Most users don't care about the alignment and spacing and so on in isolation, but they do get a sense of quality from the overall impact. This stuff really matters in aggregate.
[1] https://2165533704-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-p...
[2] https://www.thunderbird.net/media/img/thunderbird/whatsnew/1...
The search bar looks good in the mock-up, but bad in the final version due to not being centered, despite being really similar.
The first one looks like polished quality software while the second one looks like some junky app made by a solo dev on his free time that doesn't care how it looks like
Edit: Also the icons are much better in the second one. The first one has all monochrome icons which makes them much less useful for quickly scanning for the folder that you are looking for.
I can maybe agree that the first one looks more "polished" but at the same time I actually feel a but uneasy looking at it because my brain has to work harder to discern the UI elements due to the lack of colors and low contrast. Although the lines are heavier in the second one, I find it much easier to filter out the data that I am looking for.
Also the first one wastes screen real estate like crazy. I can only see 7 emails in that one, whereas the second one shows 14. I want all the emails that I receive within a single day to be able fit on a single screen so I don't have to scroll. Frankly, I think the first one sucks.
Sure there's more whitespace than some people prefer, but that sort of thing can be addressed with a compact mode.
And the first thing you do, is tell everyone how shit their code looks. The same code that pays for yours and everyone else's paychecks.
What do you think is going to happen?
I had MITMed my robot vacuum and discovered that it, like a disaffected teen, hung out in a chat room all day. I created a little python library to send it some XMPP messages so I could work around the app's terrible scheduling and put some commands in a cron file. And then I open sourced the code, because why not share?
It was a happy day for me when that robot died. Then I had a legitimate reason for archiving the project and never dealing with a user request/opinion.
Thunderbird is what it is; if you find it useful in its current incarnation use it (I do), but don't expect it to noticeably improve at the rate we've come to anticipate from other open-source projects. Even though Thunderbird is very popular by common open-source metrics for whatever reason it just doesn't move very quickly.
Which is an advantage, not a problem. I do not change my user behaviour regarding email often (if at all), so I really have no need or desire to see the tool I use for email changing (at all).
Every change brings with it a cost that the user must pay.
That is not an exaggeration, Outlook had them 20 years ago. People expected this feature, 20 years ago. I myself posted in the bugzilla issue 20 years ago.
It is available in GTK4 file picker. You know, major release, able to break ABI.
I think this is semantics.
Fact it, it took a decade+
The visual metaphor is an ellipsis, and accordingly I expect the three dots aligned horizontally to be a continuation of (and hence pertain to) the buttons/options along the same row as it (which it does).
Similarly, I expect the three dots aligned vertically to pertain to options that are in the same column (which it also does).
It's a subtle visual cue that helps me understand what the button is for, and without it I would need to spend more time figuring out what container each button is in (which is a harder task, given that there aren't always visual dividers between containers, or changes in background colour).
Your professional input may be desired. Though I did not contribute to Thunderbird either (, yet?). Thing is, your critique may result in guidance to make part of these changes according to your skillset! But I am just a hopeless dreamer in the good of many things.
This isn't complex stuff either. I'm not a designer, I don't even do frontend/UI work, I'm basically just a backend engineer. If I'm spotting this stuff on first glance at the main marketing screenshot, which should be the best possible case, then this stuff must be glaringly obvious and pervasive.
I only see one ... icon in the entire screenshot, nothing is fuzzy, and all text looks aligned. The only weirdness is a misalignment between the sidebar header and the main window header, but those don't need to be aligned anyway.
Red Letter Media has a great phrase that rolls around in my head to describe situations like this (they use it for media analysis), "You might not recognize it, but your brain did."
Where you might not be able to point to a problem, but you instinctively know something is off.
New Thunderbird development is glacially slow, but to their credit they have kept the software functional and fixed any security bugs over the decades. And of course, it's free.
Design plays a big part in how people perceive trustworthiness. It implies effort and understanding. The reason people spot fake products on AliExpress is not because they're intimately familiar with the legit versions, but because typically there are numerous design aspects that are just slightly weird.
Given the laundry list of issues they need to resolve, and as apparent from this thread the choice by UI experts to complain on HN instead of leaving feedback, I'm absolutely fine with them prioritizing other issues which are easier to address and have far more of an impact on their users.
A well designed UI also makes it easier to understand the UI, what belongs together, where one area ends and another area starts.
Tbird's ongoing lack of polish is a huge chunk of why I don't use it.