back to article Flying on its own, Thunderbird seeks input on new look

Now that the open source email client Thunderbird is sleeping in a separate bed from Mozilla, the project has called on outside help for a UI redesign. It's working with Polish designers Monterail to help with the redesign, partly because in 2016 that company created a popular custom UI theme for Thunderbird. Monterail's …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    To be honest

    and as a long term T'bird user,

    I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

    I don't want any 'fiddling while rome burns' to make it pretty at the expense of its operation especially the ease of use.

    Far too much software these days is all bling and little substence. I'll hold my hand up here as a software developer for those times when I have bowed to PM demands to 'make it pretty' rather than functional.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: To be honest

      It will supposedly be based on this theme, and if the work has mostly been done anyway then it could do with a lick of paint.

      If on the other hand it gets on the way of something like e.g. carddav, then the theme can wait.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: To be honest

        "It will supposedly be based on this theme, "

        Sigh. Themes are evil. All themes.

        Time was that people who actually researched usability for a living discovered the "amazing" fact that sticking to the same theme as every other app actually made your one more usable, because human beings only had to learn once how everything worked. But that was learned ages ago, so it probably isn't true anymore, or something.

        1. MysteryGuy

          Re: To be honest

          > But that was learned ages ago, so it probably isn't true anymore, or something.

          It seems to me that the new UI's being pushed for PC use these days are usually less usable than what they replace.

          It seems that the theory is that just because something is 'old' it is somehow automatically in need of being replaced with something 'new'.

          Using the same logic, I guess we need to find a new way of steering cars. That steering wheel thingy has been around for too long now.... :-)

        2. keithzg

          Re: To be honest

          Particularly in GTK land, where the GNOME people have decided that even windows decorations should be the domain of the apps, so they can decide what borders and min/max/close/etc buttons are there and how they should look and act.

          I actually really like themes, but from the KDE side of things, where a theme is what you set in your desktop environment's settings and then *all applications* display accordingly. That's the KDE way; sane defaults, and lots of customization available but centralized so that there's cohesion. And then a GTK or even worse an outright GNOME app will waltz into my life and ruin it all (although the ability to set matching GTK themes in KDE's System Settings is somewhat of a panacea).

          But yeah it really is shocking how much is done to make applications break away from a desktop environment's look & feel. Adobe is particularly atrocious for this, where their various products, and launchers for their products, and installers for their launchers for their products, seem to aim for as much heterogenity as possible and completely ignore the desktop OS they're targeted at. I mean it's honestly not very hard to make your application look native to Windows when it's running on Windows, native to macOS when it's running there, etc etc, but so many companies deliberately do the exact opposite, and then keep changing their minds so there isn't even uniformity across their *own* software interfaces.

          1. wayward4now
            Linux

            Re: To be honest

            Sorry, I loathe KDE.

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: To be honest

        "If on the other hand it gets on the way of something like e.g. carddav, then the theme can wait."

        And roll in Lightning and Lightbird as built-ins instead of plugins.

      3. FuzzyWuzzys

        Re: To be honest

        Absolutely. I like to spruce things up once in a while but you just know they're going to bugger up the interface. When they moved the config options around about 2 years ago it freaked people out for a while. I'm not looking forward to the new look TB.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: To be honest

      > I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

      The group that developed Palemoon as an improved version of Firefox also developed Fossamail, apparently using similar techniques to develop a fast, sleek, working Thunderbird. The last few years of Thunderbird, like Firefox, have seen it getting slower and more bloated. I wonder if this is because of all the old crufty Firefox stuff in T'bird. It is still such an important, useful bit of software to so many, and needs years of layers of paint removed, rather another layer for today.

      1. Chris King

        Re: To be honest

        Fossamail is no more:

        This project has been discontinued!

        Thank you for your interest in FossaMail, an Open Source, Mozilla Thunderbird-based mail, news and chat client for Windows and Linux.

        It was an alternative version of the Mozilla Thunderbird mail&news client, and based on the Pale Moon browser core.

        Unfortunately, due to lack of time to maintain the code, and lack of users and funds, we've discontinued this project.

        1. Florida1920

          Re: To be honest

          Fossamail is no more:

          But it still works. I had problems with the 64-bit version crashing, but the 32-bit version is still going here. Handles multiple email and RSS/Atom feeds with no issues. It is using 132 MB of memory, though.

      2. H in The Hague

        Re: To be honest

        "... also developed Fossamail .."

        That project seems to have been discontinued: https://www.fossamail.org/

        Shame, as I'm still looking for an alternative to Eudora. Using Thunderbird but not overly fond of it. Incidentally, I would be happy to pay for a good e-mail client. Any suggestions?

        1. Wensleydale Cheese

          Re: To be honest

          "Incidentally, I would be happy to pay for a good e-mail client. Any suggestions?"

          Which platform are you running on?

        2. keithzg

          Re: To be honest

          Lots of options out there, depending on your platform and requirements. Here are some cross-platform options:

          Trojitá: Not under as much development lately and there hasn't been a new stable release for a while, but still being worked on (see: https://cgit.kde.org/trojita.git/). You can download it at http://trojita.flaska.net/download.html

          Claws Mail: Kindof an oldskool client, but very actively maintained and pretty much a Eudora clone, at least a clone of how Eudora was when I last used it ;) http://www.claws-mail.org/

          And if you're over in Linux (or even just Unix-like) land, there are many options, like KMail, Geary, Evolution, etc.

        3. guyr

          Re: To be honest

          H in The Hague: Incidentally, I would be happy to pay for a good e-mail client. Any suggestions?

          If on Windows, I've been using eM Client, and it works well: http://www.emclient.com/. I'd prefer a cross-platform solution, but can't find a decent one. On Linux, I like Evolution.

        4. Dave Lawton

          Re: To be honest

          Claws Mail - http://www.claws-mail.org/

          HTH

    3. Name3

      Re: To be honest

      Yeah. Unfortunately Thunderbird is still an XUL application, meaning it's legacy code and they will have to fork it off Firefox codebase soon. Some months ago they were speculating on their blog if they should rewrite Thunderbird A) from scratch in HTML5 with a modern GMail UI or B) rewrite from scratch piece-per-piece and keep the same Thunderbird old-school look&feel. Apparently they choose C) just update the theme a little bit and decide on the hard part, what do next, later.

      It's a shame, as Thunderbird is pretty good though still unfinished and stayed in the year 2005 forever. Thunderbird has been in maintenance mode for years, and the only things that gets fixed are little graphical theme changes no one asked for, while the issues lists grows by the day and rarely someone fixes the broken parts, let alone introducing new features like a conversation-view or complete the Lightning calendar integration. Now that Mozilla declared XUL dead, the future of Thunderbird seems more uncertain than ever. Sad progres.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "modern GMail UI"???

        GMail UI is already old - and never was a great UI. It's OK for the casual user at most. Another example that Google got right its search engine only, and from the on, nothing - but its data slurping operations, of course.

        Exactly the UI you DON'T WANT in a powerful email client.

        1. m0rt

          Re: "modern GMail UI"???

          gmail UI is complete pants.

          Also, AUTO TAGGING?! FFS Google, whoever thought it was a good idea to have this so it can't be turned off?

          It is ALWAYS WRONG.

          See? Look what you made me do. I used capitals and look like a effing BBC HYS commentard.

        2. Barry Rueger

          Re: "modern GMail UI"???

          GMail UI is already old - and never was a great UI.

          In recent years I've found the Gmail interface increasingly frustrating. Too much of what I don't want, too little of what I do.

          Last week I needed a non-Gmail address for testing and decided to set up one at Yahoo.

          Check it out. It's really a lovely UI, very modern, but also clean and simple.

          1. Chemical Bob

            Re: "modern GMail UI"???

            "I've found the Gmail interface increasingly frustrating"

            Not just the UI, all of Gmail is getting increasingly frustrating. They seem to be missing the main thing about webmail - that you can use it anywhere and end up having a double conniption fit if you try to sign on from somewhere *unusual* like hotel wi-fi.

      2. Mage Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: XUL, HTML etc

        The ONLY part of the application that should be remotely related to browser tech, is actually the email contents window. NOTHING ELSE AT ALL. Everything else should use standard DESKTOP cross platform GUI components.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: To be honest

        " Some months ago they were speculating on their blog if they should rewrite Thunderbird A) from scratch in HTML5 with a modern GMail UI or B) rewrite from scratch piece-per-piece and keep the same Thunderbird old-school look&feel. Apparently they choose C) just update the theme a little bit and decide on the hard part, what do next, later."

        Personally I'd have preferred the alternative C) let LibreOffice take it over.

      4. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
        FAIL

        Name3 Re: To be honest

        "...with a modern GMail UI..."

        Excuse me? The Gmail UI is the very definition of lipstick on a pig.

        1. sabroni Silver badge

          Re: I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

          People have more success using attractive interfaces. This has been demonstrated by implementing identical functionality in two guis (one ugly, one pretty) and seeing how usable they are. When things go wrong users are put off by an ugly interface much more quickly than a pretty one. They will persist with the pretty one, often to a successful conclusion, while abandoning the ugly one.

          So if you want software to be successful you need to think about what it looks like.

          1. Dan 55 Silver badge

            Re: I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

            People have more success using attractive interfaces. This has been demonstrated by implementing identical functionality in two guis (one ugly, one pretty) and seeing how usable they are.

            For Exhibit A (ugly) see Lotus Notes.

          2. JohnFen

            Re: I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

            "People have more success using attractive interfaces."

            Perhaps, but "attractive" is a very subjective thing. How do you nail that down? As a ferinstance, most of the "modern" UIs that have been produced over the past several years have been fairly ugly.

            Give me clear and functional over "pretty" any day of the week.

            1. wayward4now
              Linux

              Re: I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works.

              CP/M AMD64!!!

      5. JohnFen

        Re: To be honest

        "from scratch in HTML5 with a modern GMail UI"

        That would make me bail on TBird pretty quickly for two reasons.

        First, HTML-based interfaces, at their best, are never as good as native ones -- so I dearly hope that TBird doesn't go that route in the first place. Better they leave the current interface unchanged than do that.

        Second, The GMail interface, specifically, is awful.

    4. Name3

      Re: To be honest

      What I meant in the other comment:

      "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies" March 2017

      https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/005298.html

      What's the news about that? Now that XUL is EOL, they certainly need a migration path, right?

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: To be honest

        I read Thunderbird can't easily switch from XUL to HTML as Gecko in HTML mode doesn't have a tree view (for folders) or a list view which groups by criteria or populates as you scroll (for thousands of items in a folder). As they're not in the HTML standard or necessary for Firefox, Mozilla won't add them either.

        This is what happens when an organisation like Mozilla succumbs to group think and everyone thinks it's fine to assume that your application's UI and a web page is the same thing.

        1. Mage Silver badge

          Re: HTML mode doesn't have a tree view (for folders)

          Should be IRRELEVANT. Total madness to do other than the opened email content using a browser engine, sandboxed, so HTML can be rendered. Such a thing can also manage the sadly rare text email. The rest of the application (or ANY application) should NEVER EVER use browser technology.

          Only Web pages and HTML documents should use browser code which should be sandboxed from the rest of the application. Because you know remote content, HTML and javascript ...

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: HTML mode doesn't have a tree view (for folders)

            "Total madness to do other than the opened email content using a browser engine, sandboxed, so HTML can be rendered."

            That's too much. Automatically send such crap back with a note saying "send plain text".

          2. JohnFen

            Re: HTML mode doesn't have a tree view (for folders)

            "so HTML can be rendered"

            Just so long as I can continue to disable HTML rendering for emails. I don't allow it now, and I will never allow it in the future.

    5. VinceH
      Facepalm

      Re: To be honest

      "I really don't care what the paint job looks like as long as it works."

      ^ This.

      I looked at the blog post, at the image, and filled in the survey with comments to the effect that they're talking about "Improving its Interface" - but the image looks like the same interface with some icky paint job on it.

      Also, the questions are so stupid. For example: Does it look "trustworthy" - WTF?

      I can't "trust" something where form is given more import than function. So that comment got added as well.

    6. mdubash

      Re: To be honest

      The whole point of a GUI is that programs look alike and so are easier to use. Mozilla forgot this a few iterations ago and made Firefox almost unusable. And now the same bastardisation is about to be visited on TB which, although a bit creaky in places, has been a fine, rich email client for years.

      I despair.

  2. Forget It
    Paris Hilton

    Ain't broke:

    Don't fix it.

    pls

    (Paris: dumb it UP don't dumb it down)

    1. Just Enough

      "Ain't broke:"

      Unfortunately, as a long term user of Thunderbird, my experience is that it is broke, and I've just spent the last week migrating away from it. It had simply got to the point where I could no longer trust it to do its job. Emails would download and vanish into a black hole, never to return. Folders would corrupt, rebuild, and dump 90% of their contents. Search functionality became increasingly a hit and miss game of chance.

      This, combined with the continued history of neglect and changes of ownership, does not fill me with confidence for a software application that I need to rely on. So I am afraid we must now part ways.

      1. H in The Hague

        "... and I've just spent the last week migrating away from it. "\

        What are you using now?

    2. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Indeed.

      Netscape and Forte Agent - heck, even OE already perfected the look 20+ years ago. TB should come with a "bare" look and for those who want blinky graphics (and the dinosaur mouse pointers) there could/should be support for themes.

      1. LB45
        Windows

        Now I'm feeling old

        Forte Agent?

        Almost forgot about that one. The flashback was sudden and the sense of loss deep on that mention.

        Damn I'm old.

        1. Barry Rueger

          Re: Now I'm feeling old

          Pegasus Mail. Sigh. I could ANYTHING with program.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Now I'm feeling old

            Pegasus and Mercury are still alive and kicking. For the record, it's the only Windows program that I still support. I'd still support the Netware NLM version, too, but I don't know anyone running Netware anymore. Truly a great email system. Sadly, there will probably never be a Linux version. If there were, I'd dump (al)pine in a heartbeat and pay money for it. (Are you listening, David?)

            Windows users can find it here. Recommended.

            1. Barry Rueger

              Re: Now I'm feeling old

              Sadly, there will probably never be a Linux version. If there were, I'd dump (al)pine in a heartbeat and pay money for it.

              Me too. I just don't understand the resistance to a Linux version.

              (I'd love to know why someone downvoted your comment. Strange people...)

    3. John Crisp

      "Ain't broke:

      Don't fix it."

      Yup, apart from things that are genuinely broken. And stuff they broke trying to be clever and shiny.

      Moz didn't just dump TBird, they tied it to the bumper and dragged it down the road several miles too.

      I used to subsbribe to the dev list but had to leave when the attitude was clearly 'we're right, you're wrong and know nothing, it's a feature not a bug, you'll learn to love it, fingers now in ears and bug closed'

      Yup I wish it was taken over by Libre, and some of the devs put out to pasture permanently.

      Hope for the best, but fear the worst..... gmail sucks chocolate covered salty balls Mr Garrity.

  3. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Windows

    Stagnant is good, dead is better

    These "labels" just mean we've got our priorities straight and we're not finding truckloads of bugs every few months to justify major changes. As a software developer who values "working", I'd be proud to stick either label on my work. I suspect that Thunderbird's target audience is already dominated by folks who feel the same way.

    I'm sure the "form over content" brigade can find another email client.

    1. IfYouInsist

      Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

      Well, there is always something to improve. As an example, Thunderbird offers partial support for the Maildir storage format but it's languished for years in a semi-complete state. I even contacted the team to ask if I could make a donation specifically towards fixing the remaining issues. They had no way of assigning donations to Bugzilla tickets, unfortunately. I still sent some money their way, I think it's important for Thunderbird to keep going.

      As for a visual refresh: as long as the budget is modest and well spent, why not? It did work as a PR hook, obviously, which is a good thing in itself.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

        "It did work as a PR hook, obviously, which is a good thing in itself."

        So did the previous "shall we leave Mozilla" debate. It came to more or less nothing. PR is a useless thing in itself.

      2. JohnFen

        Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

        "As for a visual refresh: as long as the budget is modest and well spent, why not?"

        Because it's likely to following the current "modern" UI trend. By which I mean ugly and hard to use.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

      > Stagnant is good, dead is better

      Indeed. There's a reason that lawyers use Latin expressions in contracts. The language is dead and doesn't evolve, so when the contract comes up in a court case 50 years later it still means the same thing as it did when it was written.

      Thunderbird works just the same way on every Windows release, on Linux and on Solaris. It ain't broke, don't fix it. Please.

    3. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

      Well, they might not be "finding truckloads of bugs every few months", but there's still truckloads waiting to be looked at.

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: Stagnant is good, dead is better

        Given that email has been around for quite a while (along with things like SMTP, POP and IMAP), I would agree that major change is unnecessary. It's not a bad thing if the software 'stagnates'; this implies it has reached maturity and does everything it should do. Anything now should just be maintenance programming, or adding support for any new weird and wacky ways of storing / transmitting email that happen to come along.

        What we don't need is flashy UI changes for their own sake. This just aggravates users who have got the software looking and working how the like, and have learned where all the buttons and options are. By all means, allow means of customising the layout, but don't force a new one on us. We still remember the dreaded office ribbon bar, where we had to re-learn where the hundreds of different buttons and options now lived.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What about tiles? Everybody loves tiles.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      hahaha, thanks for that :)

    2. Wensleydale Cheese

      "What about tiles?"

      I keep the matt finish ones on the roof, the shiny ones in the kitchen and bathroom.

  5. Filippo Silver badge

    My prediction: they are going to introduce a worse UI, remove features, and introduce bugs. After that, there will be a very long period of time during which the UI will get gradually improved, features will get gradually re-added, and bugs will get gradually fixed. This will be called Progress and will be hailed as a Good Thing, because the Product is Not Stagnant Any More.

    Sigh.

    1. brotherelf

      I think this needs to be called "Product Already Not That Stagnant", because that matches the majority reaction quite nicely.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    NO!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Sorry, I didn't catch that

  7. jake Silver badge

    Make it look and act like (al)pine.

    Why? Because (al)pine does exactly what an email client should do, no more and no less. Which is exactly how a un*x tool should work.

    Glitter doesn't get stuff done.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Make it look and act like (al)pine.

      You are free to use Alpine, Pine or, indeed, Elm should you so wish.

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: Make it look and act like (al)pine.

        *shudder* All of a sudden, I'm back in 1995.

    2. GrumpenKraut
      Gimp

      Re: Make it look and act like (al)pine.

      Have you ever tried mutt?

      I am using it for my pop3 account (personal mail) and absolutely love it. Efficiency is tons better than thunderbird. Mutt can bounce mails (which TB apparently can't) and its footprint is close to zero.

      ASCII fanboy (me) ---->

    3. keithzg

      Re: Make it look and act like (al)pine.

      I mean you could always just use Alpine, it's still maintained in various forks. Or Mutt, which has a very different but still minimal text interface. I actually have users of each at work; it's a very heterogenous office, often like herding cats ;)

  8. Mage Silver badge
    Facepalm

    GUI Design?

    The application should interrogate the OS and use its current theme. GUI design should be the most routine and basic part, a standard framework nearly.

    What's important is that it actually works and the GUI isn't subverted. Stuff is where it is in any application. Menus, check boxes, selection, buttons etc work as expected.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: GUI Design?

      XUL does have that ability, but it was practically left unused when the Australis theme came along.

    2. Zolko Silver badge

      Re: GUI Design?

      The application should interrogate the OS and use its current theme. [...] What's important is that it actually works and the GUI isn't subverted

      That's actually how Kmail works: integrated into the KDE desktop with the Qt theme, and works with ALL standards : IMAP, CardDav, remote ICS, ... only LDAP doesn't work well (or I didn't figure out how to set it up properly)

      1. JohnFen

        Re: GUI Design?

        "That's actually how Kmail works"

        Have they finally gotten around to making KMail actually work?

  9. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    Personally I don't care what it looks like, but other people do. Thunderbird is the ONLY mail client that actually works reliably and consistently with IMAP servers. The trouble is that for our customers, they want more than that: they want features like shared calendar, contacts synced with their iphone and a modern look.

    Every time we've tried to get things like contacts synced with another service, it's been a terrible experience. Either the addon has stopped being supported, or it doesn't sync the street addresses properly or something else goes wrong.

    The problem is that they then want to use Outlook because everybody else does. Outlook is even worse: it won't sync calendar and contacts reliably, because it'll only do that with an exchange server.

    But they don't want to pay for hosted exchange, and end up settling on Outlook. anyway However, Outlook's IMAP client really is so bugridden, that in many cases, whole folders stop being synced, even the inbox, and people get upset.

    Given that email is so important, why are there so few email clients around? And why do people insist on using Outlook, when Thunderbird is so much more reliable (at least with IMAP)?

    1. DropBear
      Stop

      "Given that email is so important, why are there so few email clients around? And why do people insist on using Outlook, when Thunderbird is so much more reliable (at least with IMAP)?"

      Because casual users don't use anything that isn't a browser any more, and non-casual (enterprise) users have grown accustomed to the integrated facilities of Outlook, as you point out, for which still no acceptable substitute whatsoever seems to exist.

      In my opinion, a proper integrated Carddav / Caldav (kinda exists in Lightning) support would be much more useful that any UI "redesign"; I stayed with Classic Theme Restorer ever since Firefox went mad and I refuse to upgrade to latest version that doesn't support it ever since Firefox went mad again. The instant Thunderbird does the same, I refuse to update that too. The loonies can have their Metro / Australis / Material design / "flat" / Gnome3 revolution all they want, I won't be following.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "The loonies can have their Metro / Australis / Material design / "flat" / Gnome3 revolution all they want, I won't be following."

        Can I point you in the direction of Seamonkey?

      2. Yes Me Silver badge
        Unhappy

        ...since Firefox went mad again

        Yes. I somehow failed to stop my wife's box from updating to Firefox 57 and there's been nothing but trouble since. Waterfox is your friend, for now, however. Must make sure updates are thoroughly off in T'bird. Maybe somebody can fork off a Waterbird?

    2. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      You've already answered your own question, people don't want to pay. Given that a quick google shows a provider with hosted exchange for a fiver a month (and rented Outlook at a couple of dollars), they are basically cheapskates.

      Find better customers, or refuse to support hacked up solutions. Either they pay a not unreasonable cost, they use IMAP and Thunderbird without calendaring, or they use someone else's webmail..

      Webmail and mobile apps also need to shoulder a lot of the blame - as it's available for free in a lot of cases, people think e-mail doesn't have a value.

      Not that I can speak, I mostly use Google organisational mail from when they were daft enough to give it away for free. K9 Mail I generally find to be solid - not quite as solid as Thunderbird, but generally pretty decent. Then there's the Google apps, which seem to be pretty solid, but I have to say I've not really used them extensively.

      1. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

        I have the google g-suite for free as well. But there still isn't a decent email client that can sync google's calendar, email and contacts properly. Actually there is: I use MacOS. And on both iOS and android phones, syncing is pretty much flawless anyway.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "The trouble is that for our customers, they want more than that: they want features like shared calendar, contacts synced with their iphone and a modern look."

      The danger with the current proposal is that they'll get the last and the rest will still be on the back burner.

    4. phuzz Silver badge

      "they want features like shared calendar"

      Yep, this.

      Pretty much only Outlook+Exchange do this reliably (for given values of reliably), so that's why they're used across companies worldwide.

      Lightning does quite a good job (mine's been running fine once I got it working a few years back), but it's not at the level of "user opens Outlook for the first time, Outlook uses domain username/password to log onto Exchange and sets everything up correctly."

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        '..Pretty much only Outlook+Exchange do this reliably (for given values of reliably)..'

        Just as well you qualified that, @work we've gone from a flaky-as-fuck local exchange server for our primary domain's email¹ to an inconsistent-as-fuck office365 setup..(probably just to tick the 'cloud' box as one of our PHBs is a clueless buzzword believing f.wit).

        Personally, I've no use for the Exchange calendar side of things so can't comment on that side of things, I only require it for email, and at least with the old flaky system you stood a fighting chance of getting some of the 'missing' email back, and, yes, email is going missing.

        As for Outlook...do.not.want,and.never.have.liked, I've Thunderbird as my main windows desktop email client @work as the least worst available option² talking to office365 via IMAP³.

        ¹ Just as well we have multiple domains and only he primary domain has been borged into this scheme, the others are still running on 'proper' email servers and not some 'groupware avec email' ones, of course my copy of T-bird is pointed at them as well, and some customers having become aware of the issues we're having with our primary domain, have now got into the habit of firing email to these domains as well as our primary..three copies of orders than none is fine by me.

        ² I 'Pine' for 'Eudora'...my two main mail clients back in the day, I've just this minute noticed what looks suspiciously like a windows install package for alpine 2.00..I still use alpine on my Linux boxes, so looks like I'll be fecking around with my email@work a bit today....for gits and shiggles.

        ³ Initially, this worked surprisingly (for Microsoft) well, however, recently I've been having issues along the lines of new emails not showing up in any IMAP client, but being visible in the webmail client at outlook.office365, I'll put it down to shonky code, as I'd hate to think that Microsoft are going back to their old EEE ways again..

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    a new coat of UI

    cluttered, scattered UI is only part of their problem. The fact they can't, WON'T fix their (...) F8 bug, pardon, "feature", is what puts me off their software every time I have to use it (and "have to" is appropriate, cause good old MS made it impossible to use their own good old windows live (dead) 2012 client connect to outlook (hotmail) servers.

  11. wolfetone Silver badge

    The only thing they need to sort out, if I'm to nitpick anything, is the speed of the search. I have a mailbox that, really, is too big to prune and too important to discard, and it's a pain in the arse to search on it. Takes absolutely forever to do.

    If they could do something to improve the speed and accuracy of the searches then that'd be great. But I'm so bloody happy they left Mozilla. If that's the only thing they do all year, it'll be the best thing they'd have done in 10 years.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Thunderbird Futures

      Please....leave it alone. It works fine.

      *

      ....and about search.....I have twenty years of saved email in two mbox archives (Inbox and Sent)....and I wrote a simple search program in C. Maybe not for everyone, but like Thunderbird itself, it works for me.

      *

      Signed: Dinosaur

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Thunderbird Futures

        I wrote my initial mail search tool in sh+standard utilities. I re-wrote it in perl about 15 years later. Haven't touched it in over 20 years. No need. CPU+memory has kept up with archive size, so it's plenty fast enough for me.

      2. wolfetone Silver badge

        Re: Thunderbird Futures

        It's not signed "Dinosaur".

        I have a proper signature that just says "ROAAAAAAAAR"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "The only thing they need to sort out, if I'm to nitpick anything, is the speed of the search."

      I've got a mailbox of approaching 20,000 messages (including all the attachments where appropriate) and find the search of several GB surprisingly quick and effective (the SSD undoubtedly helps). Even if I had five times the volume and it took five times as long, I'd still regard it as quick.

      You haven't got your mailbox held on spinning rust, have you?

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        "You haven't got your mailbox held on spinning rust, have you?"

        Of course. In spinning rust I trust.

  12. Norman Nescio Silver badge

    Pagan good luck symbols deployed

    I feel the same way about this news as when I hear that a loved but elderly relative is scheduled for a major operation: I know it is necessary, but know there is a risk the outcome will take away the person I know.

    I use Thunderbird on Linux, and it has worked extremely well for me. I have some minor quibbles, but they are as nothing compared to the hair-tearing and swearing when I have to support somone's Outlook client connecting to the same IMAP server*. I have had to rebuild their local mailbox several times because there'e something that Outlook can't handle. It has screwed up the folders on the IMAP server somehow, and I am going to have to roll my sleeves up and work out how to resolve that, too.

    I have moved several relatives from Mircosoft's various mail implementations onto Thunderbird, and also got them used to using LibreOffice in preparation for the day when I can finally get them onto Linux (it is a multi-year process, because any change is fraught, and I am in another country), so any change in the UI is going to be an issue for them (and, of course, me).

    From my point of view, the Thunderbird UI can be improved, but at the risk of making it very much worse. I just hope no current functionality will be removed, even if only temporarily. I need to compose emails in any one of three languages, so my muscle memory has finally worked out how to switch the spelling dictionary as necessary. Similarly, I've got search working for me (quickly enough). Like others, I have mailboxes with 1000s of messages in, so if the UI can't cope with that elegantly, I will be unhappy.

    I wish the Thunderbird developers/maintainers every success. My sanity may depend on it.

    *I can't simply move them to Thunderbird as they also have to connect to an Exchange server, and don't want to run two mail clients on a single machine. There are other constraints, which mean that the only reasonable solution at present is to use Outlook client connecting to Exchange for one mailbox, and the same client connecting to the IMAP server for another mailbox. I could wish for something different, but, as my mother used to say "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Pagan good luck symbols deployed

      "I can't simply move them to Thunderbird as they also have to connect to an Exchange server, and don't want to run two mail clients on a single machine."

      So what you really need is for T'bird to stop pissing about with UI changes and add in some useful stuff such as Exchange client functionality instead.

    2. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

      Re: Pagan good luck symbols deployed

      "I have had to rebuild their local mailbox several times because there'e something that Outlook can't handle. It has screwed up the folders on the IMAP server somehow, and I am going to have to roll my sleeves up and work out how to resolve that, too."

      @Norman - Outlook simply *does not work* with IMAP properly. We've had:

      - folders that exist only locally and are lost because they weren't synced to the server

      - folders that exist on the server but won't even appear in outlook

      - folders that stop updating, even the Inbox.

      On top of that, Microsoft decides which is your sent folder and makes it next to impossible to change. Oh, and Outlook insists on testing the settings by sending a test mail *without a date header* and this gets rejected by many mail servers (for example SME Server), thus making Outlook refuse to save the settings .

      This is only in Outlook 2016 and 2013. 2010 works fine. 2007 wouldn't let you choose to store sent mails on the server (I think).

  13. Blitheringeejit
    Thumb Down

    I remember when...

    ...we used to have to learn to use a program (by reading manuals and tutorials) because that was how the program worked.

    I know this sounds unlikely in the modern age of "You just know how it works because it's so intuitive, which by the way is also why we completely change how it works every couple of years, but you'll still know how it works because it's so intuitive....." (repeat ad nauseam).

    But the good thing was, once we'd learned how a program/UI worked and knew how to use it, we could use it. And carry on using it. For years and years.

    And you try telling the young people of today that...

    Signed - Trilobyte

    (ie pre-Dinosaur above, cos I have 22 years of email archives in my TBird. Not that I'm being competitive or anything.)

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I remember when...

      "...we used to have to learn to use a program (by reading manuals and tutorials) because that was how the program worked."

      Then along came IBM with CUA. When people started adhering to that new programs actually did become more "intuitive" but actually the intuition involved was following what had been learned from other applications. The learning curve was reduced.

      I think the current problems are caused, like so many others, by people who wanted to get into computing because they saw it as something modern but didn't want to cut code or do anything difficult like that. So they got into non-technical areas like interface design and started tinkering without bothering to understand why stuff looked like that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I remember when...

        Microsoft too used to have the Windows Logo Requirements which your application would have to meet in order to use the 'Design for Microsoft Windows' badge. These "logo requirements" specified good things, like the order of a menu: File, Edit ... Help. It specified things like the top right X should close the window with a cancel operation (ahem Windows 10 nagware).

        I've not seen these "logo requirements" mentioned since around the Win2k days, probably for the reasons you mention above. IT seems to be heading backwards IMO. There's UI minimalism, and there's functional minimalism, we seem to be aiming for both.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Constant changes

    What is this need to continuously redesign program UIs?

    Thunderbird is a tool to get at the real value which is the email. It is not an experience in its own right; it is there to serve a limited purpose and ideally should get out of the way as soon as possible. It shares this with desktop UIs. Every time a UI is redesigned it creates the need to re-learn how to use the tool.This is not a benefit. The best way to annoy a carpenter is to replace his/her trusty chisels and saws with bright shiny new items from the tool shop. Better because they are new! The best way to annoy me is change the long established UI for a program with something new.

    Unity died because of it. Gnome 3 is going the same way while Mate and Cinnamon flourish. The Win7/XP classic design is still better than anything in Win8 or 10.

    A pox on all marketeers and those that can't stop fiddling. If it works, don't fix it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Constant changes

      ps.

      My thanks to the article author Richard Chirgwin for the heads up.

      Note to self: download last pre-redesign version of Thunderbird and turn off updates.

  15. earl grey
    Angel

    Pah, you kids

    I was ....blah blah blah... before the beginning.

    Crinoid

  16. Ilsa Loving

    How about making Thunderbird not suck, instead?

    The dated look of Thunderbird is the least of it's issues. It's hard not to think of it as abandonware when there's been no notable improvements in *years*.

    It appears to be stuck in the 90s. It's needlessly difficult to use and configure, and is missing a multitude of features that are standard in most other clients, like unified mailboxes or functional calendar (ie: caldav, activesync) and contacts (ie: carddav, activesync, ldap) service integration.

    I don't know what the reason is, nor do I really care at this point. I simply now consider Thunderbird to be a client of last resort, especially on Mac or Windows where there are a multitude of other clients to choose from.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: How about making Thunderbird not suck, instead?

      " It's hard not to think of it as abandonware when there's been no notable improvements in *years*."

      I hear you. I have my own list of things I'd wish would get improved with it (although the UI isn't on that list).

      But, for all of its warts, I'm very, very hard-pressed to find an email client which is actually better. Even if it really were abandoned, I'd still use it, if only because of a serious lack of good alternatives.

  17. Adrian 4

    calendar ?

    Why does everyone want a calendar in their mail client ? Sure, appointments used to come in through email - but nowadays they're just as likely to come through external calendars (events) or social media (jerks). A calendar is a thing in itself, not something tacked onto an email app.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: calendar ?

      "Why does everyone want a calendar in their mail client ?"

      I find this mysterious myself -- I've never found calendar integration with email to be a useful thing. But plenty of people seem to like it, so it fits someone's use case.

  18. Kurgan

    Thunderbird needs INTERNAL REWORK, not UI

    Thunderbird does NOT need a fancy and useless "modern" UI. It needs internal rework. Local email storage is SLOW when folders are big. IMAP sometimes hangs on "sending message". Sometimes TB just crashes (rarely, but it happens). On big installations (with lots of accounts and folders and emails) it sometimes says that this or that script no longer responds, even of fast PCs with SSDs. I have some 100 or so installations on win, mac, and linux. And they all have the same issues. So, issues are not OS-related.

    Everybody (based on comments here) want a USABLE email client, and TB is committed to produce a "nice" email client. I think we have a problem here.

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