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Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor for stress. Often a lower density is totally enough and less stressful to use. Providing an optional "compact mode" for people with smaller screens or who prefer denser layouts would be my way to go.

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I’m interested to know where this idea comes from. Is there a good reference you recommend? My anecdotal experience has been that low density websites like Medium are more stressful than higher density websites like Substack/HN because I have to do more work to read the text on the page.

I don’t know. Not an UX expert. But I think the key is the right amount of information. Too much and not enough is both equally bad.

But we have much bigger screens than many years ago when thunderbird was initially designed.

Laptop screens stayed mostly the same sizes, so it makes sense to adjust density to the device type you are using or the window size. This is already done for smartphones, mobile websites usually have much smaller paddings. Same is usually done for iOS vs iPad apps.

There's some memories I have, mostly applicable to text/terminal applications... that productivity generally falls off when you have more than a dozen or so actions on the screen at a time. That people are usually better off with sub-menus or other contextual menus over too many options.

I find the UX for GMail, for example to be particularly good, not perfect but very very good for the task. The biggest issue I have with gmail is really folder and rule management.

I agree with you. Low-density desktop applications cause me more unease because there's more need to scroll to make sure I didn't miss something. It's especially egregious when the designers make the scrollbars invisible (appearing only on hover or use), meaning there's often no indication of more content available via scrolling. It breeds the habit of ritualistically scrolling each pane to make sure you're not missing something.

There's something psychological about the appearance of a low-density display as well. I can't quite explain it, but it causes me a bit of displeasure because it feels wasteful. There are so many pixels available but they aren't doing anything for me. I don't know why this causes me discomfort, but it does.

Finally, it's important for an application like a mail client to not lose sight of the fact that the way people use email varies. I personally use dozens of folders, meaning the density of the folder list should be as compact as reasonably possible so that I don't need to scroll.

That's not really comparable though. Medium and substack have one main item: the text (and its headings) while a mail application has the mail content, the subject, replies, timestamps, etc. and you can see a long list of email in a pane plus a list of folders, then you have the actionable items (reply, send, find, etc.). There are more information and actionable items on the list that in an article read in a browser.

> Information density can be very overwhelming and a factor for stress.

Really? And what about tiny scrollbars?

Since we have mouse wheels and touch screens scroll bars transformed mostly away from interactive UI components to scroll position indicators. Good components dynamically get bigger when you hover over them with your mouse or long press they on a touch screen.

Scroll indicators are fine if they stay visible. The default on mobiles and macOS is that the scroll indicator disappears once you stop scrolling. There was a webpage where I couldn't tell that an area was scrollable until I found out by accident, at which point I enabled the scrollbars to always show on macOS as I didn't want to get tripped up by that again

> "Since we have mouse wheels and touch screens ..."

Oh, how I hate that use of "we"! Please realize: "YOU" does not equal "EVERYONE"

Personally (sample size 1) I use several different PC-like hardware units for productive work, as well as personal use. These units have different hardware/software/OS in general, but some applications are used cross-platform: Email is one. Hence the need for Thunderbird in the first place. I have been using it for no less than a decade and probably much longer - iow as long as I remember.

The fact is that none (0, zero) of the total amount of hardware units I personally use _at_all_ "... have mouse wheels and touch screens" - not a single one.

I am not a robot! I exist, and I'm a core user of that product (which has become increasingly annoying in multiple ways during the years - way too narrow scroll bars are actually a good example of the dev team undermining usability - but there is no feasible alternative).

It seems the team is operating from some assumptions about user preferences that generally does not include (the likes of) me.

(ADDED: which would be fine if my demands were higher than their aility to deliver, but that is not the case. I only ever use the very basic core functions (read, write, folders; not even search) - no UI features added the past 5-10 years have been relevant for me. All of them have cost me time/productivity as anything new in the UI (no matter how minor) requires a breach of habit and a new learning loop, even if just to ignore said new feature.)

So, for the past couple of years my personal use of email has been on a steady decline. I just tend to avoid that kind of activity when/if I can.

ADDED: Don't preach me webmail in replies please. I did write "there is no feasible alternative" because that was exactly what I ment to say. Same goes for "just join the dev team and make a change yourself". I have actually considered these, but then: There IS NO feasible alternative. And that is the singular reason I still have Thunderbird installed even if used sparingly these days

I would recommend you subscribing to an anger management course.

Tiny scrollbars drive me nuts. But they're not nearly as annoying as almost nonexistent window frames!

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