4 ms·

That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring f

by tux3 4y ago

That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems. Unfortunately, it has some serious performance bugs. It often sits there idle on a brand new laptop eating 50% or 70% of a core. Doing who knows what, without giving any indication or any sort of pause button to the user. I almost have to keep Thunderbird closed to save my battery. Sometimes I think if I wrote a shell script that suspended the main process four of every five minutes, it'd make for better background task scheduling than whatever must be going on. The software is burning hundred of billions of CPU cycles running in circles for hours and hours, when it's supposed to be sitting idle.

throw0101a 4y ago
> That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems. If they want to grow the user base (or even maintain it against attrition) then relying on just the current folks isn't enough: you have to get new people to use it. (And hopefully support/donate to it.) Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. Unless you make the interface skinnable, or provide a 'core' which folks can build their own variant on with whatever interface they desire.
- roenxi 4y ago
  There are a lot of qualifiers there. The linked post by Thunderbird’s Product Design manager spends a lot of time talking about tech debt and feature availability, and not so much about problems with the interface. Indeed, it has a reassuring amount of respect for the current interface, describing a future that "allow[s] veteran users to maintain that familiarity they love". It doesn't look like the interface is a big problem to anyone. Projects with a tech debt problem could always do with a touch up. But emails haven't changed that much in the last few decades.
- bawolff 4y ago
  > Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. This is an easy thing to say. Sometimes it is even true, but i think its overstated. To survive you need to lean into whatever makes you unique or interesting, and convince new users that you're worth it. Chase whatever is trendy too far, and you simply become the off-brand version of whoever is the market leader. That annoys your base wothout actually growing new users since you aren't going to be better than whoever you are copying.
  - ziftface 4y ago
    The layout I expect Thunderbird to move towards is the one in every mail client I've used in the past decade, I wouldn't call that trendy. At this point you're an outlier so you better have a good reason to stick to the different UI.
    - account42 4y ago
      Which one is that? Gmail and Outlook have very different (default) layouts.
      - ziftface 4y ago
        That's a good point about gmail, but I was thinking of outlook, apple mail, the gnome mail client, and this one called mimestream that I use now. They all have that same familiar 3 column layout: mailboxes, list of messages, message contents. That layout has been the norm for a while, so I think calling it trendy is a bit of a stretch.
        jen20 4y ago
        It’s also basically what Thunderbird has now, though.
- ablob 4y ago
  I started using thunderbird half a year ago and like the interface. Sure, there's problems (I haven't encountered a lot of them), but the overall user experience is far better than what I'm used to from other email programs. The only thing that stuck out negatively was when I was searching for an email, in which the way I was wanting to solve it didn't work out as I thought it did. (I was looking for a mail containing specific words from a specific group of senders). Moreover, detering active users in the hopes of catching new users is a risky move. If you do it you need to be sure that there will be more new users faster than old users leaving. If it doesn't work out, chances are that they ain't coming back. I can't say anything about keeping TB open and having it steal CPU time. I usually close it after checking for mail. Having it open appears to be a valid use case taht shouldn't create problems, however.
  - Moru 4y ago
    I've been running Thunderbird in the background without problems the last 15-odd years on whatever computer I had at the time. Still do. No performance problems running 20+ mail accounts with loads and loads of mail. Ofcourse it can be slow if you do things that requires TB to recreate the mail storage but other than that I have no problem opening mail and reading it fast. I'm using both IMAP and POP3 accounts mixed. I believe there are settings you can run that might create more problems with performance but I haven't touched anything the last 5 years so can't say what it was any more.
    - jeltz 4y ago
      I do not think I have touched anything either since I like keeping as much at default as possible, but maybe I have and just do not know it, but it is dog slow for me.
- orbital223 4y ago
  > Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. Reminds me of the arguments for Firefox getting rid of the "Old School" interface and copying Chrome to bring in new users. Didn't exactly work out very well...
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Isn't Thunderbird still using XUL stuff that has been retired from Firefox? It doesn't seem that wise to keep working on that to be honest.
    - account42 4y ago
      It is if the alternative is breaking all extensions.
  - chefandy 4y ago
    You think Firefox would have more users if they hadn't updated their interface?
    - ttctciyf 4y ago
      Hard to quantify because you'd have to take account of what actual improvements they might have made instead of spending dev hours on UI, settings and defaults tweaks that mostly served to alienate their core users (IMO).
    - ilyt 4y ago
      If they focused instead on speed, and somehow managed to keep old plugins compatible, yes. People moved to Chrome coz it was plainly faster and those who stayed did it for the various plugins they got used to. When new version of FF blows up your workflow might as well go try Chrome. Hell, I'd be using Chrome already if it had sensible vertical tabs implementation... the FF ones after the apocalypse are worse than XUL ones but still better than I've seen on Chrome.
    - 6510 4y ago
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. And that risks doing absolute horseshit. Outlook's new UI for example hides the cc/bcc behind an additional click, extremely annoying for anyone but personal mail usage. How MS still haven't managed to discover and fix that with their billions of corporate users is astonishing.
emodendroket 4y ago
It sounds like they're rebuilding the whole thing practically, so the UI isn't all they're changing.

by tux3 4y ago

throw0101a 4y ago

> That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems. If they want to grow the user base (or even maintain it against attrition) then relying on just the current folks isn't enough: you have to get new people to use it. (And hopefully support/donate to it.) Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. Unless you make the interface skinnable, or provide a 'core' which folks can build their own variant on with whatever interface they desire.

roenxi 4y ago
There are a lot of qualifiers there. The linked post by Thunderbird’s Product Design manager spends a lot of time talking about tech debt and feature availability, and not so much about problems with the interface. Indeed, it has a reassuring amount of respect for the current interface, describing a future that "allow[s] veteran users to maintain that familiarity they love". It doesn't look like the interface is a big problem to anyone. Projects with a tech debt problem could always do with a touch up. But emails haven't changed that much in the last few decades.
bawolff 4y ago
> Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. This is an easy thing to say. Sometimes it is even true, but i think its overstated. To survive you need to lean into whatever makes you unique or interesting, and convince new users that you're worth it. Chase whatever is trendy too far, and you simply become the off-brand version of whoever is the market leader. That annoys your base wothout actually growing new users since you aren't going to be better than whoever you are copying.
- ziftface 4y ago
  The layout I expect Thunderbird to move towards is the one in every mail client I've used in the past decade, I wouldn't call that trendy. At this point you're an outlier so you better have a good reason to stick to the different UI.
  - account42 4y ago
    Which one is that? Gmail and Outlook have very different (default) layouts.
    - ziftface 4y ago
      That's a good point about gmail, but I was thinking of outlook, apple mail, the gnome mail client, and this one called mimestream that I use now. They all have that same familiar 3 column layout: mailboxes, list of messages, message contents. That layout has been the norm for a while, so I think calling it trendy is a bit of a stretch.
      - jen20 4y ago
        It’s also basically what Thunderbird has now, though.
ablob 4y ago
I started using thunderbird half a year ago and like the interface. Sure, there's problems (I haven't encountered a lot of them), but the overall user experience is far better than what I'm used to from other email programs. The only thing that stuck out negatively was when I was searching for an email, in which the way I was wanting to solve it didn't work out as I thought it did. (I was looking for a mail containing specific words from a specific group of senders). Moreover, detering active users in the hopes of catching new users is a risky move. If you do it you need to be sure that there will be more new users faster than old users leaving. If it doesn't work out, chances are that they ain't coming back. I can't say anything about keeping TB open and having it steal CPU time. I usually close it after checking for mail. Having it open appears to be a valid use case taht shouldn't create problems, however.
- Moru 4y ago
  I've been running Thunderbird in the background without problems the last 15-odd years on whatever computer I had at the time. Still do. No performance problems running 20+ mail accounts with loads and loads of mail. Ofcourse it can be slow if you do things that requires TB to recreate the mail storage but other than that I have no problem opening mail and reading it fast. I'm using both IMAP and POP3 accounts mixed. I believe there are settings you can run that might create more problems with performance but I haven't touched anything the last 5 years so can't say what it was any more.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    I do not think I have touched anything either since I like keeping as much at default as possible, but maybe I have and just do not know it, but it is dog slow for me.
orbital223 4y ago
> Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. Reminds me of the arguments for Firefox getting rid of the "Old School" interface and copying Chrome to bring in new users. Didn't exactly work out very well...
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Isn't Thunderbird still using XUL stuff that has been retired from Firefox? It doesn't seem that wise to keep working on that to be honest.
  - account42 4y ago
    It is if the alternative is breaking all extensions.
- chefandy 4y ago
  You think Firefox would have more users if they hadn't updated their interface?
  - ttctciyf 4y ago
    Hard to quantify because you'd have to take account of what actual improvements they might have made instead of spending dev hours on UI, settings and defaults tweaks that mostly served to alienate their core users (IMO).
  - ilyt 4y ago
    If they focused instead on speed, and somehow managed to keep old plugins compatible, yes. People moved to Chrome coz it was plainly faster and those who stayed did it for the various plugins they got used to. When new version of FF blows up your workflow might as well go try Chrome. Hell, I'd be using Chrome already if it had sensible vertical tabs implementation... the FF ones after the apocalypse are worse than XUL ones but still better than I've seen on Chrome.
  - 6510 4y ago
mschuster91 4y ago
> Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'. And that risks doing absolute horseshit. Outlook's new UI for example hides the cc/bcc behind an additional click, extremely annoying for anyone but personal mail usage. How MS still haven't managed to discover and fix that with their billions of corporate users is astonishing.

emodendroket 4y ago

It sounds like they're rebuilding the whole thing practically, so the UI isn't all they're changing.