be inclusive, and should encourage new
contributors to participate. Not discourage them by focusing on the
negative aspects. I think it would be positive to work together with the
designers and developers wanting to make improvements, even if the end
result is not the same as what they start out with. This will be my last
email to justify my intent, I am happy to reply to anything positive
coming out of this.

[Klaus Hartnegg]

> Am 19.11.2016 um 22:49 schrieb Philipp Kewisch <moz...@kewis.ch>:
>
> Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
> changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

A thing which really frustrates new users is when the first setup of a program is complicated. Look at the UI and functionality of those steps. I see a number of possible improvements there.

And why is later modifying smtp config in a completely different place than imap?

There are some possible UI improvements of the main UI, which cannot be shown in a static mockup:

When a column width is changed by the user, the width of the date, received and size columns should not change.

When a user has modified which columns are shown, and/or their width, and/or order, it should be possible to make the new setting the default for new folders and new accounts. And the change should survive a reindex of the folder. Or it should not be necessary to frequently reindex folders just to make search find all matches.

When no date line is present in an email, the date column should instead show the contents of the received line, not the timestamp when that email got moved into that folder (maybe this bug got
fixed meanwhile, didn't check).

When spam detection has been turned off, the spam column should not be shown. Or spam detection should be so great that it justifies full download of all emails when adding a folder or account.

Why is there a "new" column (the star), when that same info is also already reflected in the font weight (bold)?

Why are the icons on top by default shown with icon and text, not just icon, with text only as hover-tip? Would definitely look cleaner. Good icons do not need description always shown. If they need, make them better.

Klaus

--
Message sent from a mobile device, please excuse brevity and typos

[Tanstaafl]

On 11/19/2016 4:49 PM, Philipp Kewisch <moz...@kewis.ch> wrote:
> Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
> changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

Honestly - although I don't use themes, I didn't see anything earth
shattering there that couldn't be achieved through the use of a theme.

Could you maybe point out the major differences - other than color
scheme of course (color schemes are easily changed with themes, no?).

I agree with whoever said to just improve the ability to customize the
UI through the use of themes.

This provides the best of both worlds.

I personally like the UI as it is.

[Matt Harris]

On 19-Nov-16 2:59 PM, Jim wrote:

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 7:42 PM, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

On 11/17/2016 12:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> Interesting post:
>
> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/
>

I think you can see from the responses that there never seems to be any
way to come to a common ground in user interface changes.

There are a lot of UX features that I think we agree broadly on. The problem is that many (perhaps the majority?) of them are actually very hard to implement. Multi-line thread pane rows is a great example; if we added that as an option, I don't think anyone would complain. Sadly, the implementation is very involved and requires a lot of expertise with XUL/XPCOM. We have the same problem with making message headers scroll with the body, as well as MIME parsing changes and many others.

I think a perhaps more relevant issue is that Mozilla will not accept a patch to implement it,  I think the statement in the bug was XUL is deprecated.  But the message was clear.  If you want the feature, implement it in HTML.

Matt

[Mihovil Stanić]

20.11.2016 u 13:47, Philipp Kewisch je napisao/la:
>
> Sarcasm is not putting things positive. I've tried to state this in
> multiple ways and it doesn't seem to resonate. I would like to find some
> encouragement for Monterail to continue to contribute. With some minor
> changes our UI has been the way it is for ages. Not moving forward is
> not an option. It is clear that the design should not be implemented
> 1:1, a full redesign is surely not the goal, and that some user research
> would be helpful. I think this is also clear to Monterail, but putting
> ideas out in the open that go a bit over the top are the only way to
> spark discussion and make progress.
>
> The open source process should be inclusive, and should encourage new
> contributors to participate. Not discourage them by focusing on the
> negative aspects. I think it would be positive to work together with the
> designers and developers wanting to make improvements, even if the end
> result is not the same as what they start out with. This will be my last
> email to justify my intent, I am happy to reply to anything positive
> coming out of this.
>
> Philipp
>
>

+1
TB needs to move slowly forward and try new things. Radical UI changes
are bad thing, but slow changes and experimenting should be encouraged.

[Magnus Melin]

On 19.11.2016 23:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
> Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
> changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I like the way the thread is displaying all mails in the conversation
after each other.
(http://monterail.com/blog/assets/images/email-clients/thunderbird-redesign-message-preview.png)

Also the round sender icons are nice.

-Magnus

[Dave Koelmeyer]

On 20/11/16 10:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
>
> Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
> changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I quite like the whole thing, actually. If anything this mockup throws
into stark relief just how crufty and superficially off-putting the
existing UI is.

--
Dave Koelmeyer
http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz
GPG Key ID: 0x238BFF87

[ISHIKAWA,chiaki]

On 2016/11/20 20:34, Jörg Knobloch wrote:
> Some additions to userChrome.css.
> In the folder/thread pane I have white and grey rows alternating and I
> use more distinct colours for the selected row and the drop target.

Just curious. How do we specify white and grey rows?
I could use that feature today (!).

TIA

[The Wanderer]

On 2016-11-20 at 16:30, ISHIKAWA,chiaki wrote:

> On 2016/11/20 20:34, Jörg Knobloch wrote:
>
>> Some additions to userChrome.css. In the folder/thread pane I have
>> white and grey rows alternating and I use more distinct colours for
>> the selected row and the drop target.
>
> Just curious. How do we specify white and grey rows? I could use that
> feature today (!).

I do it with:

#threadTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-row(even) {
background-color: -moz-oddtreerow;
}

This leaves the even-numbered rows as grey, rather than the odd-numbered
ones as was the default in versions before Thunderbird dropped the zebra
striping, but the effect is much the same.

If memory serves, the reason I did it this way is that sticking with
recoloring the even rows leads to needing to override various other
colors (text highlighting with message tags, for example), in ways that
quickly get unwieldy.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

[Gervase Markham]

On 20/11/16 12:47, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
> Sarcasm is not putting things positive. I've tried to state this in
> multiple ways and it doesn't seem to resonate. I would like to find some
> encouragement for Monterail to continue to contribute.

This seems eminently sensible. I agree that the tone so far on this
thread has not been "what good can we find in this?" but "let's have a
whine and a moan about Thunderbird's lack of manpower and all of the
stuff we don't like about the mockup". Neither of these things is going
to lead to more contributors - if anything, they will lead to fewer.

I would say that "redesign" is the wrong word for what they've done, as
all of the same functions are in the same places (as far as I can see).
This is really a reskin, and so appreciation of it falls much more in
the realm of aesthetics. I also don't use the 3-pane the way they have
it set up, so it's hard to disentangle my views about that frm my views
of the mockup. But functionally, I do like the idea of "saved searches"
on the left for mail which is Starred, or marked as Important, and the
idea of de-emphasising the Spam folder.

Gerv

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 21/11/2016 10:18, Gervase Markham wrote:

On 20/11/16 12:47, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Sarcasm is not putting things positive. I've tried to state this in
multiple ways and it doesn't seem to resonate. I would like to find some
encouragement for Monterail to continue to contribute. 

This seems eminently sensible. I agree that the tone so far on this
thread has not been "what good can we find in this?" but "let's have a
whine and a moan about Thunderbird's lack of manpower and all of the
stuff we don't like about the mockup". Neither of these things is going
to lead to more contributors - if anything, they will lead to fewer.

I would say that "redesign" is the wrong word for what they've done, as
all of the same functions are in the same places (as far as I can see).
This is really a reskin, ...

I apologize for the sarcasm. As I said, I was put off by the word "redesign" since Thunderbird faces some real redesign issues. Putting a more "modern" face onto it doesn't solve those issues. And since we don't have unlimited resources, it would be good to keep the program running since a good-looking but dead program isn't of any use.

The mock-up that was presented looks nice and if modernising the UI

• brings in new donating users
• doesn't get forced upon old-school people who don't want it
• doesn't cause performance issues
• doesn't lose existing users

then there's nothing wrong with it. It would be good to get some data to prove these points.

Jörg.

[Disaster Master]

On 11/18/2016 8:42 PM, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

I think you can see from the responses that there never seems to be any
way to come to a common ground in user interface changes. I'll long
since given up trying to propose changes, as inevitably what I propose
gets shot down. I suspect that others have given up as well. I am also
guilty of being the shooter in many cases, after all we all have opinions.

The only answer that I think we have agreed with is to pick someone who
has a clear vision of a unified design to be the user interface czar,
and just do what they want.

The only answer? What may I ask is wrong with my proposal to simply improve the underlying code to allow better access for Themes to be able to change the UI?

In what way is this not a much better solution than a 'UI Czar' who, as you clearly outlined, will inevitably upset a large number of people?

Better Theme support totally eliminates said controversy.

[Disaster Master]

On 11/20/2016 3:45 PM, Dave Koelmeyer <dave.ko...@davekoelmeyer.co.nz> wrote:

On 20/11/16 10:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I quite like the whole thing, actually. If anything this mockup throws
into stark relief just how crufty and superficially off-putting the
existing UI is.

This is really just your opinion, Dave. I really dislike it when people try to speak for me/others, so please just stop it.

I, and many others I know, think the UI is just fine.

That said, I do heavily customize it from the default - but that is the beauty of Mozilla products and *why* I prefer both Firefox and Thunderbird.

Also - if you really feel this way, then you should be pushing for modernization of the internals to allow for themes to change the UI in a more comprehensive way (like the way Classic Theme Restorer does for Firefox), this way each of us could have our cake, and eat it too.

I have personally been very uncomfortable with the discussion regarding the deprecation of XUL and XPCOM, specifically with respect to certain Addon devs (Classic Theme Restorer for Firefox mainly) concerns about even being able to do what they are currently doing with the new model.

If I lose the ability to modify Thunderbird/Firefox to *my* liking because of the loss of XUL/XPCOM, I will wait a certain amount of time to see if the Addon Devs can work things out, and if not, will have to see what else is out there (my biggest fear being there are no real alternatives).

[Disaster Master]

On 11/19/2016 4:49 PM, Philipp Kewisch <moz...@kewis.ch> wrote:

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

Ok, I'll bite.

I don't have strong feelings about most of it specifically, but here goes.

First, I don't like the 'picture' icons, so would remove them right away.

Second, Vertical View is nothing new, and still needs multi-line support in the thread pane (which is apparently hard or impossible to do in HTML, although a promising (but buggy) Addon was created fairly quickly, but then went nowhere).

I see some potential in the Today Pane changes, but would add (##) designators next to each 'upcoming' section (Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming...) showing how many items there are for each (similar to how you see message counts in the Folder pane).

So, it appears to be mainly just minor skinning and integrating the 'Conversations' Addon (which I don't like), with the exception of the Calendar/Lightning (Today Pane) changes.

If that is so, I'll repeat what I said earlier.

Why not just focus on making it easier to create Themes? If there are underlying technical reasons that anything in this mockup cannot be done by a theme today, then identify those kinds of blockers, and work on them.

This way, everyone can potentially scratch their own personal itch and customize the UI exactly the way they like.

Some of these comments seem to suggest that it is possible to come up with a single set of UI changes that will please everyone.

I'm here to tell you that this is simply impossible.

So with this in mind, again, the only thing that makes sense to me is to simply make changes to the underlying code that make it easier for Theme creators to do their thing.

Also, I don't know if this is even currently possible in Lightning. Is Lightning 'themable'?

[Disaster Master]

On 11/19/2016 12:26 PM, Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

While this is accurate, at the moment we are raising over $50,000 per month from donations. As treasurer I have to be cautious so we do not overspend our ability, but if this trend continues I think we could definitely begin to see some solid forward motion in Thunderbird including both eliminating technical debt, as well as improving the user experience.

The future is starting to look exciting.

Wow! That is awesome news Kent, thanks! Why is this the first we're hearing about it? Is there anywhere (web page) that this kind of thing can be monitored by those of us who care to?

Thanks again!

[Disaster Master]

On 11/19/2016 6:10 PM, Jörg Knobloch <jo...@jorgk.com> wrote:

BTW, Postbox 5 is based on which TB version exactly?

Good question... I'm surprised they aren't at least required to say so on their website.

[Jörg Knobloch]

Worse: They don't even comply with the legal requirement to make the Mozilla source they use available, see: https://www.postbox-inc.com/coveredcode

Jörg.

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 21/11/2016 15:46, Disaster Master wrote:

I tried a feature we implemented in TB 38 (different dictionaries in different compose windows) and it wasn't in Postbox 5.

BTW, look at their layout, looks familiar? ;-)

[Jim]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Dave Koelmeyer <dave.ko...@davekoelmeyer.co.nz> wrote:

On 20/11/16 10:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
>
> Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
> changes, what do you like most about the mockup?
I quite like the whole thing, actually. If anything this mockup throws
into stark relief just how crufty and superficially off-putting the
existing UI is.

The mockup is considerably more difficult to read due to poor contrast on much of the text, making it less accessible for people with poor vision (the Thunderbird logo plastered on the folder pane is especially egregious), so that renders a lot of their UI changes unusable. They do make things line up a bit better though; the Today pane in their mockup has a header the same height as the main toolbar, which looks a lot nicer than the current Today pane. We could also look at areas where we can reduce the "weight" of some of the UI. While I think the mockup goes too far, there are places here and there where we have superfluous borders/bezels/etc.

However, if you want a single feature that will enable us to make substantial improvements to the UI, it's seamless iframes. With seamless iframes, we could completely redo the message reader UI, making it easy to scroll the headers with the body, as well as making it possible to correctly handle full conversations without CSS leaking out and without gross hacks to fix iframe sizing. That alone would let us make Thunderbird look a lot different as well as fixing long-standing usability issues.

- Jim

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 11/21/16 7:21 PM, Jim wrote:
> However, if you want a single feature that will enable us to make
> substantial improvements to the UI, it's seamless iframes. With
> seamless iframes, we could completely redo the message reader UI,
> making it easy to scroll the headers with the body, as well as making
> it possible to correctly handle full conversations without CSS leaking
> out and without gross hacks to fix iframe sizing. That alone would let
> us make Thunderbird look a lot different as well as fixing
> long-standing usability issues.

Which seems to have been removed from the spec?
https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/331

When I read about seamless I thought it would be useful too though,
would be sad if it goes away.

Philipp

[Dave Koelmeyer]

On 22/11/16 01:43, Disaster Master wrote:

On 11/20/2016 3:45 PM, Dave Koelmeyer <dave.ko...@davekoelmeyer.co.nz> wrote:

On 20/11/16 10:49, Philipp Kewisch wrote:

Imagine for once that we had infinite manpower and could make any
changes, what do you like most about the mockup?

I quite like the whole thing, actually. If anything this mockup throws
into stark relief just how crufty and superficially off-putting the
existing UI is.

This is really just your opinion, Dave. I really dislike it when people try to speak for me/others, so please just stop it.

Quite obviously it's my opinion—and I've earned the right to voice it. You clearly have little grasp of the concept of open discussion.

Cheers,
Dave

[Jim Porter]

On 11/21/2016 01:08 PM, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
> When I read about seamless I thought it would be useful too though,
> would be sad if it goes away.

Hmm, maybe we can come up with another way to handle this (scoped
stylesheets? web components?), but this will be especially hard for RSS
content which has JS enabled...

As an encouraging point, it seems that the main reason it was removed
was just that people weren't using it, as opposed to it being a bad
idea, so maybe it could be resurrected in some form...

- Jim

[Axel Grude]

Their Gecko version was forked at 9.0 and they do not plan to modernize anytime soon. Which makes Addon support difficult as you need to wrote a lot of Shim code.

 Axel

Axel Grude
Software Developer
Thunderbird Add-ons Developer (QuickFolders, quickFilters, QuickPasswords, Zombie Keys, SmartTemplate4)
AMO Editor
Visit my YouTube Channel for productivity tips

Subject:Re: Sample Thunderbird UI redesign
From:Disaster Master <disasterl...@gmail.com>
To:Tb-planning
Sent: Monday, 21/11/2016 14:46:21 14:46 GMT ST +0000 [Week 47]

On 11/19/2016 6:10 PM, Jörg Knobloch <jo...@jorgk.com> wrote:

BTW, Postbox 5 is based on which TB version exactly?

Good question... I'm surprised they aren't at least required to say so on their website.

[neandr]

+1 ... that's why we had to stop supporting it for Reminderfox :-( some
time ago

On 21.11.2016 20:54, Axel Grude wrote:
> Their Gecko version was forked at 9.0 and they do not plan to
> modernize anytime soon. Which makes Addon support difficult as you
> need to wrote a lot of Shim code.

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 11/21/16 8:30 PM, Jim Porter wrote:
> On 11/21/2016 01:08 PM, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
>> When I read about seamless I thought it would be useful too though,
>> would be sad if it goes away.
> Hmm, maybe we can come up with another way to handle this (scoped
> stylesheets? web components?), but this will be especially hard for RSS
> content which has JS enabled...

There is <iframe sandbox/> maybe you meant that?

Philipp

[Kent James]

On 11/21/2016 6:41 AM, Disaster Master wrote:
> Why is this the first we're hearing about it?

Maybe because it is news, and there is always a first time for everything?

[Disaster Master]

On 11/21/2016 9:10 PM, Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

On 11/21/2016 6:41 AM, Disaster Master wrote:

Why is this the first we're hearing about it? 

Maybe because it is news, and there is always a first time for everything?

Okay, sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. This is incredible news, and I for one am ecstatic.

I think it speaks volumes to how you and the team are handling things. Thunderbird is in good hands.

Way to go!

[Chris Ilias]

On 2016-11-17 3:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> Interesting post:
>
> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/
>

Has the discussion died down? Now all of you are going to hate me for
continuing it. :)

First, I think it's great that people are thinking about Thunderbird UX,
even if it's just aesthetic.
Even if many of us have no issues with the design, I'd be interested to
know which version of TB each of you started on. There have been
significant changes, and many of us have just gotten used to things that
may not be as intuitive in later versions. For instance:
Here's a screenshot of TB1.5: http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb15-theme.png
Here's a screenshot of TB45: http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45.png

When I started using TB, it had a menu bar by default. The menu bar was
replaced with a menu button. I suppose I would have assumed the button
at the end of the toolbar was the path to all those commands. The
addition of a calendar pushed the menu button away from the edge of the
window, and I don't think I would interpret it as a menu button anymore.
It's in the middle of nowhere and looks like a big grippy.
Maybe extend the toolbar across the window?
Change the icon to something like a gear?
Move the menu button up in the tab bar? I don’t know about anyone else,
but I rarely have more than one TB tab open anyway.

If I'm a new user, and I've just set up an account using the wizard that
pops up on first install, what are the next actions?
get new messages
* view message list
* view message content
* view other folders
* reply to a message
* write a new message
* add a signature
* create additional account?
* set up filters

Looking at the TB45 screenshot, how intuitive are each of those tasks?
Would you know where to go to set up a signature, set up filters, or
create an additional account?

By discussing the logic of the layout and common use-cases, I think we
can come across some low hanging fruit, and get more people interested
in contributing to TB.

I'm also kinda lost regarding who Thunderbird is for. It does email,
newsgroups, RSS feeds, address book, Calendar, to-do list, IRC, Jabber,
and other messaging, but no central place to launch those components,
like in SeaMonkey.

Here's another one: Why do we have a menu item to create "Other
accounts", when it only offers one account type?
http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45-otheraccount.png

Interestingly, that TB1.5 screenshot was from a blog post I did about
not liking the TB2 theme. :)
http://ilias.ca/blog/2006/11/i-dont-like-the-new-thunderbird-theme/

[Walter L Schwartz]

On 12/01/2016 07:18 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:

On 2016-11-17 3:12 PM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:

Interesting post:

http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/

Has the discussion died down? Now all of you are going to hate me for continuing it. :)

First, I think it's great that people are thinking about Thunderbird UX, even if it's just aesthetic.
Even if many of us have no issues with the design, I'd be interested to know which version of TB each of you started on. There have been significant changes, and many of us have just gotten used to things that may not be as intuitive in later versions. For instance:
Here's a screenshot of TB1.5: http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb15-theme.png
Here's a screenshot of TB45: http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45.png

When I started using TB, it had a menu bar by default. The menu bar was replaced with a menu button. I suppose I would have assumed the button at the end of the toolbar was the path to all those commands. The addition of a calendar pushed the menu button away from the edge of the window, and I don't think I would interpret it as a menu button anymore. It's in the middle of nowhere and looks like a big grippy.
Maybe extend the toolbar across the window?
Change the icon to something like a gear?
Move the menu button up in the tab bar? I don’t know about anyone else, but I rarely have more than one TB tab open anyway.

Did you know you can use Customize to move the menu button up into the tab bar, menu bar or all the way down to the other end of the mail toolbar?

I have Mail and Calendar tabs always open, Chat and read some messages in tabs other times.

If I'm a new user, and I've just set up an account using the wizard that pops up on first install, what are the next actions?
get new messages
* view message list
* view message content
* view other folders
* reply to a message
* write a new message
* add a signature
* create additional account?
* set up filters

Looking at the TB45 screenshot, how intuitive are each of those tasks? Would you know where to go to set up a signature, set up filters, or create an additional account?

By discussing the logic of the layout and common use-cases, I think we can come across some low hanging fruit, and get more people interested in contributing to TB.

I'm also kinda lost regarding who Thunderbird is for. It does email, newsgroups, RSS feeds, address book, Calendar, to-do list, IRC, Jabber, and other messaging, but no central place to launch those components, like in SeaMonkey.

Here's another one: Why do we have a menu item to create "Other accounts", when it only offers one account type? http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45-otheraccount.png

Well, all the other accounts have their own menu items. The "Other accounts" menu item offers Movemail and Newsgroups on Linux, only Newsgroups on Windows.

Interestingly, that TB1.5 screenshot was from a blog post I did about not liking the TB2 theme. :) http://ilias.ca/blog/2006/11/i-dont-like-the-new-thunderbird-theme/
 

I liked the Folder pane background in the UI redesign, but it was only for Windows. How would it look on Linux and Mac?

-- 
    

[Chris Ilias]

On 01/12/2016 10:29 PM, Walter L Schwartz wrote:
> On 12/01/2016 07:18 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:
>> Here's a screenshot of TB45: http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45.png
>>
>> When I started using TB, it had a menu bar by default. The menu bar
>> was replaced with a menu button. I suppose I would have assumed the
>> button at the end of the toolbar was the path to all those commands.
>> The addition of a calendar pushed the menu button away from the edge
>> of the window, and I don't think I would interpret it as a menu button
>> anymore. It's in the middle of nowhere and looks like a big grippy.
>> Maybe extend the toolbar across the window?
>> Change the icon to something like a gear?
>> Move the menu button up in the tab bar? I don’t know about anyone
>> else, but I rarely have more than one TB tab open anyway.
>
> Did you know you can use Customize to move the menu button up into the
> tab bar, menu bar or all the way down to the other end of the mail toolbar?

This isn't a support thread. I'm talking about the best default.
Before we can expect the user to move the button, they need to know at
least two things:
* what the button is for
* that it can be moved

>> Here's another one: Why do we have a menu item to create "Other
>> accounts", when it only offers one account type?
>> http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb45-otheraccount.png
>
> Well, all the other accounts have their own menu items. The "Other
> accounts" menu item offers Movemail and Newsgroups on Linux, only
> Newsgroups on Windows.

So there's a low hanging fruit: Change the menu label on Windows and Mac
versions. It would probably be a good first bug for a new contributor.

In addition, TB should skip the first screen of the wizard on Windows
and Mac.

[Disaster Master]

I would really like an answer to this Kent...

[Wayne Mery]

It seems you are suggesting that themes can facilitate the rearranging
of UI, or changing the logic/interaction of UI. That's not the purpose
of a theme. Themes are about skinning, which is changing the appearance
of *existing* UI.

[Disaster Master]

On 12/1/2016 7:18 PM, Chris Ilias <tb-pl...@ilias.ca> wrote:

Even if many of us have no issues with the design, I'd be interested to know which version of TB each of you started on.

I started before version 1 was released, but I can't remember what specific point release it was.

The difference in the default GUI between versions isn't really relevant for myself, because one of the reasons I love Mozilla products is the ability to customize the UI. I heavily customize the UI in both. Someone who only ever uses the default GUI would have a hard time knowing I'm even using Firefox or Thunderbird.

By discussing the logic of the layout and common use-cases, I think we can come across some low hanging fruit, and get more people interested in contributing to TB.

While there is value in designing a default GUI that makes it easy to find things, please do so with the knowledge that you will never, ever please everyone (or even likely half of everyone), and be sure people can continue to customize things the way they want - ie, customizable toolbars/buttons, ability to customize the layout itself, etc - meaning, I suppose, full fledged theming support for all UI elements.

[Disaster Master]

Fair enough, thanks Wayne. In all honesty, I was struggling to find a single word that expressed the ability to customize the UI, so I settled on Theme. Guess that wasn't the best choice.

My primary concern is maintaining the ability to customize the UI, over and above any changes to the default GUI presented on a fresh install.

I'd love to have the ability, if I were a programmer, to write my own Addon that not only just changed the 'appearance', but also the GUI itself.

Obviously, the existence of the 'Classic Theme Restorer' Addon proves that a lot of GUI changes can be made via an Addon.

So, a question for you.

Is there any reason that a Theme Addon (Themes are still Addons, right?) couldn't do the same things as, say, Classic Theme Restorer?

Also, is it possible to write an Addon that makes changes like, for example, moves/places toolbar elements (buttons, location bar, search bar, etc) to a specific toolbar, in a certain order, then hides certain other toolbars?

Regardless, upon reflection, I can see value in Kent's suggestion for a GUI 'czar', as long as the ability to customize the GUI provided as the default by said 'czar' remains fully intact.

[Axel Grude]

Subject:Re: Sample Thunderbird UI redesign
From:Disaster Master <disasterl...@gmail.com>
To:Tb-planning

Sent: Monday, 12/12/2016 15:05:09 15:05 GMT ST +0000 [Week 50]

Well, in my experience that is provided by XUL. Of course to make the GUI functional you also need to be able to inject code that does something useful (especially in the realm then you also need XPCOM which gives you access to the low level, scriptable parts of the email front end code; this also includes access to GLODA (the database behind the search engine in Thunderbird).

So, a question for you.

Is there any reason that a Theme Addon (Themes are still Addons, right?) couldn't do the same things as, say, Classic Theme Restorer?

There are restrictions with Themes, normally they shouldn't contain executable codes, but some full themes circumvent this restriction by bundling an extension with the xpi.

Also, is it possible to write an Addon that makes changes like, for example, moves/places toolbar elements (buttons, location bar, search bar, etc) to a specific toolbar, in a certain order, then hides certain other toolbars?

yes.

Regardless, upon reflection, I can see value in Kent's suggestion for a GUI 'czar', as long as the ability to customize the GUI provided as the default by said 'czar' remains fully intact.

[R Kent James]

On 12/12/2016 7:05 AM, Disaster Master wrote:
> Regardless, upon reflection, I can see value in Kent's suggestion for
> a GUI 'czar', as long as the ability to customize the GUI provided as
> the default by said 'czar' remains fully intact.

I keep meaning to give a series of blog articles on the overall plans
and future of Thunderbird, but one of the items on that list would be
"first-class addons", which mean not only that addons can add features,
but that certain core features would be implemented as optional addons
as a means to control complexity for the end user.

:rkent

[Szymon Boniecki]

> On 12 Dec 2016, at 21:18, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
>
> I keep meaning to give a series of blog articles on the overall plans
> and future of Thunderbird, but one of the items on that list would be
> "first-class addons", which mean not only that addons can add features,
> but that certain core features would be implemented as optional addons
> as a means to control complexity for the end user.
>

Hi everyone!

I am representing Monterail, the team behind the mentioned redesign post. Thank you for all your comments so far. It’s been a very rewarding experience for people here working on this.

I’ve already mentioned this to Philipp that if there’s a will to use any of this we are happy provide all the source files, produce more designs and answer all necessary questions. I hope this could be useful!

kindly,
Szymon

[Magnus Melin]

On 20.12.2016 21:22, Szymon Boniecki wrote:
>> On 12 Dec 2016, at 21:18, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
>>
>> I keep meaning to give a series of blog articles on the overall plans
>> and future of Thunderbird, but one of the items on that list would be
>> "first-class addons", which mean not only that addons can add features,
>> but that certain core features would be implemented as optional addons
>> as a means to control complexity for the end user.
>>
> Hi everyone!
>
> I am representing Monterail, the team behind the mentioned redesign post. Thank you for all your comments so far. It’s been a very rewarding experience for people here working on this.
>
> I’ve already mentioned this to Philipp that if there’s a will to use any of this we are happy provide all the source files, produce more designs and answer all necessary questions. I hope this could be useful!

I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1325184 to track
moving this work forwards. Maybe you could attach patches with your
changes to that bug?

-Magnus

[Wayne Mery]

On 12/21/16 3:22 PM, Magnus Melin wrote:
> On 20.12.2016 21:22, Szymon Boniecki wrote:
>>> On 12 Dec 2016, at 21:18, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I keep meaning to give a series of blog articles on the overall plans
>>> and future of Thunderbird, but one of the items on that list would be
>>> "first-class addons", which mean not only that addons can add features,
>>> but that certain core features would be implemented as optional addons
>>> as a means to control complexity for the end user.
>>>
>> Hi everyone!
>>
>> I am representing Monterail, the team behind the mentioned redesign
>> post. Thank you for all your comments so far. It’s been a very
>> rewarding experience for people here working on this.
>>
>> I’ve already mentioned this to Philipp that if there’s a will to use
>> any of this we are happy provide all the source files, produce more
>> designs and answer all necessary questions. I hope this could be useful!
>
> I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1325184 to track
> moving this work forwards. Maybe you could attach patches with your
> changes to that bug?
>
> -Magnus

For those that are interested in the progress of, testing of, or
submitting real code to this experiment, there is renewed activity in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1325184

And probably when there is a need to test with a larger larger audience,
someone will post an update in tb-planning. Until then, if you have
interest in this topic please direct your attention to the bug.

[Dave Koelmeyer]

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/04/a-modern-thunderbird-theme-font

--
Dave Koelmeyer
http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz
GPG Key ID: 0x238BFF87
The Document Foundation (TDF) member