19 ms·

Thunderbird 115

571 points by patadune 3y ago

throwaway106382 3y ago
> Upgrade to version 115 and experience the future of Thunderbird! How? i checked for an update and it's still only on 102
- dgellow 3y ago
  According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665266 115 will be released tomorrow.
  - throwaway106382 3y ago
    thanks, I'll keep my eye out for the update tomorrow
redeeman 3y ago
i am very skeptical that this new UI is really better. I will give it a shot, but seriously, things should just stop changing things just for the purpose of changing it
petre 3y ago
Does it still crash with lots of mail? I have mail filters and get like 500 mail a day. Always crashes. It gives me the option to wait or kill the app. I blame the mbox folders.
- velosol 3y ago
  I've got over 10GB in my profile and have no issue although I use maildir and I believe I converted precisely because it was so slow.
  - petre 3y ago
    Can you switch the thunderbird mail storage to Maildir? I've got Maildir on the server, but locally it stores in a regular Mailbox and builds an index file.
    - velosol 3y ago
      It's possible, I was able to use the method listed under (2) at [1] but it was a few hours of fiddling/restoring backups and even a "102% completed" message before I got it to work. I don't have my notes from the but I believe it involved a second profile at one point so probably pretty similar to method (3) in the end. [1]: https://tinyapps.org/blog/202207100700_thunderbird-mbox-to-maildir.html https://tinyapps.org/blog/202207100700_thunderbird-mbox-to-m...
Brendinooo 3y ago
What am I missing here? I'm running "Version 102.11.0, first offered to channel users on May 10, 2023", and this is 13 versions ahead?
- orra 3y ago
  Thunderbird major releases match up with Firefox, in terms of dates and version numbering. However, Thunderbird releases major versions less often. Hence the discrepancy.
- velosol 3y ago
  As I recall the team has been jumping the main/release branch by larger numbers as beta moves through more polish effectively making release the long-term servicing/ESR branch so 115 will start to be offered tomorrow.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  No it is exactly one version ahead, the number is just bigger by 13. Firefox ESR 102 is based on firefox non-esr 102 and ESR 115 is based on non-ESR 115. There are no ESR versions in between. As an analogy think of fedora and red hat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relationship_with_Fedora_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relat... With that same scheme it would be red hat 6, 12, 19, 28, 34 instead of 5,6,7,8,9.
drpixie 3y ago
I just want to small, simple, fast, low memory browser that shows pages - I don't want 1,000,000 features and confusions.
- nubinetwork 3y ago
  Thunderbird is an email client, not a web browser.
- GrumpyNl 3y ago
  Looks like you didnt read the article.
- jraph 3y ago
  w3m would be a good fit for this description.
- nijave 3y ago
  https://github.com/Gentux/imap-cli https://github.com/Gentux/imap-cli
- drpixie 3y ago
  Duh - I want the simlle browser too. I use TB daily but the comment still applies. I want it to do just email, simply and correctly. Most of the "smart" features just seem to get in th way :(
joiqj 3y ago
I appreciate that they have maintained information density. otoh I think they should try and stick as much as possible to the looks of the OS where thunderbird is running - you are building a desktop application, not a website. Of course it's pretty hard when not even microsoft seems to know what Windows should look like.
- PinguTS 3y ago
  Remind you, that Microsoft wants go get rid of its Microsoft Office and will make it a Website only.
  - joiqj 3y ago
    First, I don't think they'll be able to. I have had the displeasure of using their web Outlook client and it was absurdly buggy for a software company of the stature of Microsoft. I can only imagine how terrible the web version of a complex software like Excel will be. Not to mention the poor performance. There's no way they will lose all of their finance customers like that... but, it's Microsoft, so... who knows. Second, Office hasn't really looked like Windows for like... the past 20 years.
    - toyg 3y ago
      > I can only imagine how terrible the web version of a complex software like Excel will be. It's actually not that terrible, but I believe it's nowhere near feature parity. Not to mention there is a galaxy of add-ons that still need to be rewritten from scratch to work on the web version, and a lot of people cannot live without them. Excel is a classic case of 80% of users requiring 20% of all functionality, but that 20% being different for each user. Still, Microsoft made it very clear that the future is web-first.
      - joiqj 3y ago
        If you don't have feature parity, you really are in trouble, because then you are competing with Google Sheets, on which actually competent engineers are working.
nabogh 3y ago
I hope I can opt back into the more dense display that we currently have. Some other parts look quite nice however.
- smarkov 3y ago
  I really don't understand this. It already looks a little too clumped to me, what's the benefit to further putting things closer to one another? It's not like you're doing some kind of additive transformation and you need to quickly jump between lines, each email is its own thing and you can only read one at a time. If you need to find specific ones you can always categorize them or use the search functionality. I'm just confused by statements like this.
  - donatj 3y ago
    Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful. All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption. My work email rarely exist in a vacuum, they exist in the context of all my other work emails. The ability to actually cross reference and get work done quickly should always trump aesthetics. These modern “spaced out” UIs are infuriating, they achieve nothing other than requiring more scrolling.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      Spacing is useful for me because it helps each individual piece of text stand out from the others. Too dense and it all looks like a jumble to me that I can't easily scan visually. Too much whitespace I agree is bad for the reasons you described. But everyone has different taste here. The ideal scenario is an option to change spacing.
    - smarkov 3y ago
      > Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful. Conversely, why is scrolling considered evil? We can agree that emails are documents. In real life, on your desk, do spread out all your documents so you could see them all at once? Or do you have a stack of them and view them one by one? You can still cross reference by putting documents side by side, just like you can with multiple emails open in separate windows or monitors. Admittedly depending on the amount of emails and the speed at which you work through them you might benefit from seeing many at once, though there's other ways of dealing with that issue. > All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption. I don't think whitespace is all about aesthetics. Personally, it makes it easier for me to read and focus on things. It gives individual things more value, rather than them being "just another thing in a gigantic list", easily blending in and showing no significance.
sergimansilla 3y ago
I’ve been using the beta for some weeks, and it’s fantastic. snappy fast, and makes me feel in control. I’m not using (and probably never will) any of the non-email features like the calendar, or the chat. But they are relatively hidden away, so they don’t bother me.
- jraph 3y ago
  Calendar in the mail client is very useful since invitations are sent by mail. You click accept, the recipient knows you did and the event is added to your calendar. But indeed if you don't use it it does not get in the way, which is perfect.
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    did they fix the problem where the calendar account must be the same as the email account? My email is on zimbra but since the zimbra calendar is isolated, I use a google calendar from another email account because I can use it with reclaim.ai, share calendars and use it on my phone.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I read mail first on my phone with K9 (the old UI) a few times per day and accept invitations there to put them on my phone, which is always with me. Then I download mail with Thunderbird a few times per week. I use my domain providers POP3 servers. Yes, they bundle a mailbox with each domain. It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case.
    - folkrav 3y ago
      > It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case. I'm curious as to why, if you don't mind! Are you specifically looking for "download only once then get rid of it"?
      - pmontra 3y ago
        Yes, see my reply to the other message. My mail stays on my computer, backed up locally and encrypted to a remote location. I lose the ability to access old messages from remote but it never was a problem in almost 17 years of self employment. Before that, I already had about 13 years of downloaded emails, from the times when web mail was not a thing. No need to upload my old messages to Gmail, if this is even possible. I just kept using a local mail client. For my personal mail I remember some emacs clients, Netscape Mail (bundled with the browser,) Outlook Explorer then Thunderbird. I might forget something.
jraph 3y ago
This looks good! It has not reached my distribution yet, I hope this refreshed UI will be more convenient than the current one (which has done its job for the past 20 years but has some quirks like not having a straightforward way to follow a mail thread to my knowledge - well, it has but all the mails need to be in the same folder but sent mails are in the sent folder and received mails are in the received messages folder)
- orra 3y ago
  Just jumping in to say I'm also incredibly happy to see this change (and the other expected improvements). Thunderbird currently looks dated, and I'm glad to see it brought into the 2020s. Sometimes current users can be dismissive of UI changes, so it's good to see fellow users who are happy. Moreover, let's not forget the new users, who were previously put off by the dated UI.
  - elric 3y ago
    I guess I'll be that dismissive current user. I don't like random UI changes in a tool I use as frequently as a mail client. The new icons don't look too bad, even if I dislike their flat nature. I don't think TB looks dated. It looks functional. Which is exactly what I want from a mail client. If I want something that looks modern but is dysfunctional, I'll just switch to Outlook.
    - orra 3y ago
      I obviously don't begrudge the fact Thunderbird currently works for you. But there are a few issues with the current UI: * Dark mode didn't exist for a long time, and I'm glad it does, but messages are still displayed brightly. * The list of emails always has a columns and a header; there's no simplified vertical view. * There's a threading view, but IIRC it doesn't combine sent and received messages into the same thread view.
      - flas9sd 3y ago
        just gave it a test, the design additions are introduced gently. Defaults for listings are on the familiar view. Menu quick actions exist to go from compact to normal to more padding. I had the 2-line message header view on my wishlist for a long time. Thunderbird did pretty great.
alraj 3y ago
Nice updates from Thunderbird team. But will E-mail on the whole ever get features like other chat platform? Even conversation view is not good on the eye. Quoting is ugly in long Email body. Maybe only protocols are getting updated!? I think email is only still here because its a form of identification. Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  > Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion. They are moving for instant discussions, but not for proper discussions. Instant messaging is the death of knowledge. Emails aren't much better IMO, but there's still a bigger feeling of permanency and availability than IM.
- jraph 3y ago
  Check out DeltaChat [1] :-) It uses emails for chatting. Though personally, I'm quite happy with this separation of emails and chats. They are for different stuff. [1] https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
- kleiba 3y ago
  > Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion. That must be right. I got let go from my last job because I refused to use 5+ different instant messaging software and instead stick with email. In hindsight, I guess I should have been wiser.
- t43562 3y ago
  email works between companies because it's based on standards whereas messaging companies are all trying to lock us in to their particular system so they can "win" and that ensures that we cannot "chat" to people with some other software.
perlgeek 3y ago
Meta note about the announcement: > contextual options based on the tab or Space that is currently active I find it quite amusing that two whitepace keys/characters, tab and space, are also used to refer to areas of the UI in thunderbird :-)
shanghaikid 3y ago
Just be curious why are people still using email client other than web based one? Gmail or outlook 365 is quite good, and I think most people will have one web browser opened always.
- Sander_Marechal 3y ago
  I don't want my mail managed by either of those two. Many other providers use Roundcube but that's quite "meh". But the killer feature for me for Thunderbird is that I can force everything to be plain text email, both sending and receiving.
- artogahr 3y ago
  Because I like all my email in one place basically. I don't want to hunt for tabs whenever I'm looking for specific mail account, mentally all my mail is behind one icon separate from my browser, and they all look and work the same. Also maybe not Gmail but aside from that IMHO Thunderbird offers better UX than all other browser mail apps.
  - kevincox 3y ago
    Personally I hate GMail. 1. Threads are collapsed into a 1-dimensional list making moderately complex discussions hard to follow. 2. Deleting many messages is very slow. With Thunderbird I can mash <Delete> while scanning subjects and pause for a second to see the actual message body. I get a lot of email that I need to sort through or be aware of so my morning generally consists of quickly (15min) going through up to 100 conversions and getting quick status updates or just deleting uninteresting threads. For whatever reason doing this in GMail is a complete slog. (I'm not sure why, they have the <y> shortcut to archive and have a preview pane but it is just way slower, maybe they need to precache a few messages on either side of the current one?) 3. Threads are based on subject meaning that unrelated messages get grouped together. (Apparently this was changed in 2019 (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/threading-changes-in-gmail-conversation-view.html https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/threading-ch...) but I've definitely seen this issue for at least a year after that announcement when I stopped using GMail) I do admit that most of GMail is pretty good. But for me these limitations are enough to really impede my workflow. I've found that Thunderbird is the least-bad option for me. However Thunderbird's performance is quite poor. I do have 350k messages downloaded locally but even opening my empty inbox sometimes causes lockups. IIUC this is because Thunderbird is mostly single-threaded but apparently there is progress slowly being made here. For example composing messages used to frequently lock up for a few seconds but I haven't seen that in a couple years.
nik736 3y ago
What happened to the look that was announced? [0] The announcement was way more modern than the screenshot that is shown now. [0]: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Designer mockups and the actual end result don't always end up being the exact same for various reasons. Nothing a little CSS won't change, from what I can tell the biggest difference is the contrast on the panel edges and the background on the read/unread/selected messages. The road map does state Q4 2022 as a target so I imagine the work has just taken too much time already and the version 115 deadline wasn't made.
  - andix 3y ago
    If the UI platform you're using supports themes, this can usually be fixed with that. Provide one default theme that looks perfectly polished, and another more compact one for power users.
    - velosol 3y ago
      Which do you default to for someone coming from years of Thunderbird usage? How in-your-face is compact mode toggle in the ootb experience for a fresh install? And sadly how many people are going to be new to Thunderbird these days? If I got the 'polished' version as part of the normal update cycle I'd be upset that my tight, space-efficient and incredibly responsive productivity app had decided to use a design language that reduces information displayed. The point of email is to communicate information and I now have to interact with the UI more than I did before to get the same amount of information. The launched version hits the density that Thunderbird has been for about a decade and is what I'd prefer (ie the compact mode might be better for those being upgraded).
      - andix 3y ago
        Best is to ask them in my opinion. After the update: „we have a new design, do you want to use it or do you want to stay on the more compact design? You can change it any time in the settings menu <placeholder>“. The dialog should have pictograms of both designs.
tekknolagi 3y ago
At this point, whenever something says "maximize your freedoms" and does not explain further, I think it is adding spyware or otherwise restricting my choices. Decades of US policy doublespeak, I guess...
- impissedoff1 3y ago
  Don't worry, they just pipeline your emails directly to google now for 'verification' for your protection. Mozilla is a sellout
- account42 3y ago
  I guess this applies to TB PR too: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/m-p/16950 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
pshirshov 3y ago
> unified folders Actually that's the worst anti-feature for an email client.
- Open-Sourcery 3y ago
  As long as there is a way to disable it, or there is a unified view along with the individual email views. I quite like unified views considering I have three email accounts I need to view, and I don't see the downside of this view as long as when I reply, it automatically replies from the address it was sent to.
  - yetanother12345 3y ago
    > as long as when I reply, it automatically replies from the address it was sent to. In my experience this is NOT always the case. I handle multiple accounts using unified view, and I've had a _lot_ of "accidents" where I replied from another address than the email address that the email was sent to. Meaning: an email sent to me at one email address may get a reply (possibly with the email text quoted inside) - from a totally different and unrelated email address. Without me actively selecting a "different" reply account. For a while it seemed the rule is that you reply using the account you used the last time you interacted with the app (the "last active" account -ish). It really seemed to be the rule, not the exception. I'm not sure if this was/is "by design" or "a bug" T(hings like t)his is one of the reasons I use email/Thunderbird less these days. The cost per time unit has increased and the risk of uncontrolled events likewise. Of course account switching is desired in some situations, so this should be possible. With some minor difficulty - at least some sort of minor deliberate action should be needed like click a list to change sender email address away from recipient email address. It should not be default behaviour.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Yet many users rely on it every day. You don't have to use the feature if you don't unified folders, but that doesn't mean other people don't want it.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
ttoinou 3y ago
Great, thanks Thunderbird Team. But please improve / fix Quick Search !
taneq 3y ago
Will there be a way to show search results in list view by default, instead of the useless “most relevant” view? Everything else about Thunderbird is pretty great but this is so annoying.
loufe 3y ago
This looks fantastic. I've been waiting for an open source and linux-compatible alternative to Mailbird for the desktop.
creshal 3y ago
> More than just a refreshed set of graphics, Supernova introduces beautiful icons with a more consistent visual style unique to Thunderbird. Our new designs remain sharp and pixel-perfect at any density setting. Translation: We break with the established platform look&feel to follow the brave trend of replacing easily identified colourful icons with vague monochrome silhouettes.
- reocha 3y ago
  Pointless complaint with no actual observation of the new look and feel, Thunderbird is still just as colorful as it was before. The focus here seems to be on making the icons more consistent across the application as opposed to some of the issues they had before.
- Jaxan 3y ago
  It seems they kept the colouring the same. Coloured icons remain coloured and monochrome ones stay monochrome.
diarrhea 3y ago
Putting the search bar front-and-center in both the application and this announcement, I hope the backend implementation is now able to keep up? The one use case I switch to my mail provider's webmail UI for is search. I mentally sigh a little bit each time I realise I have to search through my email. Thunderbird's search has been among the worst I have ever come across, sadly. Functional search would be a killer feature. As it's running locally, heck, give me regex. Trivial to implement and would be a huge improvement already.
- berkes 3y ago
  Yeah. It's been terrible forever. Either returning far too much, far too little, or both. I've often just resorted to grep on an export of mail directories to find that one email. I even once imported the mails (ugly bash and Ruby hacks) in meilisearch to actually find stuff. It surprises me that it's possible to have a search experience that's worse than manually grepping through directories.
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  I have always wondered this. When a site like "MAterial for Mkdocs" can implement such a featureful search (with autocomplete, spellcorrect and such) in a browser for a website, how could it be this hard for a desktop application with several orders of magnitude of resources at its disposal?
  - WhyNotHugo 3y ago
    There’s no technical reason, it’s just a poor implementation. I use “notmuch” for email and it can index over two decades of emails in seconds. Search is then instantaneous. TBH, thunderbird could just use notmuch under the hood.
    - zvmaz 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - 3y ago
nu11ptr 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what UI framework is used here? Electron? something else? EDIT: On 2nd thought I'm thinking this is XUL, Mozilla's sort of electron equivalent for an HTML/CSS UI?
- jeffreygoesto 3y ago
  Afaik https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page
  - Macha 3y ago
    My understanding is that part of the goal with this UX rewrite is to move from XUL to HTML/CSS as XUL is increasingly unmaintained as Firefox has made the move for most (maybe all by now) of it's UI years ago
- cubefox 3y ago
  They did use XULRunner in the past, but probably something else nowadays.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    Actually, Thunderbird was never on XULRunner; it always relied on linking all of its code into libxul. For some strange reason, many of the C++ string APIs are different depending on when you linked into or outside of libxul, which meant it was a lot of chore to maintain a build that worked on XULRunner, and the project was never completed before Mozilla killed XULRunner in favor of embedding stories that never lasted more than a year or two.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Thanks for the correction.
- donatzsky 3y ago
  As I understand it, Thunderbird is essentially Firefox turned into a mail client. So whatever FF is using. There's probably still some XUL left here and there, but only because they haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.
johnchristopher 3y ago
At last !: > Card View emulates a mobile interface list with multi-line support, offering a more comfortable appearance to reduce cognitive burden. Took them long enough. And they said it couldn't be done, sheesh. Outlook 2003 had that for... 20 years.
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  Thanks for the downvotes Thunderbird white knights but I have the bug reports to back up my saltiness: - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335310 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335310 Closed Bug 335310 Opened 18 years ago Closed 16 years ago Suggest Multi-line Message List display (great in vertical view) - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 Bug 213945 Opened 20 years ago Closed 4 months ago Mail/message listing/thread pane needs more organization in 3 vertical pane view (column wrapping, etc) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=307013 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=307013 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307070 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307070 Open Bug 307070 Opened 18 years ago Updated 1 month ago Request for Outlook-style AutoPreview feature to see first few lines of messages As the guy who made a close to pixel perfect office2003 theme for Tbird back in the 00's this feature has sentimental value to me and am very happy this has finally landed.
- aport 3y ago
  > Outlook 2003 had that for... 20 years. It's kind of weird they say it emulates mobile interfaces.
kekebo 3y ago
Anyone have an opinion on how Betterbird[0] compares to Thunderbird? I've installed it recently to circumvent a recent design change in Thunderbird but have a hard time assessing whether it's a worthwhile long-term alternative and a project worthy of support. [0] https://www.betterbird.eu/ https://www.betterbird.eu/
- folkrav 3y ago
  I have a lot of trouble taking Betterbird seriously... The whole thing feels like a revenge based project by a disgruntled former contributor. https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/moz-governance.pdf https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/permanent-ban.pdf https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/RQHR3eFAYZ8 YMMV
- precompute 3y ago
  Oh wow, it works in the system tray. Sold!
cheeaun 3y ago
Found a typo: s/Accessability/Accessibility
cortic 3y ago
Wonder what the hard-drive footprint this takes now, my version; 60.9.1(32-bit) takes 126MB and i consider that bloated for what it is. At the Thunderbird 60.9 release mark; Pegasus footprint was 30MB, Opera Mail was 38MB, Sylpheed was 28MB, even the Bat was only 50MB. I run Thunderbird portable from a data pen, which is why this metric is important to me (i realize it won't be for the majority of users). Edit; Okay i know i could buy a bigger data pen, but i also do weekly backups to the cloud and am limited to 7mbps upload, 2g takes 40 minutes, so every bit i can shave off helps. But i want to emphasize i realize it won't be important for the majority of users
- Otek 3y ago
  Still not sure why this metric is important when you can get 1tb pen drive for $100
  - nijave 3y ago
    In the U.S. Microcenter has an in-store only deal $3.50 for a 64GB USB 3.1 drive right now
    - jeffhuys 3y ago
      Wow, I'd take 10
  - cortic 3y ago
    Sure, I'm working on a much smaller data pen. I also backup my pen drive to the cloud at 7mbps upload, 2g takes 40 minutes.
  - mistercheph 3y ago
    Oh, then surely you can send him the $100 right quick to grab it? The hundo is no biggie, right?
    - nulld3v 3y ago
      Correction: you can get a 1TB SSD for under $100. It's more like $50 these days. You can get 1TB USBs and hard drives for far less (e.g. $10 used).
danpalmer 3y ago
I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul. Text is misaligned in lots of places, the icons are fuzzy, spacing and padding is inconsistent even within the same areas, there are 3 sets of 3-dot icons in the sidebar in two different axes. It's just careless. Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This stuff really matters in aggregate.
- tommyage 3y ago
  https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/ Your professional input may be desired. Though I did not contribute to Thunderbird either (, yet?). Thing is, your critique may result in guidance to make part of these changes according to your skillset! But I am just a hopeless dreamer in the good of many things.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    I think if the team are shipping it in this state then either: they don't have the ability to notice the issues on the core team, or they see the issues and ship it anyway. Feedback like this is unlikely to solve either of those cases. This isn't complex stuff either. I'm not a designer, I don't even do frontend/UI work, I'm basically just a backend engineer. If I'm spotting this stuff on first glance at the main marketing screenshot, which should be the best possible case, then this stuff must be glaringly obvious and pervasive.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      You might have a particularly good eye. I saw none of these problems in the marketing screenshot. I only see one ... icon in the entire screenshot, nothing is fuzzy, and all text looks aligned. The only weirdness is a misalignment between the sidebar header and the main window header, but those don't need to be aligned anyway.
      - jeffhuys 3y ago
AnonC 3y ago
FYI, Thunderbird 115 is getting released tomorrow (July 11). Right now, if you visit the Thunderbird website [1] or try to look for updates within the application, you won't find this release version available (you can always get the beta release from the website). [1]: https://www.thunderbird.net/ https://www.thunderbird.net/
- guzik 3y ago
  I would advise against installing the beta for anyone considering it. I was in the beta for 2 years (mostly because it's quite challenging to get out of the beta), and the quality of the beta releases leaves a lot to be desired.
  - dgellow 3y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this, I was literally in the process of switching to the beta channel to see this new UI!
- folkrav 3y ago
  Aaaah. So that's why I wasn't finding anything, I thought I was going crazy. That landing page seems to hint that it's currently available ("Upgrade to version 115 and experience the future of Thunderbird!").
- MikusR 3y ago
  And the beta is for 116. So there is no (sane) way to get the discussed and marketed 115.
  - ntp85 3y ago
    It might not be sane by any means, but here are the current release candidates: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/115.0-candidates/build1/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/115.0-can...
    - rebelpixel 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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guzik 3y ago
As a long-term Thunderbird user, it saddens me to see the direction in which this client's development is heading, and I am seriously considering making a change. There are a few things I am discontented with, like the rather amateurish look and feel of the app. On top of that, there are many basic client features missing, such as templates (drafts are horrendous) and send later functionality (right now, I think I'm using about 2 add-ons, each of which is awful to use).
rpgbr 3y ago
From the screenshots, 102 looks better IMHO.
- cianmm 3y ago
  Given that 115 is on the left and 102 is on the right (with left generally meaning "old" and right generally meaning "new" when laid out like this), along with 102 IMO looking like a more modern and nicer app, I actually assumed that 102 _was_ the update.
davidcollantes 3y ago
From the UI design, it seems like a step backwards to me. The UI on 102 is so much cleaner!
zvmaz 3y ago
The tone and level of entitlement of some comments is astonishing. Thunderbird is a free and open source tool, used by many (including me). The least we can do is to be a little nicer.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I'm downvoting them as I see them. Donate or contribute or offer constructive feedback, don't just complain.
  - throw10920 3y ago
    There's absolutely nothing wrong with complaining about a piece of software.
    - actuallyalys 3y ago
      I think it's reasonable to criticize a piece of open source software, especially one backed by a non-profit, but not to be entitled or mean-spirited about it.
      - nestock 3y ago
        This. The original comment mentioned "tone and level of entitlement", not "constructive criticism"
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- phist_mcgee 3y ago
  As the maintainer of CoreJS (Denis Pushkarev) said: Maintainers are the unsung heroes of the software world, pouring their hearts into creating vast amounts of value that often goes unappreciated. These unsung heroes perform critical work that enables all of modern technology to function – this is not an exaggeration. These tireless individuals dedicate themselves to writing new features, fixing bugs, answering user inquiries, improving documentation, and developing innovative new software, yet they receive almost no recognition for their efforts.
madballster 3y ago
I looked through the new features list, but couldn't find the "conversational" threads feature which was on the roadmap for Q1 2023. Is this will coming or am I just missing it?
g051051 3y ago
TL;DR: Thanks, I hate it. It looks like the web version of Outlook. This is not a compliment. Can I disable the search bar wasting that space? I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've used email search over the past 2 years. Three times, for the curious. Can I disable the preview pane like I can now? What's "unified" about the folders? What's being "unified"? I've never tagged an email in my life, but there's the tag panel, taking up loads of space. Can I turn it off? Sidebar "menus" should be considered a criminal act. Where's the menu bar? Why is everyone determined to force the metaphor du jour onto their applications?
hbossy 3y ago
Thanks, I hate it.
papaman 3y ago
[dead]
chinathrow 3y ago
JFC, the first image makes me turn mad. The UI was just fine, leave it alone. Long term (25y) of Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird user here.
- bjord 3y ago
  Are you aware that you're in the minority?
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Citation needed.
  - chinathrow 3y ago
    Any data to back this up? (Yes, I also have only one data point).
  - Macha 3y ago
    Of email users? Or or thunderbird users? I don't think looking for a majority of email users is worthwhile, as the majority of email users are not going to use anything other than the webmail from their provider, and maybe the one built the in to their device. As for thunderbird users, I'm not so sure. It seems those who feel they'd use thunderbird if the UI was different in this thread still seem to be unsatisfied by these changes, while those who like the UI the way it is are asking for the new UI to be optional
    - bjord 3y ago
      This is a fair question, and you're probably right. On second thought, the average user will stick to webmail, anyway.
lousken 3y ago
I feel like half of this comment section are senior UX designers. If that is the case, why not pitch in and work on Thunderbird directly?
- nik736 3y ago
  Sorry but they announced something, hyped users (including me) and didn't deliver (yet). I understand this is a lot of work and it's free software, but it still doesn't feel right and has nothing to do with being senior UX designers. They already announced and showcased a very good looking version of Thunderbird.
  - asdajksah2123 3y ago
    They announced and showcased designs, which is nothing like any version of Thunderbird.
cutler 3y ago
I have Thunderbird to thank for allowing me to migrate the GMail accounts of several clients whilst retaining the original timestamps. You'd think a behemoth like Google would be able to handle this but Thunderbird is what you need for this.
tommica 3y ago
Thunderbird is such a nice email client - it fulfills my basic needs and it just easy to use.
keehun 3y ago
This might come off as quirky or weird but one of the things I miss the most about "iCal" (Calendar.app in macOS) is the infinite scroll (year, month, and week views). Fastmail's calendar has the infinite scroll on the month view, but not any other views. I usually hate "infinite scroll" on say a timeline feed, but for calendar, it is exactly what I need as I very often move between months when I'm looking at my calendar. Is there an extension in Firefox that'll bring the infinite scroll to calendar? Anything on the roadmap officially for that UX?
jchw 3y ago
I'm sad that sync did not make it this iteration, but hopeful that it will next time. I love using Thunderbird again. I long switched off of dedicated e-mail clients and forgot what I was missing. I have had to retrain myself to not open a new tab when I'm expecting an email. Not to mention, browsing mailing list threads is impossibly better: it has a nice threaded view that you just can't get in any web interface I'm aware of. But proper sync would be nice to have, seriously. I would really like if it could sync account credentials, personally, since I have a decent number of machines and a handful of e-mail accounts, but even if it didn't it would still be useful to have some form of sync for preferences. I'm sure some people don't like the redesign. Personally, I think it's alright: it is a bit more on the "modern" side in some regards, but it's still reasonably pleasing to use, and still not too white-space heavy, and that's all I really care about.
jokoon 3y ago
I guess the only real purpose of a raspberry pi would be to turn it into an light email server, but even a raspberry pi zero is too much powerful for my taste. I'm still not willing to pay to host my emails, and I don't have anything sensitive enough that warrants something else than gmail, even if I really want to. Also I really wish there were more ways to allow me to "trust" certain domains and to filter mail manually, on top of the usual spam filters. Gmail filters are nice but their UX could be better. Also there should be ways to give my email address in a way that is automatically trusted. For example, some optional passcode in my email address would look like: john.WORK9643@domain.thing john.GIRAFFEBANANA@domain.thing This already exists but is not mainstream. The email protocol could also have a "friend request" feature to "ask the email client" to whitelist a domain. That way, no email would land in the inbox unless it's from a domain the user approved. Those "trust request" would discourage spammers or websites you give your address to you unsolicited emails.
planede 3y ago
I like the new look, and even though it doesn't look as compact as the old layout, it might actually work better on a small screen. While the old list looks more compact vertically, it really doesn't use horizontal space well. It also wastes a lot of space for the message header, eating away precious space from the email content. Hopefully the message header can be configured to scroll with the whole email content in the preview. The old list really doesn't work with a vertically split preview on a small screen, but the new card list looks perfectly viable for that.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Has Thunderbird still proper support for local mailboxes? I recently tried this, and all I found was local folders in maildir or mbox-format. But this won't recognize new mails added to them, making it useless for this demand. Did I miss something, or was this really removed at some point?
- trog 3y ago
  What do you mean by "new mails added to them"? I have Thunderbird set up with old emails I imported from Outlook Express in local folders and it seems to work fine. I don't really add new emails into them very often but I'm pretty sure it's fine?
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    I mean another application than Thunderbird is adding new mails to the mailbox. Which is the classical purpose of a mailbox. In my test Thunderbird had not recognized the new mails, and I'm not sure whether I just did something wrong, or Thunderbird does not have this ability anymore. After all, they don't offer local mailboxes in their account-settings anymore.
dgellow 3y ago
Just curious, does anyone of you know if it is possible to use Thunderbird as a library, somehow? Or is the UI too intertwined with the "mail engine" (i.e something managing IMAP, mbox, maildir, email indexing, etc)? I would be interested to experiment with my own mail client, if I can rely on an existing project like Thunderbird that would make it way simpler to get started :)
- nerdbert 3y ago
  The codebase is huge and grown over decades, I doubt it would make anything simpler to start from that.
faefox 3y ago
From these comments I can only assume that the Thunderbird project is going to have a lot of new contributors in the near future. :) Create the future you want to see!
Night_Thastus 3y ago
I've been watching some of the behind-the-scenes videos they've put out lately about design decisions and areas of improvement. Pretty interesting stuff. UI design is not easy when you have such an old product and so many different types of users. Once they pointed out some features I had no idea existed (like the unified view for mailboxes) my experience was notably better.
danjoredd 3y ago
I like it! Definitely looks better than it did. I can see some more work needing to be done, but this is definitely a huge step in the right direction.
dbg31415 3y ago
These guys have a steep hill to climb. One huge problem with open-source "hobby" projects is that they tend to not have designers when they need them. A dev sets out to build something, and then after it works asks a designer to help clean it up. If you want a polished and "nice" application, getting a designer involved before you code is key. Retrofitting designs to dev work is going to be spotty at best. It sort of looks better, but it doesn't look "good" by modern standards. It still looks like Frankenstein... but at least he's got some lipstick that matches his nails. It's a tough spot, and you see it all the time when dealing with things built without designers.
landgenoot 3y ago
I think it is really impressing to see that they upgraded the interface while maintaining backwards compatibility. I have been running the Beta for a couple of months now, but I had to modify settings to keep up with the design changes. One thing I haven't found out is how to disable tabs. I think it is strange that you can switch between calendar, contacts and mail using the left menu. But the switcher opens new tabs instead.
thesausageking 3y ago
Side note: does anyone know why it costs so much to make a donation? I'm an avid Thunderbird user and I like to support the team making it, but drives me crazy that sending them money costs 8%. So if you give them $100, they only get $92. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ I know Mozilla is anti-crypto, but there still has to be a cheaper way to send them money.
- bhauer 3y ago
  For whatever it's worth, you can also donate via mailed check, assuming you're in the US. This will avoid the 8% card processing fee.
bhauer 3y ago
I was prepared for disappointment, given the sad direction most desktop applications have been heading in the past decade. But admittedly, it looks pretty dang good. Looking forward to giving it a test drive! It hit me that they may be listening to their users more than most desktop app developers when I scrolled to the section about display density. The overwhelming majority of modern desktop apps have exploded the use of white-space and grossly reduced the information density of applications. Mind you, I suspect I will personally want an even more dense setting than their current densest option. But having density settings demonstrated front and center gives me hope. I'm also concerned that I will still want a traditional three-pane split view (folders at left, message list at top-right, message text at bottom-right). Many desktop users do not run their mail client fully maximized, so a horizontally-biased window size should not be assumed. I run Thunderbird on the left half of a single monitor, meaning it's taller than it is wide. A three-column view will probably not use that space well. I'm guessing this is not an Electron app. If I am right, that alone deserves praise. In sum, I am now cautiously optimistic!
- slondr 3y ago
  > I'm guessing this is not an Electron app. If I am right, that alone deserves praise. Thunderbird is, and has always been, essentially a Firefox distribution which implements an MUA instead of a web browser.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  > window size should not be assumed Yes, I have a 3:2 lappy and a second monitor in portrait. Forced widescreen layouts are a no-go here. Thankfully the article implies new options, rather than "Dieter from Shprockets" knows best.
amelius 3y ago
How does search work if my mails are stored remotely, on a server?
- mariusor 3y ago
  Thunderbird downloads local copies. A lot of email clients do that actually.
- tredre3 3y ago
  Thunderbird can be configured to download all emails in full and index them (I don't think it does that by default). But mail clients usually use the IMAP search command and the server does the searching: Client: A282 SEARCH FLAGGED SINCE 1-Feb-1994 NOT FROM "Smith" Server: * SEARCH 2 84 882 Server: A282 OK SEARCH completed https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1730#section-6.4.4 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1730#section-6.4.4
cosmotic 3y ago
"Beautiful Iconography" <4 icons that all have the same silhouette>
aorth 3y ago
Long time Thunderbird user. Love it, donate monthly, open source is important, blah blah blah. Having said that, does anyone else notice how the text editor in the email message body has a bunch of weird issues? For example, edit a previously sent email with a list, and in the new message every list has a space at the end of each element. Try to delete the space and it deletes the last character. You have to use shift-arrow to select the space and delete it. What is that?! Another example, sometimes I paste from a rich-text source that has a table and it immediately converts the body to plaintext or something awful. Can't Ctrl-Z to undo, and I've already written a bunch of text that I don't want to lose, so I copy my text and paste into something plaintext and start the message over. In general I avoid pasting into the message body because of these type of weird issues. What component is that? I haven't gotten around to filing a bug yet because I've never tried to explain these issues to anyone else before!
apocalyptic0n3 3y ago
I played with the beta for a bit and while it's a marked improvement over the old UI, it still feels remarkably old and outdated to use. 1. There still doesn't appear to be a threaded email view. Emails are grouped, but I don't see a way to view them in a thread. Just one at a time 2. Rich text emails that are just text look remarkably bad. They're just black text on white background with limited padding. If you use dark mode, it still displays with a white background; many email readers have moved away from that 3. If you click an email group, it opens a summary view instead of an actual email. In order to open the actual email, you have to expand the group by clicking a tiny arrow 4. Having a landing page for an account still seems odd. It just means I have to keep the account open and click Inbox instead. Each of my 4 accounts have about 30-50 folders each so my sidebar is basically impossible to navigate unless I switch to the Unified folder view which has a separate list of issues 5. Going back to #2, if I reply to such an email in dark mode, the quoted text appears as black on dark gray. 6. The composer definitely needs some love Basically, it still requires 3-4 clicks to do a ton of things that other clients can do in 1 click. Postbox, which forked Thunderbird like 15 years ago and I used for close to a decade, is also looking dated at this point but is much easier to use than Supernova. Some of these things can be improved or changed, but I couldn't find a good combination that created an experience worth switching to. It's unfortunate because I had been planning to switch to Thunderbird from Spark v2 since it was announced last year. Instead, it prompted me to re-evaluate Spark v3 which seems to have resolved most of its early issues. I'd prefer to use OSS, but not at the cost of productivity. Negativity aside, it does look much better than it did previously and I can see the makings of a worthwhile client in there. It's just not ready for me yet.
LeonM 3y ago
"Expanded Accessability" Looks like a typo? Shouldn't this be accessibility?
meow81 3y ago
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/releasenotes/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/releasen...
BlackLotus89 3y ago
Breaks some plugins like TBsync and more... Why does mozilla always try to break addons?
hhhenry 3y ago
[flagged]

571 points by patadune 3y ago

> Upgrade to version 115 and experience the future of Thunderbird! How? i checked for an update and it's still only on 102

dgellow 3y ago
According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665266 115 will be released tomorrow.
- throwaway106382 3y ago
  thanks, I'll keep my eye out for the update tomorrow

redeeman 3y ago

i am very skeptical that this new UI is really better. I will give it a shot, but seriously, things should just stop changing things just for the purpose of changing it

petre 3y ago

Does it still crash with lots of mail? I have mail filters and get like 500 mail a day. Always crashes. It gives me the option to wait or kill the app. I blame the mbox folders.

velosol 3y ago
I've got over 10GB in my profile and have no issue although I use maildir and I believe I converted precisely because it was so slow.
- petre 3y ago
  Can you switch the thunderbird mail storage to Maildir? I've got Maildir on the server, but locally it stores in a regular Mailbox and builds an index file.
  - velosol 3y ago
    It's possible, I was able to use the method listed under (2) at [1] but it was a few hours of fiddling/restoring backups and even a "102% completed" message before I got it to work. I don't have my notes from the but I believe it involved a second profile at one point so probably pretty similar to method (3) in the end. [1]: https://tinyapps.org/blog/202207100700_thunderbird-mbox-to-maildir.html https://tinyapps.org/blog/202207100700_thunderbird-mbox-to-m...

Brendinooo 3y ago

What am I missing here? I'm running "Version 102.11.0, first offered to channel users on May 10, 2023", and this is 13 versions ahead?

orra 3y ago
Thunderbird major releases match up with Firefox, in terms of dates and version numbering. However, Thunderbird releases major versions less often. Hence the discrepancy.
velosol 3y ago
As I recall the team has been jumping the main/release branch by larger numbers as beta moves through more polish effectively making release the long-term servicing/ESR branch so 115 will start to be offered tomorrow.
diffeomorphism 3y ago
No it is exactly one version ahead, the number is just bigger by 13. Firefox ESR 102 is based on firefox non-esr 102 and ESR 115 is based on non-ESR 115. There are no ESR versions in between. As an analogy think of fedora and red hat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relationship_with_Fedora_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relat... With that same scheme it would be red hat 6, 12, 19, 28, 34 instead of 5,6,7,8,9.

drpixie 3y ago

I just want to small, simple, fast, low memory browser that shows pages - I don't want 1,000,000 features and confusions.

nubinetwork 3y ago
Thunderbird is an email client, not a web browser.
GrumpyNl 3y ago
Looks like you didnt read the article.
jraph 3y ago
w3m would be a good fit for this description.
nijave 3y ago
https://github.com/Gentux/imap-cli https://github.com/Gentux/imap-cli
drpixie 3y ago
Duh - I want the simlle browser too. I use TB daily but the comment still applies. I want it to do just email, simply and correctly. Most of the "smart" features just seem to get in th way :(

joiqj 3y ago

I appreciate that they have maintained information density. otoh I think they should try and stick as much as possible to the looks of the OS where thunderbird is running - you are building a desktop application, not a website. Of course it's pretty hard when not even microsoft seems to know what Windows should look like.

PinguTS 3y ago
Remind you, that Microsoft wants go get rid of its Microsoft Office and will make it a Website only.
- joiqj 3y ago
  First, I don't think they'll be able to. I have had the displeasure of using their web Outlook client and it was absurdly buggy for a software company of the stature of Microsoft. I can only imagine how terrible the web version of a complex software like Excel will be. Not to mention the poor performance. There's no way they will lose all of their finance customers like that... but, it's Microsoft, so... who knows. Second, Office hasn't really looked like Windows for like... the past 20 years.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > I can only imagine how terrible the web version of a complex software like Excel will be. It's actually not that terrible, but I believe it's nowhere near feature parity. Not to mention there is a galaxy of add-ons that still need to be rewritten from scratch to work on the web version, and a lot of people cannot live without them. Excel is a classic case of 80% of users requiring 20% of all functionality, but that 20% being different for each user. Still, Microsoft made it very clear that the future is web-first.
    - joiqj 3y ago
      If you don't have feature parity, you really are in trouble, because then you are competing with Google Sheets, on which actually competent engineers are working.

nabogh 3y ago

I hope I can opt back into the more dense display that we currently have. Some other parts look quite nice however.

smarkov 3y ago
I really don't understand this. It already looks a little too clumped to me, what's the benefit to further putting things closer to one another? It's not like you're doing some kind of additive transformation and you need to quickly jump between lines, each email is its own thing and you can only read one at a time. If you need to find specific ones you can always categorize them or use the search functionality. I'm just confused by statements like this.
- donatj 3y ago
  Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful. All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption. My work email rarely exist in a vacuum, they exist in the context of all my other work emails. The ability to actually cross reference and get work done quickly should always trump aesthetics. These modern “spaced out” UIs are infuriating, they achieve nothing other than requiring more scrolling.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    Spacing is useful for me because it helps each individual piece of text stand out from the others. Too dense and it all looks like a jumble to me that I can't easily scan visually. Too much whitespace I agree is bad for the reasons you described. But everyone has different taste here. The ideal scenario is an option to change spacing.
  - smarkov 3y ago
    > Being able to quickly scan a large list of emails without scrolling is practical and useful. Conversely, why is scrolling considered evil? We can agree that emails are documents. In real life, on your desk, do spread out all your documents so you could see them all at once? Or do you have a stack of them and view them one by one? You can still cross reference by putting documents side by side, just like you can with multiple emails open in separate windows or monitors. Admittedly depending on the amount of emails and the speed at which you work through them you might benefit from seeing many at once, though there's other ways of dealing with that issue. > All whitespace achieves is aesthetics, which are meaningless beyond initial adoption. I don't think whitespace is all about aesthetics. Personally, it makes it easier for me to read and focus on things. It gives individual things more value, rather than them being "just another thing in a gigantic list", easily blending in and showing no significance.

sergimansilla 3y ago

I’ve been using the beta for some weeks, and it’s fantastic. snappy fast, and makes me feel in control. I’m not using (and probably never will) any of the non-email features like the calendar, or the chat. But they are relatively hidden away, so they don’t bother me.

jraph 3y ago
Calendar in the mail client is very useful since invitations are sent by mail. You click accept, the recipient knows you did and the event is added to your calendar. But indeed if you don't use it it does not get in the way, which is perfect.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  did they fix the problem where the calendar account must be the same as the email account? My email is on zimbra but since the zimbra calendar is isolated, I use a google calendar from another email account because I can use it with reclaim.ai, share calendars and use it on my phone.
- pmontra 3y ago
  I read mail first on my phone with K9 (the old UI) a few times per day and accept invitations there to put them on my phone, which is always with me. Then I download mail with Thunderbird a few times per week. I use my domain providers POP3 servers. Yes, they bundle a mailbox with each domain. It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case.
  - folkrav 3y ago
    > It's also IMAP and webmail but POP3 is better for my use case. I'm curious as to why, if you don't mind! Are you specifically looking for "download only once then get rid of it"?
    - pmontra 3y ago
      Yes, see my reply to the other message. My mail stays on my computer, backed up locally and encrypted to a remote location. I lose the ability to access old messages from remote but it never was a problem in almost 17 years of self employment. Before that, I already had about 13 years of downloaded emails, from the times when web mail was not a thing. No need to upload my old messages to Gmail, if this is even possible. I just kept using a local mail client. For my personal mail I remember some emacs clients, Netscape Mail (bundled with the browser,) Outlook Explorer then Thunderbird. I might forget something.

jraph 3y ago

This looks good! It has not reached my distribution yet, I hope this refreshed UI will be more convenient than the current one (which has done its job for the past 20 years but has some quirks like not having a straightforward way to follow a mail thread to my knowledge - well, it has but all the mails need to be in the same folder but sent mails are in the sent folder and received mails are in the received messages folder)

orra 3y ago
Just jumping in to say I'm also incredibly happy to see this change (and the other expected improvements). Thunderbird currently looks dated, and I'm glad to see it brought into the 2020s. Sometimes current users can be dismissive of UI changes, so it's good to see fellow users who are happy. Moreover, let's not forget the new users, who were previously put off by the dated UI.
- elric 3y ago
  I guess I'll be that dismissive current user. I don't like random UI changes in a tool I use as frequently as a mail client. The new icons don't look too bad, even if I dislike their flat nature. I don't think TB looks dated. It looks functional. Which is exactly what I want from a mail client. If I want something that looks modern but is dysfunctional, I'll just switch to Outlook.
  - orra 3y ago
    I obviously don't begrudge the fact Thunderbird currently works for you. But there are a few issues with the current UI: * Dark mode didn't exist for a long time, and I'm glad it does, but messages are still displayed brightly. * The list of emails always has a columns and a header; there's no simplified vertical view. * There's a threading view, but IIRC it doesn't combine sent and received messages into the same thread view.
    - flas9sd 3y ago
      just gave it a test, the design additions are introduced gently. Defaults for listings are on the familiar view. Menu quick actions exist to go from compact to normal to more padding. I had the 2-line message header view on my wishlist for a long time. Thunderbird did pretty great.

alraj 3y ago

Nice updates from Thunderbird team. But will E-mail on the whole ever get features like other chat platform? Even conversation view is not good on the eye. Quoting is ugly in long Email body. Maybe only protocols are getting updated!? I think email is only still here because its a form of identification. Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion.

iLoveOncall 3y ago
> Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion. They are moving for instant discussions, but not for proper discussions. Instant messaging is the death of knowledge. Emails aren't much better IMO, but there's still a bigger feeling of permanency and availability than IM.
jraph 3y ago
Check out DeltaChat [1] :-) It uses emails for chatting. Though personally, I'm quite happy with this separation of emails and chats. They are for different stuff. [1] https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
kleiba 3y ago
> Most companies and groups are moving towards Discord, Slack, etc. for a proper discussion. That must be right. I got let go from my last job because I refused to use 5+ different instant messaging software and instead stick with email. In hindsight, I guess I should have been wiser.
t43562 3y ago
email works between companies because it's based on standards whereas messaging companies are all trying to lock us in to their particular system so they can "win" and that ensures that we cannot "chat" to people with some other software.

perlgeek 3y ago

Meta note about the announcement: > contextual options based on the tab or Space that is currently active I find it quite amusing that two whitepace keys/characters, tab and space, are also used to refer to areas of the UI in thunderbird :-)

shanghaikid 3y ago

Just be curious why are people still using email client other than web based one? Gmail or outlook 365 is quite good, and I think most people will have one web browser opened always.

Sander_Marechal 3y ago
I don't want my mail managed by either of those two. Many other providers use Roundcube but that's quite "meh". But the killer feature for me for Thunderbird is that I can force everything to be plain text email, both sending and receiving.
artogahr 3y ago
Because I like all my email in one place basically. I don't want to hunt for tabs whenever I'm looking for specific mail account, mentally all my mail is behind one icon separate from my browser, and they all look and work the same. Also maybe not Gmail but aside from that IMHO Thunderbird offers better UX than all other browser mail apps.
- kevincox 3y ago
  Personally I hate GMail. 1. Threads are collapsed into a 1-dimensional list making moderately complex discussions hard to follow. 2. Deleting many messages is very slow. With Thunderbird I can mash <Delete> while scanning subjects and pause for a second to see the actual message body. I get a lot of email that I need to sort through or be aware of so my morning generally consists of quickly (15min) going through up to 100 conversions and getting quick status updates or just deleting uninteresting threads. For whatever reason doing this in GMail is a complete slog. (I'm not sure why, they have the <y> shortcut to archive and have a preview pane but it is just way slower, maybe they need to precache a few messages on either side of the current one?) 3. Threads are based on subject meaning that unrelated messages get grouped together. (Apparently this was changed in 2019 (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/threading-changes-in-gmail-conversation-view.html https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/threading-ch...) but I've definitely seen this issue for at least a year after that announcement when I stopped using GMail) I do admit that most of GMail is pretty good. But for me these limitations are enough to really impede my workflow. I've found that Thunderbird is the least-bad option for me. However Thunderbird's performance is quite poor. I do have 350k messages downloaded locally but even opening my empty inbox sometimes causes lockups. IIUC this is because Thunderbird is mostly single-threaded but apparently there is progress slowly being made here. For example composing messages used to frequently lock up for a few seconds but I haven't seen that in a couple years.

nik736 3y ago

What happened to the look that was announced? [0] The announcement was way more modern than the screenshot that is shown now. [0]: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap

jeroenhd 3y ago
Designer mockups and the actual end result don't always end up being the exact same for various reasons. Nothing a little CSS won't change, from what I can tell the biggest difference is the contrast on the panel edges and the background on the read/unread/selected messages. The road map does state Q4 2022 as a target so I imagine the work has just taken too much time already and the version 115 deadline wasn't made.
- andix 3y ago
  If the UI platform you're using supports themes, this can usually be fixed with that. Provide one default theme that looks perfectly polished, and another more compact one for power users.
  - velosol 3y ago
    Which do you default to for someone coming from years of Thunderbird usage? How in-your-face is compact mode toggle in the ootb experience for a fresh install? And sadly how many people are going to be new to Thunderbird these days? If I got the 'polished' version as part of the normal update cycle I'd be upset that my tight, space-efficient and incredibly responsive productivity app had decided to use a design language that reduces information displayed. The point of email is to communicate information and I now have to interact with the UI more than I did before to get the same amount of information. The launched version hits the density that Thunderbird has been for about a decade and is what I'd prefer (ie the compact mode might be better for those being upgraded).
    - andix 3y ago
      Best is to ask them in my opinion. After the update: „we have a new design, do you want to use it or do you want to stay on the more compact design? You can change it any time in the settings menu <placeholder>“. The dialog should have pictograms of both designs.

tekknolagi 3y ago

At this point, whenever something says "maximize your freedoms" and does not explain further, I think it is adding spyware or otherwise restricting my choices. Decades of US policy doublespeak, I guess...

impissedoff1 3y ago
Don't worry, they just pipeline your emails directly to google now for 'verification' for your protection. Mozilla is a sellout
account42 3y ago
I guess this applies to TB PR too: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/m-p/16950 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...

pshirshov 3y ago

> unified folders Actually that's the worst anti-feature for an email client.

Open-Sourcery 3y ago
As long as there is a way to disable it, or there is a unified view along with the individual email views. I quite like unified views considering I have three email accounts I need to view, and I don't see the downside of this view as long as when I reply, it automatically replies from the address it was sent to.
- yetanother12345 3y ago
  > as long as when I reply, it automatically replies from the address it was sent to. In my experience this is NOT always the case. I handle multiple accounts using unified view, and I've had a _lot_ of "accidents" where I replied from another address than the email address that the email was sent to. Meaning: an email sent to me at one email address may get a reply (possibly with the email text quoted inside) - from a totally different and unrelated email address. Without me actively selecting a "different" reply account. For a while it seemed the rule is that you reply using the account you used the last time you interacted with the app (the "last active" account -ish). It really seemed to be the rule, not the exception. I'm not sure if this was/is "by design" or "a bug" T(hings like t)his is one of the reasons I use email/Thunderbird less these days. The cost per time unit has increased and the risk of uncontrolled events likewise. Of course account switching is desired in some situations, so this should be possible. With some minor difficulty - at least some sort of minor deliberate action should be needed like click a list to change sender email address away from recipient email address. It should not be default behaviour.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Yet many users rely on it every day. You don't have to use the feature if you don't unified folders, but that doesn't mean other people don't want it.
rhaway84773 3y ago

ttoinou 3y ago

Great, thanks Thunderbird Team. But please improve / fix Quick Search !

taneq 3y ago

Will there be a way to show search results in list view by default, instead of the useless “most relevant” view? Everything else about Thunderbird is pretty great but this is so annoying.

loufe 3y ago

This looks fantastic. I've been waiting for an open source and linux-compatible alternative to Mailbird for the desktop.

creshal 3y ago

> More than just a refreshed set of graphics, Supernova introduces beautiful icons with a more consistent visual style unique to Thunderbird. Our new designs remain sharp and pixel-perfect at any density setting. Translation: We break with the established platform look&feel to follow the brave trend of replacing easily identified colourful icons with vague monochrome silhouettes.

reocha 3y ago
Pointless complaint with no actual observation of the new look and feel, Thunderbird is still just as colorful as it was before. The focus here seems to be on making the icons more consistent across the application as opposed to some of the issues they had before.
Jaxan 3y ago
It seems they kept the colouring the same. Coloured icons remain coloured and monochrome ones stay monochrome.

diarrhea 3y ago

Putting the search bar front-and-center in both the application and this announcement, I hope the backend implementation is now able to keep up? The one use case I switch to my mail provider's webmail UI for is search. I mentally sigh a little bit each time I realise I have to search through my email. Thunderbird's search has been among the worst I have ever come across, sadly. Functional search would be a killer feature. As it's running locally, heck, give me regex. Trivial to implement and would be a huge improvement already.

berkes 3y ago
Yeah. It's been terrible forever. Either returning far too much, far too little, or both. I've often just resorted to grep on an export of mail directories to find that one email. I even once imported the mails (ugly bash and Ruby hacks) in meilisearch to actually find stuff. It surprises me that it's possible to have a search experience that's worse than manually grepping through directories.
reacharavindh 3y ago
I have always wondered this. When a site like "MAterial for Mkdocs" can implement such a featureful search (with autocomplete, spellcorrect and such) in a browser for a website, how could it be this hard for a desktop application with several orders of magnitude of resources at its disposal?
- WhyNotHugo 3y ago
  There’s no technical reason, it’s just a poor implementation. I use “notmuch” for email and it can index over two decades of emails in seconds. Search is then instantaneous. TBH, thunderbird could just use notmuch under the hood.
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - 3y ago

nu11ptr 3y ago

Out of curiosity, what UI framework is used here? Electron? something else? EDIT: On 2nd thought I'm thinking this is XUL, Mozilla's sort of electron equivalent for an HTML/CSS UI?

jeffreygoesto 3y ago
Afaik https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page https://wiki.mozilla.org/XUL:Home_Page
- Macha 3y ago
  My understanding is that part of the goal with this UX rewrite is to move from XUL to HTML/CSS as XUL is increasingly unmaintained as Firefox has made the move for most (maybe all by now) of it's UI years ago
cubefox 3y ago
They did use XULRunner in the past, but probably something else nowadays.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  Actually, Thunderbird was never on XULRunner; it always relied on linking all of its code into libxul. For some strange reason, many of the C++ string APIs are different depending on when you linked into or outside of libxul, which meant it was a lot of chore to maintain a build that worked on XULRunner, and the project was never completed before Mozilla killed XULRunner in favor of embedding stories that never lasted more than a year or two.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Thanks for the correction.
donatzsky 3y ago
As I understand it, Thunderbird is essentially Firefox turned into a mail client. So whatever FF is using. There's probably still some XUL left here and there, but only because they haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.

johnchristopher 3y ago

At last !: > Card View emulates a mobile interface list with multi-line support, offering a more comfortable appearance to reduce cognitive burden. Took them long enough. And they said it couldn't be done, sheesh. Outlook 2003 had that for... 20 years.

johnchristopher 3y ago
Thanks for the downvotes Thunderbird white knights but I have the bug reports to back up my saltiness: - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335310 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335310 Closed Bug 335310 Opened 18 years ago Closed 16 years ago Suggest Multi-line Message List display (great in vertical view) - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 Bug 213945 Opened 20 years ago Closed 4 months ago Mail/message listing/thread pane needs more organization in 3 vertical pane view (column wrapping, etc) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=307013 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=307013 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307070 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307070 Open Bug 307070 Opened 18 years ago Updated 1 month ago Request for Outlook-style AutoPreview feature to see first few lines of messages As the guy who made a close to pixel perfect office2003 theme for Tbird back in the 00's this feature has sentimental value to me and am very happy this has finally landed.
aport 3y ago
> Outlook 2003 had that for... 20 years. It's kind of weird they say it emulates mobile interfaces.

kekebo 3y ago

Anyone have an opinion on how Betterbird[0] compares to Thunderbird? I've installed it recently to circumvent a recent design change in Thunderbird but have a hard time assessing whether it's a worthwhile long-term alternative and a project worthy of support. [0] https://www.betterbird.eu/ https://www.betterbird.eu/

folkrav 3y ago
I have a lot of trouble taking Betterbird seriously... The whole thing feels like a revenge based project by a disgruntled former contributor. https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/moz-governance.pdf https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/permanent-ban.pdf https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/RQHR3eFAYZ8 YMMV
precompute 3y ago
Oh wow, it works in the system tray. Sold!

cheeaun 3y ago

Found a typo: s/Accessability/Accessibility

cortic 3y ago

Wonder what the hard-drive footprint this takes now, my version; 60.9.1(32-bit) takes 126MB and i consider that bloated for what it is. At the Thunderbird 60.9 release mark; Pegasus footprint was 30MB, Opera Mail was 38MB, Sylpheed was 28MB, even the Bat was only 50MB. I run Thunderbird portable from a data pen, which is why this metric is important to me (i realize it won't be for the majority of users). Edit; Okay i know i could buy a bigger data pen, but i also do weekly backups to the cloud and am limited to 7mbps upload, 2g takes 40 minutes, so every bit i can shave off helps. But i want to emphasize i realize it won't be important for the majority of users

Otek 3y ago
Still not sure why this metric is important when you can get 1tb pen drive for $100
- nijave 3y ago
  In the U.S. Microcenter has an in-store only deal $3.50 for a 64GB USB 3.1 drive right now
  - jeffhuys 3y ago
    Wow, I'd take 10
- cortic 3y ago
  Sure, I'm working on a much smaller data pen. I also backup my pen drive to the cloud at 7mbps upload, 2g takes 40 minutes.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  Oh, then surely you can send him the $100 right quick to grab it? The hundo is no biggie, right?
  - nulld3v 3y ago
    Correction: you can get a 1TB SSD for under $100. It's more like $50 these days. You can get 1TB USBs and hard drives for far less (e.g. $10 used).

danpalmer 3y ago

I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul. Text is misaligned in lots of places, the icons are fuzzy, spacing and padding is inconsistent even within the same areas, there are 3 sets of 3-dot icons in the sidebar in two different axes. It's just careless. Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This stuff really matters in aggregate.

tommyage 3y ago
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/ Your professional input may be desired. Though I did not contribute to Thunderbird either (, yet?). Thing is, your critique may result in guidance to make part of these changes according to your skillset! But I am just a hopeless dreamer in the good of many things.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I think if the team are shipping it in this state then either: they don't have the ability to notice the issues on the core team, or they see the issues and ship it anyway. Feedback like this is unlikely to solve either of those cases. This isn't complex stuff either. I'm not a designer, I don't even do frontend/UI work, I'm basically just a backend engineer. If I'm spotting this stuff on first glance at the main marketing screenshot, which should be the best possible case, then this stuff must be glaringly obvious and pervasive.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    You might have a particularly good eye. I saw none of these problems in the marketing screenshot. I only see one ... icon in the entire screenshot, nothing is fuzzy, and all text looks aligned. The only weirdness is a misalignment between the sidebar header and the main window header, but those don't need to be aligned anyway.
    - jeffhuys 3y ago

AnonC 3y ago

FYI, Thunderbird 115 is getting released tomorrow (July 11). Right now, if you visit the Thunderbird website [1] or try to look for updates within the application, you won't find this release version available (you can always get the beta release from the website). [1]: https://www.thunderbird.net/ https://www.thunderbird.net/

guzik 3y ago
I would advise against installing the beta for anyone considering it. I was in the beta for 2 years (mostly because it's quite challenging to get out of the beta), and the quality of the beta releases leaves a lot to be desired.
- dgellow 3y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this, I was literally in the process of switching to the beta channel to see this new UI!
folkrav 3y ago
Aaaah. So that's why I wasn't finding anything, I thought I was going crazy. That landing page seems to hint that it's currently available ("Upgrade to version 115 and experience the future of Thunderbird!").
MikusR 3y ago
And the beta is for 116. So there is no (sane) way to get the discussed and marketed 115.
- ntp85 3y ago
  It might not be sane by any means, but here are the current release candidates: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/115.0-candidates/build1/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/115.0-can...
  - rebelpixel 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

guzik 3y ago

As a long-term Thunderbird user, it saddens me to see the direction in which this client's development is heading, and I am seriously considering making a change. There are a few things I am discontented with, like the rather amateurish look and feel of the app. On top of that, there are many basic client features missing, such as templates (drafts are horrendous) and send later functionality (right now, I think I'm using about 2 add-ons, each of which is awful to use).

rpgbr 3y ago

From the screenshots, 102 looks better IMHO.

cianmm 3y ago
Given that 115 is on the left and 102 is on the right (with left generally meaning "old" and right generally meaning "new" when laid out like this), along with 102 IMO looking like a more modern and nicer app, I actually assumed that 102 _was_ the update.

davidcollantes 3y ago

From the UI design, it seems like a step backwards to me. The UI on 102 is so much cleaner!

zvmaz 3y ago

The tone and level of entitlement of some comments is astonishing. Thunderbird is a free and open source tool, used by many (including me). The least we can do is to be a little nicer.

nerdponx 3y ago
I'm downvoting them as I see them. Donate or contribute or offer constructive feedback, don't just complain.
- throw10920 3y ago
  There's absolutely nothing wrong with complaining about a piece of software.
  - actuallyalys 3y ago
    I think it's reasonable to criticize a piece of open source software, especially one backed by a non-profit, but not to be entitled or mean-spirited about it.
    - nestock 3y ago
      This. The original comment mentioned "tone and level of entitlement", not "constructive criticism"
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
phist_mcgee 3y ago
As the maintainer of CoreJS (Denis Pushkarev) said: Maintainers are the unsung heroes of the software world, pouring their hearts into creating vast amounts of value that often goes unappreciated. These unsung heroes perform critical work that enables all of modern technology to function – this is not an exaggeration. These tireless individuals dedicate themselves to writing new features, fixing bugs, answering user inquiries, improving documentation, and developing innovative new software, yet they receive almost no recognition for their efforts.

madballster 3y ago

I looked through the new features list, but couldn't find the "conversational" threads feature which was on the roadmap for Q1 2023. Is this will coming or am I just missing it?

g051051 3y ago

TL;DR: Thanks, I hate it. It looks like the web version of Outlook. This is not a compliment. Can I disable the search bar wasting that space? I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've used email search over the past 2 years. Three times, for the curious. Can I disable the preview pane like I can now? What's "unified" about the folders? What's being "unified"? I've never tagged an email in my life, but there's the tag panel, taking up loads of space. Can I turn it off? Sidebar "menus" should be considered a criminal act. Where's the menu bar? Why is everyone determined to force the metaphor du jour onto their applications?

hbossy 3y ago

Thanks, I hate it.

papaman 3y ago

[dead]

chinathrow 3y ago

JFC, the first image makes me turn mad. The UI was just fine, leave it alone. Long term (25y) of Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird user here.

bjord 3y ago
Are you aware that you're in the minority?
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Citation needed.
- chinathrow 3y ago
  Any data to back this up? (Yes, I also have only one data point).
- Macha 3y ago
  Of email users? Or or thunderbird users? I don't think looking for a majority of email users is worthwhile, as the majority of email users are not going to use anything other than the webmail from their provider, and maybe the one built the in to their device. As for thunderbird users, I'm not so sure. It seems those who feel they'd use thunderbird if the UI was different in this thread still seem to be unsatisfied by these changes, while those who like the UI the way it is are asking for the new UI to be optional
  - bjord 3y ago
    This is a fair question, and you're probably right. On second thought, the average user will stick to webmail, anyway.

lousken 3y ago

I feel like half of this comment section are senior UX designers. If that is the case, why not pitch in and work on Thunderbird directly?

nik736 3y ago
Sorry but they announced something, hyped users (including me) and didn't deliver (yet). I understand this is a lot of work and it's free software, but it still doesn't feel right and has nothing to do with being senior UX designers. They already announced and showcased a very good looking version of Thunderbird.
- asdajksah2123 3y ago
  They announced and showcased designs, which is nothing like any version of Thunderbird.

cutler 3y ago

I have Thunderbird to thank for allowing me to migrate the GMail accounts of several clients whilst retaining the original timestamps. You'd think a behemoth like Google would be able to handle this but Thunderbird is what you need for this.

tommica 3y ago

Thunderbird is such a nice email client - it fulfills my basic needs and it just easy to use.

keehun 3y ago

This might come off as quirky or weird but one of the things I miss the most about "iCal" (Calendar.app in macOS) is the infinite scroll (year, month, and week views). Fastmail's calendar has the infinite scroll on the month view, but not any other views. I usually hate "infinite scroll" on say a timeline feed, but for calendar, it is exactly what I need as I very often move between months when I'm looking at my calendar. Is there an extension in Firefox that'll bring the infinite scroll to calendar? Anything on the roadmap officially for that UX?

jchw 3y ago

I'm sad that sync did not make it this iteration, but hopeful that it will next time. I love using Thunderbird again. I long switched off of dedicated e-mail clients and forgot what I was missing. I have had to retrain myself to not open a new tab when I'm expecting an email. Not to mention, browsing mailing list threads is impossibly better: it has a nice threaded view that you just can't get in any web interface I'm aware of. But proper sync would be nice to have, seriously. I would really like if it could sync account credentials, personally, since I have a decent number of machines and a handful of e-mail accounts, but even if it didn't it would still be useful to have some form of sync for preferences. I'm sure some people don't like the redesign. Personally, I think it's alright: it is a bit more on the "modern" side in some regards, but it's still reasonably pleasing to use, and still not too white-space heavy, and that's all I really care about.

jokoon 3y ago

I guess the only real purpose of a raspberry pi would be to turn it into an light email server, but even a raspberry pi zero is too much powerful for my taste. I'm still not willing to pay to host my emails, and I don't have anything sensitive enough that warrants something else than gmail, even if I really want to. Also I really wish there were more ways to allow me to "trust" certain domains and to filter mail manually, on top of the usual spam filters. Gmail filters are nice but their UX could be better. Also there should be ways to give my email address in a way that is automatically trusted. For example, some optional passcode in my email address would look like: john.WORK9643@domain.thing john.GIRAFFEBANANA@domain.thing This already exists but is not mainstream. The email protocol could also have a "friend request" feature to "ask the email client" to whitelist a domain. That way, no email would land in the inbox unless it's from a domain the user approved. Those "trust request" would discourage spammers or websites you give your address to you unsolicited emails.

planede 3y ago

I like the new look, and even though it doesn't look as compact as the old layout, it might actually work better on a small screen. While the old list looks more compact vertically, it really doesn't use horizontal space well. It also wastes a lot of space for the message header, eating away precious space from the email content. Hopefully the message header can be configured to scroll with the whole email content in the preview. The old list really doesn't work with a vertically split preview on a small screen, but the new card list looks perfectly viable for that.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

Has Thunderbird still proper support for local mailboxes? I recently tried this, and all I found was local folders in maildir or mbox-format. But this won't recognize new mails added to them, making it useless for this demand. Did I miss something, or was this really removed at some point?

trog 3y ago
What do you mean by "new mails added to them"? I have Thunderbird set up with old emails I imported from Outlook Express in local folders and it seems to work fine. I don't really add new emails into them very often but I'm pretty sure it's fine?
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  I mean another application than Thunderbird is adding new mails to the mailbox. Which is the classical purpose of a mailbox. In my test Thunderbird had not recognized the new mails, and I'm not sure whether I just did something wrong, or Thunderbird does not have this ability anymore. After all, they don't offer local mailboxes in their account-settings anymore.

dgellow 3y ago

Just curious, does anyone of you know if it is possible to use Thunderbird as a library, somehow? Or is the UI too intertwined with the "mail engine" (i.e something managing IMAP, mbox, maildir, email indexing, etc)? I would be interested to experiment with my own mail client, if I can rely on an existing project like Thunderbird that would make it way simpler to get started :)

nerdbert 3y ago
The codebase is huge and grown over decades, I doubt it would make anything simpler to start from that.

faefox 3y ago

From these comments I can only assume that the Thunderbird project is going to have a lot of new contributors in the near future. :) Create the future you want to see!

Night_Thastus 3y ago

I've been watching some of the behind-the-scenes videos they've put out lately about design decisions and areas of improvement. Pretty interesting stuff. UI design is not easy when you have such an old product and so many different types of users. Once they pointed out some features I had no idea existed (like the unified view for mailboxes) my experience was notably better.

danjoredd 3y ago

I like it! Definitely looks better than it did. I can see some more work needing to be done, but this is definitely a huge step in the right direction.

dbg31415 3y ago

These guys have a steep hill to climb. One huge problem with open-source "hobby" projects is that they tend to not have designers when they need them. A dev sets out to build something, and then after it works asks a designer to help clean it up. If you want a polished and "nice" application, getting a designer involved before you code is key. Retrofitting designs to dev work is going to be spotty at best. It sort of looks better, but it doesn't look "good" by modern standards. It still looks like Frankenstein... but at least he's got some lipstick that matches his nails. It's a tough spot, and you see it all the time when dealing with things built without designers.

landgenoot 3y ago

I think it is really impressing to see that they upgraded the interface while maintaining backwards compatibility. I have been running the Beta for a couple of months now, but I had to modify settings to keep up with the design changes. One thing I haven't found out is how to disable tabs. I think it is strange that you can switch between calendar, contacts and mail using the left menu. But the switcher opens new tabs instead.

thesausageking 3y ago

Side note: does anyone know why it costs so much to make a donation? I'm an avid Thunderbird user and I like to support the team making it, but drives me crazy that sending them money costs 8%. So if you give them $100, they only get $92. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ I know Mozilla is anti-crypto, but there still has to be a cheaper way to send them money.

bhauer 3y ago
For whatever it's worth, you can also donate via mailed check, assuming you're in the US. This will avoid the 8% card processing fee.

bhauer 3y ago

I was prepared for disappointment, given the sad direction most desktop applications have been heading in the past decade. But admittedly, it looks pretty dang good. Looking forward to giving it a test drive! It hit me that they may be listening to their users more than most desktop app developers when I scrolled to the section about display density. The overwhelming majority of modern desktop apps have exploded the use of white-space and grossly reduced the information density of applications. Mind you, I suspect I will personally want an even more dense setting than their current densest option. But having density settings demonstrated front and center gives me hope. I'm also concerned that I will still want a traditional three-pane split view (folders at left, message list at top-right, message text at bottom-right). Many desktop users do not run their mail client fully maximized, so a horizontally-biased window size should not be assumed. I run Thunderbird on the left half of a single monitor, meaning it's taller than it is wide. A three-column view will probably not use that space well. I'm guessing this is not an Electron app. If I am right, that alone deserves praise. In sum, I am now cautiously optimistic!

slondr 3y ago
> I'm guessing this is not an Electron app. If I am right, that alone deserves praise. Thunderbird is, and has always been, essentially a Firefox distribution which implements an MUA instead of a web browser.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
> window size should not be assumed Yes, I have a 3:2 lappy and a second monitor in portrait. Forced widescreen layouts are a no-go here. Thankfully the article implies new options, rather than "Dieter from Shprockets" knows best.

amelius 3y ago

How does search work if my mails are stored remotely, on a server?

mariusor 3y ago
Thunderbird downloads local copies. A lot of email clients do that actually.
tredre3 3y ago
Thunderbird can be configured to download all emails in full and index them (I don't think it does that by default). But mail clients usually use the IMAP search command and the server does the searching: Client: A282 SEARCH FLAGGED SINCE 1-Feb-1994 NOT FROM "Smith" Server: * SEARCH 2 84 882 Server: A282 OK SEARCH completed https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1730#section-6.4.4 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1730#section-6.4.4

cosmotic 3y ago

"Beautiful Iconography" <4 icons that all have the same silhouette>

aorth 3y ago

Long time Thunderbird user. Love it, donate monthly, open source is important, blah blah blah. Having said that, does anyone else notice how the text editor in the email message body has a bunch of weird issues? For example, edit a previously sent email with a list, and in the new message every list has a space at the end of each element. Try to delete the space and it deletes the last character. You have to use shift-arrow to select the space and delete it. What is that?! Another example, sometimes I paste from a rich-text source that has a table and it immediately converts the body to plaintext or something awful. Can't Ctrl-Z to undo, and I've already written a bunch of text that I don't want to lose, so I copy my text and paste into something plaintext and start the message over. In general I avoid pasting into the message body because of these type of weird issues. What component is that? I haven't gotten around to filing a bug yet because I've never tried to explain these issues to anyone else before!

apocalyptic0n3 3y ago

I played with the beta for a bit and while it's a marked improvement over the old UI, it still feels remarkably old and outdated to use. 1. There still doesn't appear to be a threaded email view. Emails are grouped, but I don't see a way to view them in a thread. Just one at a time 2. Rich text emails that are just text look remarkably bad. They're just black text on white background with limited padding. If you use dark mode, it still displays with a white background; many email readers have moved away from that 3. If you click an email group, it opens a summary view instead of an actual email. In order to open the actual email, you have to expand the group by clicking a tiny arrow 4. Having a landing page for an account still seems odd. It just means I have to keep the account open and click Inbox instead. Each of my 4 accounts have about 30-50 folders each so my sidebar is basically impossible to navigate unless I switch to the Unified folder view which has a separate list of issues 5. Going back to #2, if I reply to such an email in dark mode, the quoted text appears as black on dark gray. 6. The composer definitely needs some love Basically, it still requires 3-4 clicks to do a ton of things that other clients can do in 1 click. Postbox, which forked Thunderbird like 15 years ago and I used for close to a decade, is also looking dated at this point but is much easier to use than Supernova. Some of these things can be improved or changed, but I couldn't find a good combination that created an experience worth switching to. It's unfortunate because I had been planning to switch to Thunderbird from Spark v2 since it was announced last year. Instead, it prompted me to re-evaluate Spark v3 which seems to have resolved most of its early issues. I'd prefer to use OSS, but not at the cost of productivity. Negativity aside, it does look much better than it did previously and I can see the makings of a worthwhile client in there. It's just not ready for me yet.

LeonM 3y ago

"Expanded Accessability" Looks like a typo? Shouldn't this be accessibility?

meow81 3y ago

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/releasenotes/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/releasen...

BlackLotus89 3y ago

Breaks some plugins like TBsync and more... Why does mozilla always try to break addons?

hhhenry 3y ago

[flagged]