1805872 - The "smart reply" button feature has been made useless

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[vchevallier]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:107.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/107.0

Steps to reproduce:

You want to respond to a multi-recipient email.

Actual results:

Since version 102 (I think), the customization of the email toolbar (where the reply, delete, archive buttons and so on, are) has become impossible. The smart reply button (which combine the Reply / Reply to all actions in a drop down menu embedded in the button) has remained the default button in the toolbar. But the "simple" Reply button remains next to it, there is no way to remove it, so:

• it cancels the benefit of using the "smart" one.
• the "smart" one is useless

Expected results:

For me (correct me if I'm wrong) the main benefit of using the "smart reply" to avoid to reply to all and reply only to one person by mistake.
When in a group conversation, the default action SHOULD be to reply to everybody, as long as you CAN choose to reply only to one. The "reply to only one instead of reply to all" mistake happens much more than the opposite IMO.
The smart button combines the error-avoiding, the choice, and a UI real estate reduction: perfect.
But if the "normal" reply button remains next to it:

• you can reply to one by mistake (the reason I'm typing this right now, after years not having made that mistake)
• The "smart" drop down is completely useless: there is now 2 way to click "Reply"

Now that toolbar customization has been removed, you have to take a decision:

• Keep the 'Smart' Reply as the ONLY button in the toolbar and remove the Reply button (I think it's the right choice)
• Keep 'Reply' button and turn the "Smart" one in a "simple" 'Reply to all'