1665169 - 78.2.2 makes icons chunky, monochrome

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Pete Magsig]

Attachment: Screen shot of UI - folder pane and message composition pane

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.102 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Run Thunderbird 68.12.0 with automatic updates on
2. Let the automatic update take you to 78.2.2
3. Open the main mail pane.

Actual results:

All of the icons turned into crude monochrome (see attached).
Composition window has oddly spaced entry fields (see attached).
[Speculating here - it's like the them broke?]

Expected results:

The UI should have remained the same across the automated update. I also tried running in safe mode and the problem did not resolve. Have tried uninstalling and reinstalling version 78.2.2

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Your questions are not unusual. Yes, these changes were intentional:

• the icon changes involve several forward looking user experience features - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-78#w_customize-the-colors-of-mail-folder-icons describes how to change colors.
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-78#w_new-addressing-area describes the compose changes

Comment 2

[Pete Magsig]

I'm very disappointed to hear that these changes are were deliberate and considered "forward looking". Have you any UI/UX cognitive load specialists involved in these decisions? Blobby, indistinct icons do not ease cognitive load. Neither does insignificant whitespace. Will there be a theme where we can get it to at least look like the old system?

If not, I'll probably roll back to an earlier version and stick to that until this is resolved.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Yes, we have an experienced UX expert. Yes, the changes received multiple approvals. And FWIW, although I don't have approval in these matters, I was initially also unhappy with the aesthetics even though I agreed with the reasons (and still do), however I now actually much prefer the simpler icons. There will likely be further improvements either in the core or via add-ons to greater control, but at the present time there are no folder themes.

If you mean the whitespace in the composer, it is there because some of the addressing fields are larger than those seen in the initial panel, and adding/changing fields should not cause those initial fields to move

Comment 4

[Pete Magsig]

Unfortunately, I believe your instincts are correct. I occasionally teach UI/UX. I don't really have the bandwidth right now to take this apart like Miller does in The Science of Great UI, but it's hitting all of the wrong notes in terms of proper use of shape, edge, color, and other distinguishing characteristics that enable icons to ease their way into our cognitive processing structures. This isn't just a matter of aesthetics, it's ease-of-use. These icons look very trendy, but I have a feeling a deep analysis would show they're not an actual ease-of-use improvement.

I think I'll roll back and stick to an older version.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Pete, you can see some of the past discussion, and contribute to the future, at https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/ux