1686504 - Thunderbird should have Conversations view functionality built-in by default

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Tunnell]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:84.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/84.0

Steps to reproduce:

Thunderbird should have Conversations function built-in by default instead of via an addon because the addon isnt kept up to date. Currently the addon's Quick Reply support is broken.

This not being built in also means that theming of the user preferences do not work pretty much at all. It is impossible to use a Dark Mode in Thunderbird with the Conversations plugin because the conversation is never in Dark Mode. If you activate the forced color options in preferences then it only changes the message text, nothing else around it in the conversation view.

Conversations is now an expected requirement for a modern email client so Thunderbird not having it built in is rather disappointing and limiting the adoption of the email client.

Expected results:

Conversations should be a default function and not rely on an addon structure.

Conversations should support the Dark Mode options

Conversations should also support Quick Reply functionality.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Conversations is pretty well maintained AFAIK.
I don't think we want to integrate it as such though certain features would be nice to adopt.

Comment 2

[sbern]

I think there is more and more users who think that Thunderbird should have "Conversations function" built-in by default.

See :

• https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-conversations/issues/1519#issuecomment-670726841
• https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-conversations/issues/1348#issuecomment-466783149

By the way, instead of investing effort to move conversation to WebExtension does it make more sense to just begin to integrate it in thunderbird.
See : https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-conversations/issues/1348#issuecomment-467269374

Comment 3

[MartinX3]

Definitely would be a conversation like view optimize the usability to follow email conversations.

And the big advantage of this buildin feature most users benefit is, that it works with every new thunderbird version and is pretty well integrated and optimized performance wise. :)

Comment 4

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

What features should be adapted?

I have "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to" enabled in each of my accounts "Copies and Folders" preference, use "Sort by Threaded, and occasionally right-click a threaded message and use "Open Message in Conversation".

Comment 5

[sbern]

I think this is an ergonomic and also visibility question.
I guess this is why "thunderbird-conversations" is largely used despite its performance issue.

To be honest It's hard to be to find reasons to not have the emails presented in "conversation" way. In which case you don't want to have all your email corresponding to 1 conversation at the same place.

So the most important feature to me is :

"Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to" is a kind of workaround that I didn't know it. But this is not really the expected behavior this force you to have a specific way to organize your email.

Imagine I have an old mail box with lot of mail and I decide to use Thunderbird. All my messages are in "sent" folder (AFIAK this is the most common way)

Comment 6

[sbern]

(forgot my previous message it was send when I click CTRL+ENTER and I can not edit/remove it... bugzilla ...)

I think this is an ergonomic and also visibility question.
I guess this is why "thunderbird-conversations" is largely used despite its performance issue.

To be honest It's hard to me to find reasons to not have emails displayed in "conversation" way.
In which case you don't want to have all your email corresponding to 1 conversation at the same place ?
I think the conversation way should be the default one.

The most important feature to me is :
"Thunderbird Conversations now displays all messages that belong to the conversation. It may be that Thunderbird Conversations finds messages related to the current conversation in other folders. In this case, it will notify you about it. You click the blue label to jump to that folder."_
(see: http://write.flossmanuals.net/thunderbird/thunderbird-conversations/)

"Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to" is a kind of workaround. I didn't know it. But this is not really the expected behavior. it forces you to have a specific way to organize your email.

Imagine I have an old mail box with lot of mails and I decide to use Thunderbird. All my messages are in "sent" folder (AFAIK this is the most common way) and if I understand this correctly "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to" will not help.

Even with this we still miss a way to read your whole conversation at the same place.

Comment 7

[Ryan Lee Sipes]

Thank you for this report Michael. I agree that this should happen and I think the user expectation is there considering it has become the default in nearly every other email client (Outlook, GMail, etc).

The Thunderbird Conversations add-on has many features beyond the conversations view that make the experience of using Thunderbird, frankly, a dream and make up for many of our shortcomings as a product.

There will be some things that need to be improved and some bugs that need to be fixed, but this experience needs to make it into Thunderbird in the next release.