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Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

Here's the money quote:

Younger users have become used to using simpler interfaces. They’ve never used a “Local Folder” and probably don’t even know what that is. So, we’re offering a simple option to turn the Local Folders display on or off.

So that's why they did it. Hide the things for young-lings so they don't get confused, let the old-farts find the options the make it look like it used to.

At least it's an option, I dislike the 'simpler-version first' mentality but I get it. I really appreciate the fact that it's optional.

I've been using their mail-client since it was still baked into Netscape Navigator, so I'm not the target audience.

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I've been using TB for over 15 years now, and in that whole time Local Folders has been 100% useless for me. Just visual clutter. I even created an addon to hide it permanently, which got fairly popular and existed until they changed the plugin architecture a few years back. Once the addon broke, someone else created a working alternative almost immediately.

I understand why Local Folders exists, but never once in 15 years have I actually used it. It's about time they created a native option to hide it, and that's coming from an old fogy!

Local folders are occasionally useful and I'm glad Thunderbird supports them. User experience could have been improved by simply not creating them by default. Then they'd not confuse or annoy anyone, and should the need ever arise, the user could add them.

I have used Local Folders when my past workplace was removing my email account, so I copied all of those folders to my Local Folders.

So I am glad they exist, but I am also happy that they can be hidden for those who don't need them.

@UI_at_80x24,

On the contrary, you ARE ALSO the target audience. It is stated so explicitly multiple times - for example "existing users will not be left behind", "you get to choose", etc.

p.s. I've also been using the browser since the earliest days of Netscape Navigator, and I am on the Thunderbird team.

I'd also be pissed if I got left behind. But it's not happening.

I self-host all my email, I know what's the point of local folders (heck, I've used mutt when I was really into TUIs), but I've never had an use case for them. Having an option to remove those is welcome. Whatever the defaults are - I don't really care, as long as I can configure it only once and as long as that won't get accidentally reset someday.

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