The year of Linux desktop will come after the desktop is no longer relevant, but I'll be honest, I've been AI-pilled, and it's never been a better time to run a Linux desktop. Instead of going sleuthing every time I hit a papercut that previously I'd have spend hours consulting a how-to or a wiki to find the subsystems and config files to fix the problem, I can now just describe the problem to an AI agent that runs around on my system that just fixes it while I go off and do something else.
> A few weeks ago, we conducted hour-long conversations with 10 of our users to dig deep into how you manage your preferences and configurations in Thunderbird desktop
Is only 10 people representative of the population of thunderbird users?
> Is only 10 people representative of the population of thunderbird users?
For very narrow studies it is possible to get representative data with fewer than a dozen interviews, but in this case it is explicitly not representative. In the video they mention that most of the participants have used Thunderbird for over a decade and follow release notes, development, and various forums closely, which to me suggests that they were recruited opportunistically rather than a random statistical sampling.
They do mention that they have plans to engage a larger audience in the future but that can be incredibly expensive. Even large organizations typically have to augment a small number of representative interviews with a large number of surveys and a very large set of user telemetry to properly weight interview feedback.
It's a standard research technique. You can have 2,000 people answer an automated survey but you can't have hour-long conversations with them. Researchers in many fields would like a better solution for in-depth interviews.
Missing step numero Zero: What is a menu bar, where should it be placed, and how do I use its menu items in a way that adheres to the basic design rules of all operating systems on which this software runs?
TB has big UX problems not mentioned: Search works poorly (Misses too many results to be useful), messages you typed have weird paragraph spacings, and reading multi-message threads is a mess.
Search does miss a lot of stuff. I hope they never get rid of the option for storing messages in MBOX because I find I have to grep through my messages all the time.
Kudos to the Thunderbird team for improving TB so much over the past few years, it really helped that they split from Mozilla. K9-Mail (which is now TB) also strongly benefitted from this. Maybe Mozilla will start listening to their users someday...
Thunderbird is great and was my main email app for a decade – until I de-googled my life. I think settings were a horrible mess, but after that UX sending/receiving email were great.
please make the oauth flow catchy and easy to debug, like straight up suggesting that an unreachable imap server is because the port is blocked or catching the the custom domainis just outlook and updating the flow accordingly. Make it nice for enterprises, so users can push for enterprise use, too :)
related - recently I learned Microsoft doesn't provide any way to download all your emails from outlook.com in one way to back them up, so Thunderbird was the tool I used to create backup
still can't comprehend how is this legal in EU, Google at least provide takeout
Thunderbird recently often breaks and stops checking new emails. Is that a Gmail issue or why can't it be reliably tested so it doesn't get broken again?
I want to use Thunderbird, but it's so... weird. And why can it not be minimized to tray? Am I supposed to sit and keep the Thunderbird window open at all times?
Why are they repeating the 6 key themes twice but phrased in different ways and in different order? And then there are 6 recommendations and 5 improvements which are very similar to each other, but the article doesn't say how they are related.
I would suggest they first "demystify the language" and "streamline information architecture" of the article itself.
Also some details would be nice. And some acknowledgement of an understanding that the UI being "dated" and not "modern" probably isn't what's making it difficult to use.
If I were one of those 10 people I'd have told them that I love "dated" UIs. Most modern UIs are trash. I'd hate it if efforts to make Thunderbird shiny enough to attract users sacrificed functionality, ease of use, or customization.
I tried Thunderbird recently, and was baffled that there seemed to be no way to see received emails grouped with my responses to them (aka threading or conversations). Even grouping incoming emails that have the same subject seemed like an experimental feature.
Surely I'm missing something? How are people using it? If someone replies to you "I think there was a problem with your attachment", do you search for your sent email?
Thunderbird supports threading in the message list pane (which displays replies next to the email that was replied to), but a conversation mode for the message pane is still in development:
In the meantime, the Thunderbird Conversations add-on provides a conversation view that looks like classic Gmail, which is probably what you're looking for:
> You customize extensively during your initial setup, followed only by minor tweaks to get your workspace just right.
If all of your users customize extensively the moment they get your hands on the software that means your defaults suck. As long as they keep letting people customize it's good enough though.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadhttps://roadmaps.thunderbird.net/en-US/
Deep down, though, I really wish they rebuilt it on top of something less heavy than Firefox, eg. ZED's GPUI.
I'd also like it to be possible to enter a U2F pin number when using Oauth because then I could actually use it with my company Yubikey.
Maybe try the .deb version? (maybe need to back up your data in ~/snap/thunderbird/
Oh well, no software is perfect.
Is only 10 people representative of the population of thunderbird users?
For very narrow studies it is possible to get representative data with fewer than a dozen interviews, but in this case it is explicitly not representative. In the video they mention that most of the participants have used Thunderbird for over a decade and follow release notes, development, and various forums closely, which to me suggests that they were recruited opportunistically rather than a random statistical sampling.
They do mention that they have plans to engage a larger audience in the future but that can be incredibly expensive. Even large organizations typically have to augment a small number of representative interviews with a large number of surveys and a very large set of user telemetry to properly weight interview feedback.
(I jest!)
Missing step numero Zero: What is a menu bar, where should it be placed, and how do I use its menu items in a way that adheres to the basic design rules of all operating systems on which this software runs?
> Thunderbird’s robust functionality is its superpower, but a dated interface shouldn’t be a barrier to entry for newer users.
I started preparing for the worst.
still can't comprehend how is this legal in EU, Google at least provide takeout
I would suggest they first "demystify the language" and "streamline information architecture" of the article itself.
Also some details would be nice. And some acknowledgement of an understanding that the UI being "dated" and not "modern" probably isn't what's making it difficult to use.
Surely I'm missing something? How are people using it? If someone replies to you "I think there was a problem with your attachment", do you search for your sent email?
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/true-threaded-conversat...
In the meantime, the Thunderbird Conversations add-on provides a conversation view that looks like classic Gmail, which is probably what you're looking for:
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail...
There is no reason for the client to insist on knowing every email alias that delivers to a mail store.
Whatever the To address of a received mail, use that for the From addr in any replies...
#2 Suggestion: Make calendar reminders not get lost on snooze...
If all of your users customize extensively the moment they get your hands on the software that means your defaults suck. As long as they keep letting people customize it's good enough though.