UI design comparison Thunderbird update to Vivaldi Mail

WildEnte

The Thunderbird team is updating their UI, a preview pic was shown a while ago on Twitter. https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/1592201016052629504/photo/1
Some thoughts, what I like and how I would compare it to Vivaldi mail. Note that I like Vivaldi's UI, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate what TB is doing here.

Generally: Selected items having a thin vertical blue bar on the left and just a blueish shade over the rest of the line item. In Vivaldi the entire line item changes color - I think the TB way looks nicer.
Side panel: horizontal lines between the categories and a slightly larger line distance - more friendly / less crowded initial appearance.
Message list: Preview of the first couple of lines in the message list (a feature wish of mine for Vivaldi) - I rarely have more than 10 unread emails, so my message list is at max half full, and I like my message list on the side - otherwise the message itself gets too wide. Having a messge preview directly in the list makes better use of my vertical screen real estate and I get to have a glimpse into an email without clicking it, allowing me to more quickly get to the important stuff.
Contact pictures (if available) make it easier to find a specific person's email in some email list.
Right hand side pane: frequent contacts. Opera M2 had "Followed contacts" as a panel category, which is similar. In particular in business context, quick access to a specific frequent contact's correspondence is great. I don't mind if that's in the mail panel or in a separate toolbar like in Thunderbird, but it should be there. Automatic retrieval of a profile picture from some LinkedIn / Twitter / Vivaldi Forum / .... profile of that contact would be great
Message pane: a quick reply field ... originally introduced in Opera M2 and very convenient.
Not sure about this one: they seem to have a universal search at the top and current list view search above the message list. The top one is a little like hitting "all messages" in Vivaldi and then doing a list search. I think two search fields is redundant. Vivaldi does it well by asking whether the search results should be limited to the current view or expanded to all messages.
Why TB show tasks and calendar icons both in the left panel as well as the right hand side panel is beyond me. While we are at it, there is great use for a right hand side panel - to show today's calendar agenda so I have my meetings in sight while working through my emails. (see https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/68661/option-to-show-first-x-lines-of-mail-body-in-email-list)
having the "layout" and "message threads" toggle buttons above the message list makes more sense than all the way in the top right like it is in Vivaldi. In particular the toggle message threads button acts on the list view. (I have tried to customize the menu such that the threads button is to the right of the search field but still above the message list)

janrif

@WildEnte Since you've gone back to TB, may I ask how you use it along side Vivaldi? TIA

WildEnte

@janrif I don't use TB, no way. I just saw the preview of the upcoming UI changes on Twitter.

I do have Thunderbird installed in parallel and have it download my mails via imap every now and then.

I don't have any filters or labels (see my signature, I think a search when needed is all that it really takes) so I would generally be able to seamlessly switch to any other mail client with a fast search.

edwardp

@WildEnte I have Thunderbird installed on my Debian Linux desktops, but haven't even looked at it for the past couple of months. Been 100% Vivaldi. and .

There really didn't seem to be anything wrong with TB's current UI, so why fix something that isn't really broken?

pjol

@edwardp said in UI design comparison Thunderbird update to Vivaldi Mail:

There really didn't seem to be anything wrong with TB's current UI, so why fix something that isn't really broken?

Here is what Thunderbird had to say:

Simply adding stuff on top of a crumbling architecture isn't sustainable, and we can’t keep ignoring it.

Throughout the next 3 years, we're aiming at these primary objectives:

1: Make the code base leaner and more reliable, rewrite ancient code, remove technical debt.

2: Rebuild the interface from scratch to create a consistent design system, as well as developing and maintaining an adaptable and extremely customizable user interface.

3: Switch to a monthly release schedule.

Source

edwardp

@pjol We'll all have to wait and see what it will look like once its released.

luetage

The thing Thunderbird is missing is a proper browser. Already runs Firefox in the background though…