Thunderbird In 2019 To Focus On Performance & UI/UX Improvements

[xorbe]

I use Thunderbird on a 4K screen, and scrolling the email header list is so slow.

They also need to be more flexible in arranging the 3 main panels in any manner. I don't need the entire left side to be the folder list, I want:

folders | headers
body of email

or

list of email headers
folders | email body

[torsionbar28]

I use Thunderbird on a 4K screen, and scrolling the email header list is so slow.

Sounds like you're doing something (or multiple somethings) wrong. Check your font size and scroll wheel speed, both are configurable.

[S.Pam]

I think that Thunderbird really does fill a big gap. For example multiple accounts from different providers is not possible in most web based services. In addition there is searching and filtering over all accounts.

What I like to see is an overhaul of the accounts settings and email filter screens.
Would also really like to see full support for both CalDAV and CardDAV v4.
Lightning calendar plugin should be made native.
Support reccuring events on week numbers!

[dwagner]

They could reimplement it in ... (collection of buzz-words)...

Better delete that post of yours. Given the insanity of today's development hypes, the Mozilla team is not unlikely to read your post, find it inspiring and do just that...

[Guest]

Web apps... Once a coworker asked me to take a look at her netbook, because she thought it might have a virus or something, since checking her Yahoo Mail on a browser was too slow. There was no virus, just Yahoo creating a bloated webpage, too heavy for a old Intel Atom to handle. I them suggested Thunderbird to her, since it could retrieve her e-mails fast without having to load all the crap from the so called Web App...

Depends on the website implementation, and if your browser is using hardware acceleration where possible - after all a lot of websites do work great on mobile devices, due to sensible website optimizations and the browser using the GPU and other components as much as possible.

[molecule-eye]

Thunderbird is pretty solid, but I do wish they updated the UI. I have the message pane on the right of the email list (vertical layout), and because list items take up exactly one row, unless you stretch your window out massively wide, the columns are very short. It's impossible to get a full normal-length subject to fully show. That's one reason I prefer KMail over Thunderbird.

[crystall]

Funny that performance improvement are in the pipe. In my experience Thunderbird is the only mail client I know of that can reasonably handle my multiple, huge accounts so I'm actually quite satisfied by its performance. Still, it's good to know that there's a focus on responsiveness, that's always a good thing.

[rgloor]

Tread lightly. It is very functional and practical as-is. My fear is the developers will take the Win10 & Gnome3 approach, i.e. radically altering the UI, producing an ugly clunky mess and breaking everyone's workflow in the process.

Yes, I fully agree.

They should implement better integration / localization of calendar (CalDAV) and addressbook (CardDAV), avoid any breaking of things during upgrades (like all the issues with localized versions and the Lightning "Add-On").

They should avoid improving it towards "look nice but be impractical".

But it is great to see, that it is alive and being further maintained / developed.

[JPFSanders]

I don't mind that thunderbird is outdated. It does its job and it does it well.

I Cannot agree more, it never gave me the feeling of being old, quite the contrary, I find it intuitive and solid, the only thing I do to the GUI is to make it show the menu, as it comes off by default.

IMHO what Thunderbird needs:

* Fixes to the HTML editor (It has been a mess since the beginning, can not paste data from Libreoffice and maintain format, specially from CALC)
* Fixes to the font handling, it is broken.
* Performance enhancements to the message filtering, it is dead slow if you have lots of filters and one marks the email as read.
* Desktop notifications are a mess, they need to be sorted out ASAP.
* Native support for tray icon on Linux to indicate the number of messages/new email, currently it depends on plugins that have been abandoned because of internal Mozilla's internal changes to the plugin API.
* Native support for Groupware, specifically Exchange mannerisms like invitations, sadly it is the de-facto standard.
* Improvements to the archiving process, it is incredibly slow if one tries to archive more than 200 messages in one operation, and there are no progress indicators.
* The activity manager needs to better reflect what is going on internally, you delete 1000 messages and thunderbird will remain unresponsive for minutes with no indication of what is happening.
* The ability to see what is happening with server connections in the background for troubleshooting (some kind of log window where one can see if the server is returning some kind of error)

I haven't read what Mozilla is planning on doing yet, but I fear the worst. I bet they will destroy Thunderbird.

[JPFSanders]

Thunderbird is pretty solid, but I do wish they updated the UI. I have the message pane on the right of the email list (vertical layout), and because list items take up exactly one row, unless you stretch your window out massively wide, the columns are very short. It's impossible to get a full normal-length subject to fully show. That's one reason I prefer KMail over Thunderbird.

IMHO configuring Thunderbird to open a message upon double click on its own window/tab is the superior solution, reading panes are always a compromise. At least in my experience.