Talk:Thunderbird:UI Reduction

Hmm, nice wish, but this is to general. Which UI is useless ? Which dialog do you want to simplify ? Make suggestions !

(I'm aware this is too general. I haven't had time to do this yet [and unfortunately may not for a while due to other, more important concerns], so I'm leaving it as a placeholder for others to update as they have the time. I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way, so I'm leaving it open for others to start listing problems as they see them. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime soon, too.--Waldo 11:49, 5 Feb 2005 (PST))

Too much? I disagree

There's too much of it.

For the most part, I don't see this. TB seems very sleek and in fact a little too stripped down for my use. (Thunderbird:Menus excepted; in fact, I'd like to see some of the less useful menus moved into Options pages.) Perhaps I'm too geeky to act as a model user, but if TB is dumbed down much beyond where it is, I'll have to find another client. Maybe there could be a (standard, supported) "Expert" extension.

Fonts and Display should be merged under Mail Display.

The above assertion is a perfect example of overapplication of the "less UI is more" ideal. That change has in fact already been implemented in the trunk -- but encoding and font settings also apply to Composition, which clearly deserves its own tab but should not be duplicating font-setting controls. (The suggestions about Return Receipts and Connection Settings have also been implemented in the trunk.)

Some of the options are used by very few users and should be ditched in favour of system default.

I don't see too much fat in the options. Maybe the "use quoted-printable for 8-bit" could be hidden, but I (quite seriously) can think of three preferences I'd like to see in its place.

The junk mail dialogue should be merged into options

Yes, this is true; I think there's a bug about this, in fact.

The Account dialogue also needs a redesign.

This I agree with. Given that there are now tabs in the Options dialog, perhaps having separate tabs for Accounts and Identities would be a good idea -- each account could have a default identity, but all the identity-specific edits would not be under the Account settings. Instead, Accounts would only define an incoming server and its access settings. (I gather the current folder structure will not be part of TB 2, so there'll be no need for specifying, e.g, "use global inbox" any more.) Maybe "Accounts" would subdivide to two or three -- Mail, News, SMTP, for instance.

I think Identity Management should be more separated from Accounts; Identities should have their own item in the tree (or their own tab) --mcow

I'm surprised people don't want to get rid of stuff. I find the menu's completely a mess for the most part. Everything up to View is fine. View is really cluttered, and could probably be condensed. I have no idea what people use all these options for actually. 3-Pane views aren't things people change on the fly. You should set one default setting somewhere and be done. Folders I've never even noticed before, but it's an option better integrated into the actual folder pane than put up there anyway. Headers are controllable through the main UI, and Message Body should be in the options dialog somewhere. The rest seems fine to me.

The Go menu is useless and should be removed. The Message menu has a ton of stuff, that's much much easier to do through the general UI. In Tools, the Import option should be in File (to correlate with FF), and all that junk/filter stuff should be condensed too. It's just to much to read. Help ain't gonna change much.--wjjohnst

Minimize to systray

Surprised I don't see anything here about an option to minimize to systray like Outlook 2003. It's a minor issue true but I know a lot of people want the function. I know I do.