Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox.
Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.
Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.
The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
edit: I say this MYSELF as a thunderbird user!
I don't want an "new experience" every 9 months, and having to explain it to my parents
But when they updated the UI, they
- Added options to use to make it very close to the old layout
- Set those options for you if you had it customized like that in the previous version
Which is IMHO much better than how Mozilla handled the redesign - you can get the old style in a GitHub repo thanklessly maintained by one person[0], enable userchrome support in about:config (until they decide to take it away one day!), and enable compact mode (also gated behind about:config and called "Compact (not supported)". Oh, and remember to update the userchrome every few updates because they keep breaking it.
That's the difference between user-centric and not user-centric.
The app has a phantom message even in empty folders that it keeps selected. Unread bubble and nothing else, an empty message. You can’t even delete it. Sometimes it persists between app restarts.
It shows unread count on a folder just because it feels like it.
It’s a long list.
I don’t buy the “oh well, kinda sort of for like 60% of mail features and possibly a read only calendar in Two Weeks”
I switched away from Thunderbird to Outlook TWO FULL DECADES AGO, and in that time they have never once given me a possibility to switch back.
Like it or not, business runs on Office/Outlook.
Give me the 1990s GUI back.