I like that Thunderbird exactly looks like what it looked like when I started using it in 2005, 18 years ago (save for the OS theme in use).
Though I would not mind some refresh. Many (younger? and as young as me, actually) people who are used to webmails and mobile apps find it ugly, and I can see that.
The world is missing a fast and efficient desktop mail client that looks good and I'd be glad if Thunderbird were it.
There's a world in which the Thunderbird team understands they have a huge number of long time users and they should be careful to keep it usable for them, where they will take feedback and in which they build something that doesn't suck for people who don't now it yet, and this world could be ours.
Wait and see? I understand the concern and that many people are worried, I also don't quite like the trend of UIs with a lot of space lacking contrast everywhere, but I think a good outcome is actually likely.
There are a ton of desktop email clients that have that design: Apple Mail, Windows 10/11 Mail application, Outlook, Mailspring, whatever.
Of client that have the UI/UX of Thunderbird... well only Thunderbird remained. I get that if you use the email sporadically with only one account, you are better with a client like you described, but at that point you can as well use a webmail.
Otherwise if you work with emails, and you manage tens or hundreds of email each day, Thunderbird interface is great, is compact, is essential, is functional. Not pretty, but works well, it's stable, it's reliable.
Thunderbird is a work tool, and a work tool to me doesn't have to be pretty, it has to work.
You know what? Nothing needs to be pretty. Why stop at work tools? A home is there to let you cook, sleep and live efficiently. No need to be pretty. A city is there to allow you to go from A to B without any fuzz and to provide the essential services. Pretty cities are annoying.
I have several accounts and thousands of mails. But I can't see how an efficient tool can't be pretty and how a pretty tool can't be efficient.
I agree with the pros you find to the UI of Thunderbird and that's why I use it. But non-prettiness is not a feature. Prettiness is. For most people, it will be more enjoyable, more so if they spend hours each day using the tool, which is more likely in a work environment.
If it's more enjoyable, more people will use it instead of all these non-free pieces of software you listed (and which I will not use as a consequence), which in turn might bring more funding, which might allow the Thunderbird team to make it even more reliable.
Life is there to be enjoyed and this includes work. I also use thunderbird for my personal email account so it's not just work for me, like many people out there.
Why are we even arguing for non-prettiness? This is madness.
Again, the revamping we are talking about is being done for maintainability reasons, which is what you want for your tool to remain efficient, stable and reliable.
I understand the concerns, UI rewrites are often upsetting, but the amount of resistance to change here is quite impressive.
I don't see the point of not wanting improvements. Of course I won't be happy if Thunderbird becomes less reliable or less efficient but we are not there yet.
I trust the Thunderbird team to do the right things. They have not failed me for almost 20 years. I can't use anything else because I'm too used to its UI, the keyboard shortcuts, everything. The first versions after the rewrite might not work very well and have bugs but we can always wait a bit before upgrading.
My home needs to be pretty because fundamentally I am an irrational animal motivated by my emotions. When I sit on my leather couch and look at my house plants and art that makes me feel good. When I come home and find things out of place it makes me feel bad.
A UI revamp is like coming home to a crime scene, or at least a messy kitchen.
Likewise, for many people, pretty tools make them feel better.
Of course, a UI revamp needs to be done carefully, taking existing users in account. If done well, it will be like someone living in the same home having done some cleaning.
Pretty tools don't make me feel better. Useful tools help me do work, and finishing work makes me feel better. I have suffered at the hands of many a meddling UX designer over the years. The best tools I ever used personally were Perl CGI scripts with no styling at all. Just fast page loads and buttons that do what I need.
> But I can't see how an efficient tool can't be pretty and how a pretty tool can't be efficient.
Usually pretty and efficient doesn't go well together. Pretty tools not only add useless things (such as animation, transparency, etc) that are not functional but consume resources, but also are designed towards looking good without thinking at the usability of the tool, for example a lot of whitespace and padding, big line heights and fonts, remove features that most of the user don't need, etc.
A professional tool doesn't need to be pretty. If you go to a plant control room and look at the computer screens they have an interface that looks Windows 95 usually... but that is fine, since they need to be functional, not pretty, they don't need rounded corners, they use high contrast between colours that are ugly from a design point of view but allow to see things easily.
Most email clients are shit. They show you mails in a conversational way that is just wrong, mail are not chats, but letters. They insist on composing HTML mails, instead of plain text ones (like Thunderbird does). And have a very bad UX in general.
Of many things that can improve Thunderbird (for example a better integration with Exchange/Office365 with not only the mail but also the calendar/contacts, sync settings to a Mozilla account, better search in the emails) they focus on the only thing that make most people use Thunderbird.
> I don't see the point of not wanting improvements
I see it. I'm used to a tool, that I use with satisfaction since years. There is no reason why I have to learn to use a new UI or change the way I work because somebody at Mozilla decided that we need a more fancy looking UI. The reason I choose Thunderbird is because other software, such as Outlook, became shit because they followed the same path of modernization that now is following Mozilla.
If something is not broken and users are satisfied with it, why the hell do you want to change it???
By the way, so far I'm happy with the improvements in Thunderbird that Mozilla had done, because having prettier icons and fonts, having the dark theme, are all UI improvements that are purely cosmetics and doesn't change the UX, same shortcuts that I'm used, same mode of operation, I don't have to learn a new thing. Now they decide that the whole UI must be modernized, I don't get it. I will probably stay with the last Thunderbird that will support the current UI for a long time...
In the case of houses, I would think in most cases there's less conflict between prettiness and efficiency, for things like furniture there's much less space for the aesthetics to make a given piece more or less functional or efficient. However the tension isn't entirely gone, Juicero and 'McMansions' spring to mind as possible counterexamples.
I don't think paragonating email clients to houses makes all that much sense. Unless you use them for personal stuff (but most people use mobile phones or webmails for that these days, that to manage 1 personal account it's fine) email clients are a professional tool, used at work.
So it's more correct paragonating them to a factory, where furniture doesn't need to look good but it needs to be functional, safe and reliable.
No. If you want a “pretty” email client go make one and see how it does. Stability is the number one feature I want in a UI. The only other concern is responsiveness. Literally nothing else matters.
It's not like it's easy. It crossed my mind a few years ago, actually. But why should I when the email client I actually happen to use decided to actually rebuild its interface? I'm not the one who is unhappy, I'm happy either way actually, I could answer "go fork Thunderbird if you are not happy".
There was an interesting talk at FOSDEM by OpenProject on how to handle UI revamps [1], there are ways to do it without breaking current users. I recommend it, I'm quite picky on presentations but this one was really good and I enjoyed it.
I agree that UI stability is important. UI stability is not the only important thing. Responsiveness indeed too. I hate slow UIs. Consistency with what users are used to (from the rest of the world) is very important too.
What's more, I read in the blog post that they are rebuilding the UI from scratch, but what I don't read is that they decided to change everything.
They can do it right. I can't say they will, but… again, let's see? I'm sure they'd be glad to receive feedback, questions and concerns.
Am I the only one enthusiastic about some potential Thunderbird UI revamp here?
I don't like many UI/UX choices on the current web, but I also like what KDE has been doing, and maybe Gnome too, there are places where UIs get better! Why not Thunderbird?
What if I decide to remap your keyboard every 12 months because I think I have a better layout? If you practice for an hour a day you'll adjust in a month! Of course that will go out the window 11 months later, but I will have my promo in by then. Apple literally does this with keyboard shortcuts and UI elements in MacOS. This is what I imagine when I hear someone wants to "revamp" a UI.
In modern software "UI revamp" means turning muscle memory into papercuts.
Mozilla can rebuild the UI without redesigning it. If they need to throw out underlying code to improve performance or maintainability that's fine. But changing UI elements is like renaming a boat. You just don't do it.
If you decide to turn my functional if bulky 70s office building into something a bit fresher I won't mind. Of course don't do it every month but Thunderbird hasn't changed for twenty years.
Apart from the attach button that was put at the other side of the compose window. That was annoying.
I fully expect the new UI to have a mode resembling the current one and the current keyboard shortcuts to still work. Now, if it's not the case I'll agree with you.
I too am pretty pissed off by many UI revamps and modern web UIs in general, but I'm quite confident because Thunderbird is not your regular shitty web app powered by a horde of investors.
> if you decide to turn my functional if bulky 70s office building into something a bit fresher I won't mind.
I worked in one of these and it was the best office space ever. Built into a nature preserve. There were paths along the water between the buildings. Everyone had an office with a window and view of trees and water. It was dated but I had zero complaints. We got bought by a company in Silicon Valley and they moved us to an "open office" in what was essentially a warehouse. Fancy new furniture and desks, none of it better than what we already had. Attractive but uncomfortable. The development team was placed next to sales, which is about as loud as an elementary school at recess. It was horrible. The only view was of a retaining wall in the parking lot. Nothing about it was better. Even the HVAC was worse.
They didn't keep the features that mattered to you and implemented this badly on top of it. Of course it's bad.
Okay, that's a tangent, but
if done well, new buildings should be better because we improved on many plans.
At the campus in which I studied, 70s buildings are mostly ugly and badly isolated (done quickly all at the same time because they were needed quickly, standards of back then, also fairly solid). Cold in winter, hot in summer, quite dark inside overall at least for the corridors.
They did a decent job for the new buildings. Rooms still have the same number of people. Those buildings are rented for 30 years costing a lot to the university but they are better overall.
So, yeah. In both cases, new stuff can be better but of course it needs to be well done, stuff that matter need to be there and users listened.
Though I would not mind some refresh. Many (younger? and as young as me, actually) people who are used to webmails and mobile apps find it ugly, and I can see that.
The world is missing a fast and efficient desktop mail client that looks good and I'd be glad if Thunderbird were it.
There's a world in which the Thunderbird team understands they have a huge number of long time users and they should be careful to keep it usable for them, where they will take feedback and in which they build something that doesn't suck for people who don't now it yet, and this world could be ours.
Wait and see? I understand the concern and that many people are worried, I also don't quite like the trend of UIs with a lot of space lacking contrast everywhere, but I think a good outcome is actually likely.