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mfru | 5 days ago

Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox.

Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.

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elorant|5 days ago

Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

mzajc|5 days ago

> Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update

But when they updated the UI, they

- Added options to use to make it very close to the old layout

- Set those options for you if you had it customized like that in the previous version

Which is IMHO much better than how Mozilla handled the redesign - you can get the old style in a GitHub repo thanklessly maintained by one person[0], enable userchrome support in about:config (until they decide to take it away one day!), and enable compact mode (also gated behind about:config and called "Compact (not supported)". Oh, and remember to update the userchrome every few updates because they keep breaking it.

That's the difference between user-centric and not user-centric.

[0]: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

celsoazevedo|5 days ago

It's hard to be in charge of a project like this. You're criticized no matter what you do.

The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

ginko|5 days ago

As a longterm thunderbird user I find this annoying. I appreciate it being maintained more actively again but I really liked the fact that the UI stayed stable for years. Changing things to make them "more modern" is just annoying. No one asked for this.

crossroadsguy|5 days ago

When you delete a message after that the old message remains selected and so if you hit delete again thinking the last time didn’t do the trick, you deleted another message and now go to deleted messages and try to find what you deleted.

The app has a phantom message even in empty folders that it keeps selected. Unread bubble and nothing else, an empty message. You can’t even delete it. Sometimes it persists between app restarts.

It shows unread count on a folder just because it feels like it.

It’s a long list.

SV_BubbleTime|5 days ago

Can I replace Outlook yet?

I don’t buy the “oh well, kinda sort of for like 60% of mail features and possibly a read only calendar in Two Weeks”

I switched away from Thunderbird to Outlook TWO FULL DECADES AGO, and in that time they have never once given me a possibility to switch back.

Like it or not, business runs on Office/Outlook.

wackget|5 days ago

You must be joking. The Supernova UI redesign is an unmitigated disaster. They unnecessarily butchered the look and feel of Thunderbird to the point where people are switching to forks.

Gud|5 days ago

Absolutely. New Thunderbird sucks, I was afraid this would happen when they resumed development. what’s the best alternative?

Give me the 1990s GUI back.

mfru|3 days ago

Well I like Supernova better, it made me switch to Thunderbird from em Client. (I always wanted to switch to Thunderbird, but until Supernova I never liked the UX enough to keep using it)

paddim8|4 days ago

The previous UI made no sense. Having the email viewer on the bottom and the list on the top instead of side by side makes absolutely no sense when most emails are designed for viewing in portrait.

PurpleRamen|5 days ago

What are you talking about? Thunderbird has barely any progress in the last years. It's more busy with breaking and fixing things. Sure, there are reasons for it, but as a user, all I see is stalemate, while one addon after another is dying. Thunderbird Mobile is nice, and I hope Thunderbird Pro will be something good, but so far none of them are the big breakthroughs.

glitchc|5 days ago

I ended up switching over to Betterbird. It's easier to setup and more stable.

gregoriol|5 days ago

Until it's not maintained, like most Thunderbird forks so far

setopt|5 days ago

Does it work with the OWL extension?