1482172 - Implement color customization for mail accounts

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Looks]

Hi,

Since the thunderbird 60 the great addon "account colors" does not work. The good thing on thunderbird is, that I can use a different accounts in the inbox. But without account colors it is not good to see for wich account I received mails. With account Colors I see it quick and clear.

My Suggestion, why not implent as default account Color possibility in Thunderbird. Because I think this is a problem that have a lot of users.

It would be nice, when you will think about it.

Thanks for this good work, greetings
Looks

Comment 1

[osian78]

I'd like to second this. In fact, I'm really confused and frustrated as why it's not been a standard feature for years.

For some of us who use TB heavily, it is really important not to confuse different accounts and doing so can be really professionally embarrassing. The whole point of a good mail client should be for it to do everything in its power not to allow the user to confuse accounts. If it treats every account as equal (which TB does, pretty much) then I might as well resort to just accessing all my mail accounts through a web-browser tab.

Fobbing the responsibility for this kind of function to add-on developers is an awful solution, because as shown by the recent v78, add-ons aren't always backwardly compatible and most developers don't have the resources to update stuff ad-infinitum (good will doesn't pay the bills!). Besides, and as I say above, the whole point of a mail client is to "manage multiple mail accounts", and not to demote the responsibility of that management to an afterthought.

Functionality should include:

• assign a color to each account in the account's settings
• use this color in the side-pane and mail list (as "account colors" add-on used to do)
• use this color as a background in the from/to/cc/bcc when composing mails (as "account colors" used to do)
• allow you to change the "from" box in every composition window (and change field colors when the "from" box changes, as "account colors" used to do)
• put a sub-menu under each "send/reply/forward" button to allow you to decide which account you want to send from (as "Identity Chooser" does)
• on each account, include the option of enabling/disabling an "are you sure you want to send with this account" popup
• in the navigator pane (left side of the main TB screen) allow me to change the order of mail-accounts so that I can put my more important ones on top (without having to resort to hacking the config-editor)
• bonus features (though I realize this requires quite a lot of complexity) add intelligent warnings such as:
  • "Are you sure you want to send a mail to John Doe from account A, because you normally send from account B"
  • "This mail is being sent to persons at '@companyA.com' as well as '@companyB.com'. Are you really sure you want to do this?"

In my opinion this is just standard functionality as to what a multi-account e-mail client should do. Otherwise it's just a web browser with a tweaked front-end

Comment 2

[honza]

I just came in to support the comments by Looks and osian78.

"In my opinion this is just standard functionality as to what a multi-account e-mail client should do."
Exactly! This should be a must. Every new-launched app enables coloring of accounts, though it is a "pro" feature sometimes.

Please, read the reviews here, addressing the developer of an addon used by 5.000 people (at minimum).
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/account-colors/#reviews
User are even "offering money" for such addon... :)

Hope sometimes happens soon, I do not fancy using outdated software version, but I am forced to now - in my TB I have 15 different accounts.

Comment 3

[saiolar-c]

I am also coming in support for this. After a system update, the colors addon was disabled and will apparently not come back. So I have to rollback to a previous version and will stick to it. But this means installing a software from a different channel than the supported one, I'm definitely not a fan of doing so - along with the fact that I won't get future fixes (including security ones) which is again not a good thing for an email client.
With a lot of accounts, it is almost impossible to use without this feature. This indeed should be a standard functionality (and it is in most email clients these days). It is too bad since Thunderbird is otherwise my favourite, but this single functionality (well, the lack of it) makes it suddenly impractical.

Comment 4

[saiolar-c]

Just losing my mind as I cannot even switch to an older version of thunderbird, as it is embedding the new version inside the profile, and I would need to recreate every single configuration. Moving away from thunderbird at this point - reluctantly but this is just too much.

Comment 5

[d2_c2]

I want to support this and somehow bump it to the forefront for all the reasons mentioned above. TB has been very useful to manage several different accounts both personal and business and now it is too easy to make a mistake in filing, management or actually sending emails. Also the fact that the new version of TB has totally intertwined itself in my profile, to revert to an older version would be starting over. Bake this capability into TB,

Comment 6

[Martin]

^^^ BUMP ^^^
please! this is such an important feature request!
Managing multiple email accounts under UNIFIED FOLDERS is pure chaos without proper account color support.
The addon "Account Colors" was doing an amazing job at this. Sadly it doesn't work anymore.
Account-wide color systems must be supported from within Thunderbird itself. ICON Colors is definitely NOT enough... For instance, unified emails in the unified inbox must also be color coded, because we can't at the moment know what account the emails belong to.

I desperately need this.

Comment 7

[Sanded7279]

BUMP. I've waited a whole year, unable to update because you haven't made account colours native and haven't allowed me to install the perfect fine third party add-on. That's not acceptable. I want to hear from Devs.
Just because your product is free (and funded by donations), doesn't make it right to ignore and deprecate critical features and third party add-ons your users rely on.
You're producing a service and encouraging people to use it on the premise that your product is better than the competition.
So, when are you going to solve this problem for us?

Comment 8

[Sanded7279]

The third party shows 7000+ users as of 01 January 2022.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I also liked the add-on, but deprecation of add-ons is not the primary responsibility of those who ship Thunderbird. Even if it was, it would seem there has been insufficient understanding of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html. So we will take a break from bug comments.

Version 78 partly implements this, but there is more to do, sufficiently described in Comment 0 and 1.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #9)

Version 78 partly implements this ...

... as noted in https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/07/whats-new-in-thunderbird-78/ and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-78

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I recently had discussion with the author of https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/account-colors/ for another user. The author indicates they will not be supporting their add-on in the future. So someone will need to adopt the add-on or it gets adopted into Thunderbird core.

Comment 12

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

We will try to get this in for next ESR.

Comment 13

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Plans for this feature:

• Add input color in the account settings page.
• Store the color in the account properties so we can reuse it across the application (not just as folder property).
• Apply the color to the server icon in the folder pane.
• Set the default color for existing profiles to the TB primary blue.

Follow ups (in this bug or others):

• Show colored indicator in the list of identities in the compose window, bug 355520.
• Show colored indicator in the message list, bug 1882368.
• Create an array of colors to choose from so new accounts can each get a unique color.

Comment 14

[Silvia Bonavista i Serrat]

Add input color in the account settings page.

There is an existing implementation that adds it here and further down.

Store the color in the account properties so we can reuse it across the application.

This implementation stores the color against the incoming server.

The patch should apply to Daily.

Comment 15

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Thanks Jorg, but I'm not looking at Betterbird code for this implementation and I already have some WIP patches I did almost a year ago but never completed.
I just need to implement test to complete these.

Comment 16

[chrizilla]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #13)

Follow ups (in this bug or others):

• Show colored indicator in the list of identities in the compose window.
• Show colored indicator in the message list, bug 1882368.
• Create an array of colors to choose from so new accounts can each get a unique color.

For reference, the first item ("colored indicator … in compose window") is bug 355520 I think.

Comment 17

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Good find!

Comment 18

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Attachment: Bug 1482172 - Implement color customization for accounts. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/61da4e8d6e25
Implement color customization for accounts. r=mkmelin,vineet

Comment 20

[Silvia Bonavista i Serrat]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #13)

Plans for this feature:

• Store the color in the account properties so we can reuse it across the application (not just as folder property).

This hasn't been implemented, has it? The colour is stored using FolderTreeProperties which may not be the best place given further use in bug 355520 and bug 1882368. Storing it as an account preference mail.server.serverNN.color would have been more universal.