4 ms·

Uhg. This is the exact opposite of what direction I want from Thunderbird. I want it to remain stable. I want it to remain looking like an email client I run on

Uhg. This is the exact opposite of what direction I want from Thunderbird. I want it to remain stable. I want it to remain looking like an email client I run on my native OS. I do not want giant white-space webshit design and an entire rebuild that makes all my extensions and well trained spam detection .dat unusable. Please stop changing things just to change. Thunderbird works.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jeltz 4y ago
Yeah, they should work on fixing bugs, improving performance, fixing search and adding some features. The UI is fine, it is the best thing of Thunderbird.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I read the article and sounds like the rewrite is mostly to do with large amounts of technical debt and being tied to firefox's development cycle. This should enable them to fix bugs if they don't have to fight code always coming from an alternative product.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    I read it too and I am not as hopefully as you given how previous changes have mostly made the performance worse than fixed anything. Hope I am wrong though.
progx 4y ago
Extensions are not really a problem, cause Thunderbird have made it to scare off many over the years. They change rules, api, etc. many extension are not maintained, not compatible, whatever. I stopped installing and using Thunderbird extensions, it took me too much time and nerves on updates.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
I believe you missed the part where the codebase has become impossible to work on. This isn't change "for change's sake", it's "because if we don't, this product is dead".
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Thunderbird is absolutely due for a UX and feature set overhaul. But please please please don't follow current design trends: Thunderbird users are not and will probably never be people who appreciate the "everything is a mobile app" fad of the last few years. The term "webshit" absolutely feels apt here, and I would gladly triple my donation for the coming year if it meant that they committed to maintaining a traditional desktop look and feel in the rewrite.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    I will probably need to look for alternatives, if I catch any sniff of "we are an electron app now" or similar. In that case I will probably only use the older version as a lookup program for past e-mails, if I cannot import them into something else. Or I stick with an old version of Thunderbird.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      I mean thunderbird is already running on an entire browser stack. Wouldn't electron be similar to what thunderbird is already using?
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        I thought XUL had been removed?
        jraph 4y ago
        XUL is still hiding in there I think, though most things in Firefox have been rewritten in regular HTML. Not sure about Thunderbird, though the new settings page suspiciously looks like the Firefox one, so if not everything has been migrated yet, some stuff definitely have. Either way, Gecko is what renders XUL and HTML, and therefore Thunderbird. It's essentially a big chunk of web stuff. It has always been this way. Though I think Gecko is a tad more memory efficient than Chromium / Electron, and a lot nicer to use than your average Electron app. And I'm pretty certain Thunderbird is staying this way. Becoming an Electron app would be a huge rewrite, and I think Thunderbird devs like Gecko. They say it in the blog post. It's not happening.
ulkesh 4y ago
And I want a better design with better out-of-the-box, turn-key support for both Outlook/Exchange and GMail for contacts, mail (with proper conversations/threading), and calendaring. The extensions are clunky, and it always takes way too much time to get even remotely close to looking/acting correct.
bugmen0t 4y ago
Frankly, it's surprising how long they managed to drag it along given they build on top of a weird fork of Firefox ESR. Their foundation is crumbling for years and years. They really need to get off of it.
david_draco 4y ago
Unfortunately the web keeps changing. Firefox is trying hard to remain relevant and needs to be flexible with their code-base. So Thunderbird does not live in a stable world.
- toomim 4y ago
  Strange comment. Thunderbird is for email, not the web. Are the people who want it to change confused about the difference between smtp and http?
  - mplanchard 4y ago
    In TFA it says that Thunderbird is built on top of Firefox, which makes it difficult for them to keep up and causes a lot of churn and bugs. I imagine that’s what the parent poster is referring to.
    - jraph 4y ago
      Yes, and today, to render mails, you need a web engine. Unless you only want to deal with text email but that comes from with its fair share of tradeoffs, including the occasional unreadable email in text… which you'll open in a web browser. And as a mail client you'd better follow the security fixes of the web engine you are using. I guess not everyone is willing to use an old web engine derived from an old version of Word and maintain this thing for the eternity.
renewiltord 4y ago
You can turn off auto-updates or build off a present revision. Those won't go away.
- superkuh 4y ago
  Yeah, I did. I technically use a thunderbird fork. It'd be a shame if the extension ecosystem split though.
jraph 4y ago
I like that Thunderbird exactly looks like what it looked like when I started using it in 2005, 18 years ago (save for the OS theme in use). Though I would not mind some refresh. Many (younger? and as young as me, actually) people who are used to webmails and mobile apps find it ugly, and I can see that. The world is missing a fast and efficient desktop mail client that looks good and I'd be glad if Thunderbird were it. There's a world in which the Thunderbird team understands they have a huge number of long time users and they should be careful to keep it usable for them, where they will take feedback and in which they build something that doesn't suck for people who don't now it yet, and this world could be ours. Wait and see? I understand the concern and that many people are worried, I also don't quite like the trend of UIs with a lot of space lacking contrast everywhere, but I think a good outcome is actually likely.
- mulmen 4y ago
  No. If you want a “pretty” email client go make one and see how it does. Stability is the number one feature I want in a UI. The only other concern is responsiveness. Literally nothing else matters.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > go make one It's not like it's easy. It crossed my mind a few years ago, actually. But why should I when the email client I actually happen to use decided to actually rebuild its interface? I'm not the one who is unhappy, I'm happy either way actually, I could answer "go fork Thunderbird if you are not happy". There was an interesting talk at FOSDEM by OpenProject on how to handle UI revamps [1], there are ways to do it without breaking current users. I recommend it, I'm quite picky on presentations but this one was really good and I enjoyed it. I agree that UI stability is important. UI stability is not the only important thing. Responsiveness indeed too. I hate slow UIs. Consistency with what users are used to (from the rest of the world) is very important too. What's more, I read in the blog post that they are rebuilding the UI from scratch, but what I don't read is that they decided to change everything. They can do it right. I can't say they will, but… again, let's see? I'm sure they'd be glad to receive feedback, questions and concerns. Am I the only one enthusiastic about some potential Thunderbird UI revamp here? I don't like many UI/UX choices on the current web, but I also like what KDE has been doing, and maybe Gnome too, there are places where UIs get better! Why not Thunderbird? [1] https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/practical_ux_at_openproject/ https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/practical_ux_at_openp...
aorth 4y ago
I'd understand if you just resisted the UI changes. In the video they discuss serious underlying technical debt. Thunderbird is twenty years old now and most of us have technical debt on projects that are a fraction of that age! I support the revived energy around the Thunderbird project and I trust that they will not betray old and loyal power users. Looking forward to future releases.
safety1st 4y ago
Thunderbird sucks, full send. I love free software and I've used TB for ten years because it's bundled with lots of Linux distros. But one paragraph into the post they are making excuses for how bad they are: "Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?" I'm definitely not complaining about the UI "looking old" - I like UIs that are old, they are simple! But Thunderbird is glitchy, sluggish, and plagued by idiotic design decisions (for example, why the fuck do they make it hard for me to include attachments in a reply? super obvious example of some cranky "principled" programmer who's happy to give the middle finger to Thunderbird's actual users). We're on TB for one reason - we're too busy to evaluate replacements. If/when we find the time to evaluate other clients we will absolutely replace it. The post stinks of hostility toward their users, which is unfortunately no surprise with Thunderbird.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jeltz 4y ago

Yeah, they should work on fixing bugs, improving performance, fixing search and adding some features. The UI is fine, it is the best thing of Thunderbird.

xeromal 4y ago
I read the article and sounds like the rewrite is mostly to do with large amounts of technical debt and being tied to firefox's development cycle. This should enable them to fix bugs if they don't have to fight code always coming from an alternative product.
- jeltz 4y ago
  I read it too and I am not as hopefully as you given how previous changes have mostly made the performance worse than fixed anything. Hope I am wrong though.

progx 4y ago

Extensions are not really a problem, cause Thunderbird have made it to scare off many over the years. They change rules, api, etc. many extension are not maintained, not compatible, whatever. I stopped installing and using Thunderbird extensions, it took me too much time and nerves on updates.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

I believe you missed the part where the codebase has become impossible to work on. This isn't change "for change's sake", it's "because if we don't, this product is dead".

nerdponx 4y ago
Thunderbird is absolutely due for a UX and feature set overhaul. But please please please don't follow current design trends: Thunderbird users are not and will probably never be people who appreciate the "everything is a mobile app" fad of the last few years. The term "webshit" absolutely feels apt here, and I would gladly triple my donation for the coming year if it meant that they committed to maintaining a traditional desktop look and feel in the rewrite.
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  I will probably need to look for alternatives, if I catch any sniff of "we are an electron app now" or similar. In that case I will probably only use the older version as a lookup program for past e-mails, if I cannot import them into something else. Or I stick with an old version of Thunderbird.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    I mean thunderbird is already running on an entire browser stack. Wouldn't electron be similar to what thunderbird is already using?
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      I thought XUL had been removed?
      - jraph 4y ago
        XUL is still hiding in there I think, though most things in Firefox have been rewritten in regular HTML. Not sure about Thunderbird, though the new settings page suspiciously looks like the Firefox one, so if not everything has been migrated yet, some stuff definitely have. Either way, Gecko is what renders XUL and HTML, and therefore Thunderbird. It's essentially a big chunk of web stuff. It has always been this way. Though I think Gecko is a tad more memory efficient than Chromium / Electron, and a lot nicer to use than your average Electron app. And I'm pretty certain Thunderbird is staying this way. Becoming an Electron app would be a huge rewrite, and I think Thunderbird devs like Gecko. They say it in the blog post. It's not happening.

ulkesh 4y ago

And I want a better design with better out-of-the-box, turn-key support for both Outlook/Exchange and GMail for contacts, mail (with proper conversations/threading), and calendaring. The extensions are clunky, and it always takes way too much time to get even remotely close to looking/acting correct.

bugmen0t 4y ago

Frankly, it's surprising how long they managed to drag it along given they build on top of a weird fork of Firefox ESR. Their foundation is crumbling for years and years. They really need to get off of it.

david_draco 4y ago

Unfortunately the web keeps changing. Firefox is trying hard to remain relevant and needs to be flexible with their code-base. So Thunderbird does not live in a stable world.

toomim 4y ago
Strange comment. Thunderbird is for email, not the web. Are the people who want it to change confused about the difference between smtp and http?
- mplanchard 4y ago
  In TFA it says that Thunderbird is built on top of Firefox, which makes it difficult for them to keep up and causes a lot of churn and bugs. I imagine that’s what the parent poster is referring to.
  - jraph 4y ago
    Yes, and today, to render mails, you need a web engine. Unless you only want to deal with text email but that comes from with its fair share of tradeoffs, including the occasional unreadable email in text… which you'll open in a web browser. And as a mail client you'd better follow the security fixes of the web engine you are using. I guess not everyone is willing to use an old web engine derived from an old version of Word and maintain this thing for the eternity.

renewiltord 4y ago

You can turn off auto-updates or build off a present revision. Those won't go away.

superkuh 4y ago
Yeah, I did. I technically use a thunderbird fork. It'd be a shame if the extension ecosystem split though.

jraph 4y ago

I like that Thunderbird exactly looks like what it looked like when I started using it in 2005, 18 years ago (save for the OS theme in use). Though I would not mind some refresh. Many (younger? and as young as me, actually) people who are used to webmails and mobile apps find it ugly, and I can see that. The world is missing a fast and efficient desktop mail client that looks good and I'd be glad if Thunderbird were it. There's a world in which the Thunderbird team understands they have a huge number of long time users and they should be careful to keep it usable for them, where they will take feedback and in which they build something that doesn't suck for people who don't now it yet, and this world could be ours. Wait and see? I understand the concern and that many people are worried, I also don't quite like the trend of UIs with a lot of space lacking contrast everywhere, but I think a good outcome is actually likely.

mulmen 4y ago
No. If you want a “pretty” email client go make one and see how it does. Stability is the number one feature I want in a UI. The only other concern is responsiveness. Literally nothing else matters.
- jraph 4y ago
  > go make one It's not like it's easy. It crossed my mind a few years ago, actually. But why should I when the email client I actually happen to use decided to actually rebuild its interface? I'm not the one who is unhappy, I'm happy either way actually, I could answer "go fork Thunderbird if you are not happy". There was an interesting talk at FOSDEM by OpenProject on how to handle UI revamps [1], there are ways to do it without breaking current users. I recommend it, I'm quite picky on presentations but this one was really good and I enjoyed it. I agree that UI stability is important. UI stability is not the only important thing. Responsiveness indeed too. I hate slow UIs. Consistency with what users are used to (from the rest of the world) is very important too. What's more, I read in the blog post that they are rebuilding the UI from scratch, but what I don't read is that they decided to change everything. They can do it right. I can't say they will, but… again, let's see? I'm sure they'd be glad to receive feedback, questions and concerns. Am I the only one enthusiastic about some potential Thunderbird UI revamp here? I don't like many UI/UX choices on the current web, but I also like what KDE has been doing, and maybe Gnome too, there are places where UIs get better! Why not Thunderbird? [1] https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/practical_ux_at_openproject/ https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/practical_ux_at_openp...

aorth 4y ago

I'd understand if you just resisted the UI changes. In the video they discuss serious underlying technical debt. Thunderbird is twenty years old now and most of us have technical debt on projects that are a fraction of that age! I support the revived energy around the Thunderbird project and I trust that they will not betray old and loyal power users. Looking forward to future releases.

safety1st 4y ago

Thunderbird sucks, full send. I love free software and I've used TB for ten years because it's bundled with lots of Linux distros. But one paragraph into the post they are making excuses for how bad they are: "Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?" I'm definitely not complaining about the UI "looking old" - I like UIs that are old, they are simple! But Thunderbird is glitchy, sluggish, and plagued by idiotic design decisions (for example, why the fuck do they make it hard for me to include attachments in a reply? super obvious example of some cranky "principled" programmer who's happy to give the middle finger to Thunderbird's actual users). We're on TB for one reason - we're too busy to evaluate replacements. If/when we find the time to evaluate other clients we will absolutely replace it. The post stinks of hostility toward their users, which is unfortunately no surprise with Thunderbird.