There are certainly some interesting thoughts here, and if people wanted to pick up the smaller ones, and drive them into the product, that would make me quite happy. :)
Re thunderbird tabs on top rationale: If you need to change the thunderbird so much in order to accomodate for extra functions - like calendars or advanced searches or whatever - so much that the new design has disadvantages on e-mail usability - that may be a heavy indication that all these things are sufficiently different to NOT belong into an e-mail client. Why not remember the old Unix motto: One task, one tool. That way, we can keep one layout for e-mailers, and another for calendars.
AnonymousI haven’t seen any data that suggests that placing the toolbar below the tabs has any disadvantage on e-mail usability. Some people don’t like it, but that’s hardly justification for your claim.
Furthermore, two of the main tasks we hope to put in tabs are composing email and looking up addresses. Both of those have their own toolbars with different buttons from the message window’s. And both of those are functions which have been in Thunderbird for years. (Perhaps Thunderbird should split up into an mh-style set of programs, but I think you’ld be hard pressed to try convincing the current community that that would be a good direction to go.) I will also assert that being able to easily add meeting invitations from e-mail messages to your calendar is an important part of many people’s jobs, and that there is a lot of use in being able to quickly and accurately find messages you’ve stored, and so a set of disconnected tools would not be in our users’ best interests.
Thanks for your question!
Mike Conley has been hacking furiously on a new address book, and he’s got a early, web-based prototype for you to give feedback on.
The Modern Address Book is starting it’s first baby steps towards being something useful!
There’s a long way to go, but this is a good first step.
A long time ago, I worked on an experimental addon that would make Thunderbird more useful for small screens. It was eventually named TbAir. But it never really went anywhere, sadly. The code is available on Github if anyone wants to run with it. Pull requests will be happily accepted. :)
Help me find the menu toolbar -- I don't have the three lines on the right and I mistakenly unchecked my "menu" on the toolbar drop down
AnonymousRight-click on an empty spot in the tab bar, and there should be a “Menu Bar” item. Click on that, and your menu bar should re-appear. (Also, if you hit “alt”, it should show up, so you can still use the keyboard shortcuts you’re used to.)
The Thunderbird Menu Button (a work in progress).
(Yes, I think we should remove a bunch of the things from the top level, and will be saying that in the bug.)
What should we put in the Thunderbird button?
Now that tabs-on-top has been released, many people are suggesting that we should implement (or should have implemented) a Thunderbird button, like the Firefox button. The main blocker on that was that we’re waiting for Test Pilot to show us what actions people take in Thunderbird, but in the meantime, let’s do a straw-poll.
As politely as possible, what functions do you expect to see in a Thunderbird button?
To keep the answers to a reasonable length, only post the top 3-5 items you would want, please.
Thanks,
Blake.
