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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 e
by 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 agohttps://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 agoI 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 agoYou 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 agoLook at the "+ New message"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AnonC 3y agoYou can participate in the Thunderbird UX discussions on Topicbox (and also through email) and provide your suggestions/critiques at https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/ux https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/ux
- eps 3y agoDo they listen to the opinions of random newcomers?
- danpalmer 3y agoIn my experience most communities like this are quite unreceptive to feedback – both in hoops you have to jump through to give it, and in terms of attitude from maintainers. I haven't engaged with the Thunderbird feedback process so this may be unfair to them, but it's a broad perception I have and so I think organisations that do want the feedback or do want first-time contributors need to push hard to make that happen.
- robertlagrant 3y agoPro tip: don't lead with "I can't believe how janky this still looks after a UI overhaul."
- rudasn 3y agoSo, image you're the new hire and you are welcomed to this massive code base with thousands of files, each thousands of lines long, without some clear separation of concerns or "basic modern best practices". And the first thing you do, is tell everyone how shit their code looks. The same code that pays for yours and everyone else's paychecks. What do you think is going to happen?
- xattt 3y agoMost users don’t have the time to gain entrée into a developer community.
- kristofferR 3y agoAgree. The differences between the mock-up [1] and the finished version [2] are both quite small, yet make a massive difference in the perceived quality. [1] https://2165533704-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-L_nKoWlOPz_rkC_kHdV%2Fuploads%2F7vlED6WQDgHtKKAiFvm4%2Faccount_mail_tab.png?alt=media https://2165533704-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-p... [2] https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/115/115.png https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1... The search bar looks good in the mock-up, but bad in the final version due to not being centered, despite being really similar.
- jimaek 3y agoOh wow that's a huge difference. The first one looks like polished quality software while the second one looks like some junky app made by a solo dev on his free time that doesn't care how it looks like
- arsome 3y agoThe first one looks like a massive waste of screen real estate. Glad they fixed it.
- carlosjobim 3y agoCompare the two, and you'll see that it's not really the case. The first one has a narrower sidebar and much more space for the actual e-mail message. The main difference is that the e-mail list in the first shows twice as much in the preview, while the other shows twice as many messages.
- ulrikrasmussen 3y agoI like the second one better. Much better contrast and less useless whitespace. I can't see what's wrong with it but I'm also not experienced in UI/UX. Edit: Also the icons are much better in the second one. The first one has all monochrome icons which makes them much less useful for quickly scanning for the folder that you are looking for.
- globular-toast 3y agoGood software doesn't need to look good, though. Looking good is just a bonus. I don't care in the slightest how it looks because it's still better than the alternatives.
- rizky05 3y ago[dead]
- andix 3y agoGood software also looks good. Looking good can't make up for bad functionality. that's true. But good UX design is an important part of software.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoMisaligned lines are not bad UX. They are bad design/UI, but misaligned dots have no impact on the UX.
- danpalmer 3y agoIf software doesn't appear "trustworthy" people won't use it, particularly if it's holding sensitive personal data such as email. The worst UX is people never using the software. Design plays a big part in how people perceive trustworthiness. It implies effort and understanding. The reason people spot fake products on AliExpress is not because they're intimately familiar with the legit versions, but because typically there are numerous design aspects that are just slightly weird.
- globular-toast 3y agoAnd we really want to reinforce this stupid belief that good looking things are trustworthy?
- jeffhuys 3y agoSure, this one piece of software that doesn't want to look perfect will change the game!
- andix 3y agoAt least it is a step in the right direction. Let's hope they will continue the journey and gradually improve it. "Just" aligning margins, paddings and font sizes should be a much easier task.
- danpalmer 3y agoThat's true! And the mockups look great so hopefully they're still working in that direction.
- jeffparsons 3y agoThe fuzzy icons are because of how the image is scaled on the marketing site. If you load the image directly (https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/115/new-old-fade.png https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1...) you'll see the icons in the UI are actually crisp.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- danpalmer 3y ago[flagged]
- nerdponx 3y agoI like how you conveniently left out that you're using a retina display until maybe your fifth post complaining about this. It's possible that none of the developers can afford to buy a $2000 laptop for testing. If the icons are obviously fuzzy on your machine, grab a screenshot, post a bug on the bug tracker, and let it be. I assume also that you are already a substantial monthly donor. If not, then I think all this complaining comes across as rather entitled.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThe marketing site says this: > Our new designs remain sharp and pixel-perfect at any density setting. Why are you having a go at someone who's just saying that the icons are fuzzy? If it's true it's true.
- abenga 3y agoIf it's true, that's a bug. File it, don't just complain online as if you are being let down by a paid tool.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
- silentsanctuary 3y agoSpeaking only on the 3-dot icons part - I actually quite like it the way it is. The visual metaphor is an ellipsis, and accordingly I expect the three dots aligned horizontally to be a continuation of (and hence pertain to) the buttons/options along the same row as it (which it does). Similarly, I expect the three dots aligned vertically to pertain to options that are in the same column (which it also does). It's a subtle visual cue that helps me understand what the button is for, and without it I would need to spend more time figuring out what container each button is in (which is a harder task, given that there aren't always visual dividers between containers, or changes in background colour).
- tonoto 3y agoI've been using Thunderbird for a couple of years, then I went for Icedove for a while (but honestly, I used mutt more during that period) and then back to Thunderbird since 2018(?) and honestly I don't get what is wrong with the UI? At least compared to Icedove it feels very modern and fresh. I've also tried Apple Mail for a couple of weeks but that felt it was lacking both in functionality and UI experience compared to Thunderbird. But I'm just a simple user that want's to use a couple of Imap-mailboxes together with GPG and S/Mime, office administration and/or computer gaming is not my department. I've been using this MUA in both Linux and Darwin environments and it is way above the Outlook/Office 365 experience that some hostile environments force upon its users.
- Frondo 3y ago> 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. Red Letter Media has a great phrase that rolls around in my head to describe situations like this (they use it for media analysis), "You might not recognize it, but your brain did." Where you might not be able to point to a problem, but you instinctively know something is off.
- slowmovintarget 3y agoBut I can guess how the kebab and ellipsis menus are going to open... Granted, if they don't actually open that way, and don't apply to the sections they're in, then that could be a problem.
- tired-turtle 3y agoWithout context, this also describes Microsoft Outlook on Mac.
- hendersoon 3y agoAfter 20 years I'm still amazed they finally got multi-row listings working. I honestly never thought I'd see the day. New Thunderbird development is glacially slow, but to their credit they have kept the software functional and fixed any security bugs over the decades. And of course, it's free.