this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2023
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Mozilla is rebuilding Thunderbird UI from scratch (blog.thunderbird.net)
submitted 2 years ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm glad this is happening.

My gf's father has a 2013 Apple computer that's absurdly slow. His only reason not to switch to a libre system is email. He tried Thunderbird and found it ugly and barely intuitive. I was hoping something like this UI rebuilding would happen, because he is still willing to wait to see how options change over time.

M1 incompatibility with an old program he uses stops him from getting a Mac. He doesn't even consider Windows because he dislikes it… Thunderbird's ugly interface stops him from getting a libre desktop system. I'm hoping Thunderbird delivers their new polished and intuitive interface before his old program gets replaced by something he can use in an M1.

[–] alacer@fosstodon.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@snek_boi @yogthos I suggest to gift him and late 2019/early 2020 MAC Book air/pro refurbished. You may be able to get it on ebay or any other online retail even in sales. At least till 2024-2025 his life is easy... It will give you time to think solutions

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation! It makes a lot of sense

[–] KelsonV@wandering.shop 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

@yogthos Honestly, that's probably a good idea. I tried firing it up recently for testing RSS feeds, and it was so clunky and slow. I know my box isn't exactly cutting edge, but it's happy enough running Gnome, which I figure is a good test of its ability to handle UI.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The issue is that thunderbird is apparently built on top of firefox code, so I expect there's a similar level of layers upon layers of bloat as with many electron apps. But this rebuilding project seems to be focused on the UI side of things and changing how things look, so I don't know if it'll actually improve in terms of performance (it might help a bit though, since they intend to remove stuff and clean up the code on the Thunderbird side of things).

Personally, I feel it would be more interesting to turn it into a Firefox extension (and extend the extensions API where necessary), so the resources that are shared could be actually shared. That, or fully embrace K-9 Mail (the android app that they partnered with and which will become Thunderbird mobile) and adapt it for the desktop.

[–] poVoq 4 points 2 years ago

Turning it into a Firefox plugin would be quite ironic as that was what it used to be pretty much before the Mozilla browser was split into Firefox and Thunderbird.

[–] KelsonV@wandering.shop 1 points 2 years ago

@Ferk On the other hand, Firefox runs just fine on the same machine. It makes me wonder if Firefox got several rounds of optimization after the code bases were split.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah the chat function is a mess and I still can't get omemo working with xmpp. Granted, I kinda gave up on it.

[–] poVoq 2 points 2 years ago

The old Thunderbird XMPP integration doesn't support OMEMO. But there are many modern XMPP clients where OMEMO works out of the box without issues.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, my experience with Thunderbird has been that it's functional, but UI isn't great and it's a bit of a resource hog.

[–] lionel@lemmy.coupou.fr 3 points 2 years ago

Exactly the same, I've been using it for years now because, as you said, it's functional but I would gladly see it more user-friendly.

[–] sub_ubi@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

I'm happy with Thunderbird as-is!

I have a few folders per account (keep, notices, receipts), organized easily with quickFilters. ("notices" I have to set to delete after 30 days, and it includes OTP's / marketing / politics / newsletters /semi-interesting crap). Inbox is at zero almost automatically.

To see everything all at once, I use two "search folders": "Personal" and "Business". It updates as mail comes in.

In just about every way I find it superior to gmail's front end. If they want to change how it looks that's fine, but if quickFilters or search folders break or functionality changes I'll fund a fork.

[–] natebluehooves@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

A facelift on thunderbird is long overdue and I’m all for improving any alternative to outlook. That shit was the bane of my existence when I worked hospital IT.

[–] wiki_me@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I just hope they will do good UX research, I don't want some overly opinionated UX design that will be not very usable and hurt the popularity of the project (I think that's what happened to amarok , GNOME 3 also comes to mind).