Add toolbar separator for unified toolbar
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, enhancement, P3)
Tracking
(thunderbird_esr115 wontfix)
| Tracking | Status | |
|---|---|---|
| thunderbird_esr115 | --- | wontfix |
People
(Reporter: bugzilla, Unassigned)
References
(Blocks 1 open bug)
Details
(Keywords: triaged)
Steps to reproduce:
Windows 10
I installed Thunderbird 115 with a completely fresh profile on another computer to see if it's finally worth upgrading from my good old v60 now. Well, it looks much different. And not to my pleasure. Lots of useless UI and a general feeling of Microsoft Outlook which is a reason not to use it.
So I tried to customise it to get as close to the old UI. In the process I noticed a few inconsistencies.
If the menubar is enabled, it appears below the toolbar. That's a weird position, so I disabled the menubar again for now. It can be brought back easily enough by pressing the Alt key.
The toolbar does not offer a separator. That makes it hard to read the buttons because honestly all icons look the same to me. Tiny grey blobs. I used to use some vertical lines to group them and guide the eye. Here I have to use spaces now.
The toolbar in the compose window is still the old one that works decently. But it really feels like I'm in another application there.
The mail message list quick search bar is also a bit too bold now. Was much more pleasant in v60.
The mail preview headers are a complete waste of space. Why would I want to see a reply-to header before replying? To and CC names could be placed in one row. Even the recipients and the sender could go next to each other. No need for the small toolbar when we have a big one at the top, but I can't hide it to free its space. (And the old Compact Header add-on of course doesn't work anymore like almost all add-ons from v68 on.)
When composing a message (reply), the From name and address field is too narrow and doesn't fit all content. There's so much empty space at the right end, why isn't it used?
All in all, the new UI makes a very beta impression. I'll better come back in a year or so and see if it has improved by then. Or eventually invest a lot of time and go on with my plans of my own new, modern and usable e-mail app that is different from Outlook.
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Comment 1•1 year ago
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The toolbar does not offer a separator. That makes it hard to read the buttons because honestly all icons look the same to me. Tiny grey blobs. I used to use some vertical lines to group them and guide the eye. Here I have to use spaces now.
Yes, that is one of the purposes for flexible space.
I'm not feeling that I miss the separator. According to https://mzl.la/3DLujE4 yours is the first request for this since the 7 months that the new toolbar has been in the wild. And a month after release with now 400k users on 115, I'm not seeing any requests for this at https://connect.mozilla.org/
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Comment 2•1 year ago
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I don't know whether this is reported on sumo or matrix.
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Comment 3•1 year ago
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yours is the first request for this since the 7 months
Others, like me, have not requested it because we assumed you guys removed it on purpose and there was no use in asking. After all, what many users want is to undo most or all of the UI changes of the past 10-12 years or so:
- Menu bar at the top
- Toolbar below menu bar
- Large expressive button icons on the toolbar
- No silly buttons in the message header area
- No tabs unless we ask for them
- No weird "New Message" in the middle of the folder poane
- Dialogs rather than tabs (especially for preferences)
you know, the good old days when you actually smiled at the simple friendliness of the TB window:
anyway, please bring the separators back.
If the menubar is enabled, it appears below the toolbar. That's a weird position, so I disabled the menubar again for now. It can be brought back easily enough by pressing the Alt key.
Totally agree, I cannot understand why the most important toolbar is not in the most logical position.
Please use the 'chosen solution' info at the following link to sort out this problem.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1420060
The toolbar does not offer a separator.
Separators should be offered for those who prefer to use them in Unified Toolbar - after all it is a personal preference and for those with poor vision, it's often necessary as an aid to differentiate between items. But using Text plus icon helps to space items.
The flexible space can be used to force spacing.
But it's not just the Unified Toolbar - they are also missing separators in the column headers in Thread Pane which looks even weirder.
see bug 1847441
I would also like to use the pencil icon for Write and the 102 icon for Get Messages. The new icons are different and I'm sure some people like them, but they are more blob like and I'm not even sure what a + sign has to do composing.; I associate a plus sign with a pharmacy.
Whilst I can get those icons to display, the latest beta update 117.0b1 altered something in Toolbar code and now suddenly I've got black icons.
Why would I want to see a reply-to header before replying?
Actually, that is really useful to see because plenty of bogus emails will use a reply-to email address which is significantly different from the alledged 'FROM'. This header has flagged up loads of emails you would not want to reply to.
I'm sure I've seen various reports of people not liking certain aspects which are mentioned the list in previous comment and I have voiced many identical design concerns myself, but I do agree with Wayne that I've not seen anything specific about the lack of separators in the Unified Toolbar until now.
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Comment 5•1 year ago
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Why would I want to see a reply-to header before replying?
Actually, that is really useful to see because plenty of bogus emails will use a reply-to email address which is significantly different from the alledged 'FROM'. This header has flagged up loads of emails you would not want to reply to.
Yes, most phishing mails use a different reply-to. But most legitimate generated mails do that, too. All system accounts that do not want bounces, but allow the recipient to simply reply and be redirected to customer service. Still, this is a waste of space because it is so common and I really don't want to know as I'm not going to reply to most of my incoming mails. Why should I be pointed out about something that's totally irrelevant?
To make a suggestion for your point: Show me a yellow warning in the compose window when I'm actually intending to reply and the Reply-To is not identical to From (just the address part of course). That's the first moment when this information becomes relevant at all. Usually, I notice the difference or check the recipient address anyway, but sure, go ahead and warn me, I'm okay with that.
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Comment 6•1 year ago
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I don't remember comments like this on Matrix.
This feels like it should be split in to multiple bugs. For example, letting the From field be wider doesn't seem like it needs to be address at the same time as switching the order of the menu bars.
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Comment 7•1 year ago
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Thanks for the multiple reports, but this is very complicated for us to track and triage.
We will consider only the initial report, which is adding separators back into the unified toolbar.
For everything else, please open dedicated bug reports.
We removed the separators because they are static elements that can't be interacted with in the toolbar. To create visual separation, we recommend using the flexible space.
We didn't receive any request to put back separators, yours is the first one, so I'll keep this open temporarily to see if we get any other report.
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Comment 8•1 year ago
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I'm gonna go through all your questions
(In reply to Yves Goergen from comment #0)
If the menubar is enabled, it appears below the toolbar. That's a weird position, so I disabled the menubar again for now. It can be brought back easily enough by pressing the Alt key.
Menubar below the toolbar is a paradigm that it has been used in many applications and file managers across decades. It only "feels" weird because it used to be on top.
Having the menubar on top causes a lot of annoying idiosyncrasies with window decorations in various OSs.
It's also a counter argument for users that really want to use it, as if it's so necessary to be used everyday isn't it better being closer to the content the user is interacting with?
The toolbar in the compose window is still the old one that works decently. But it really feels like I'm in another application there.
The new UI and new toolbar is slowly getting implemented in all the areas, starting from the Mail Tab. All other dialogs and standalone windows still have the old toolbar. It's a slow iterative process that it will hopefully be completed before next ESR.
The mail message list quick search bar is also a bit too bold now. Was much more pleasant in v60.
We're still improving that area to make it less "loud", the work is getting tracked in bug 1846359.
The mail preview headers are a complete waste of space. Why would I want to see a reply-to header before replying? To and CC names could be placed in one row. Even the recipients and the sender could go next to each other. No need for the small toolbar when we have a big one at the top, but I can't hide it to free its space. (And the old Compact Header add-on of course doesn't work anymore like almost all add-ons from v68 on.)
You can click on More > Customize to change some visual aspects of that area. Also here more improvements will come.
You can also make the whole UI more tighter by opening the App Menu (top right button) and select the Compact density`.
When composing a message (reply), the From name and address field is too narrow and doesn't fit all content. There's so much empty space at the right end, why isn't it used?
We haven't had any capacity to improve the compose window, but we know that needs some love and improvements. We will get to it hopefully in the next cycle.
All in all, the new UI makes a very beta impression. I'll better come back in a year or so and see if it has improved by then. Or eventually invest a lot of time and go on with my plans of my own new, modern and usable e-mail app that is different from Outlook.
I would like to kindly challenge you and try to use the new Thunderbird for a few weeks and try to get used to the new UI.
I'm sure you will find it pleasant and well spaced.
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Comment 9•1 year ago
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(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #7)
For everything else, please open dedicated bug reports.
Will do where I don't see that you're already aware of it.
We removed the separators because they are static elements that can't be interacted with in the toolbar. To create visual separation, we recommend using the flexible space.
Flexible space is just as a static element that can't be interacted with. It's just harder to recognise as a visual separator and has a different effect.
We didn't receive any request to put back separators, yours is the first one, so I'll keep this open temporarily to see if we get any other report.
I know of a few people who have silently given up on perceived strange decisions by software vendors and won't try to improve it anymore. They suffer and accept it; there are more important problems to handle. Others simply aren't aware of how bad design negatively affects them and they couldn't even spot a problem if you asked them explicitly. So I'm not surprised that there have been no reports on this detail before. An A/B test with preconfigured toolbars might result in a measurable difference though.
(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #8)
Menubar below the toolbar is a paradigm that it has been used in many applications and file managers across decades. It only "feels" weird because it used to be on top.
Yes, always. Never have I seen a menubar below a toolbar anywhere in my life, on no OS.
Maybe you're thinking it a different way. To you, it seems, the toolbar isn't a classic toolbar; instead you see it as a decorated window title bar. I conclude this from your default configuration where the toolbar has the same global search box as Outlook and no traditional toolbuttons. I just reconfigured that space to act as a classic toolbar which changes the meaning of that UI part. And of course I enabled the normal title bar (see next).
Having the menubar on top causes a lot of annoying idiosyncrasies with window decorations in various OSs.
If you refer to the also undesired "window decorations" that misuse the window title bar for other stuff, then you might be correct. I'm not interested in that layout, though. The title bar serves multiple important usability aspects and I'm going to keep it whereever I can. The menubar comes below that, then the toolbar, then tabs, then content, and finally statusbar. This has worked greak for decades, why mess it all up?
It's also a counter argument for users that really want to use it, as if it's so necessary to be used everyday isn't it better being closer to the content the user is interacting with?
You could ask the same question for the toolbar. I'm not getting your point.
The mail preview headers are a complete waste of space. Why would I want to see a reply-to header before replying? (…)
You can click on
More > Customizeto change some visual aspects of that area. Also here more improvements will come.
You can also make the whole UI more tighter by opening the App Menu (top right button) and select theCompactdensity`.
Done both already, doesn't resolve my issue and has other unintended side effects.
All in all, the new UI makes a very beta impression. I'll better come back in a year or so and see if it has improved by then. Or eventually invest a lot of time and go on with my plans of my own new, modern and usable e-mail app that is different from Outlook.
I would like to kindly challenge you and try to use the new Thunderbird for a few weeks and try to get used to the new UI.
I'm sure you will find it pleasant and well spaced.
I'm not so sure about that after already identifying this number of annoyances after an hour of use. It's good to hear that these areas are already being improved. I understand your limited capacity in this. All in all, considering the past release dates, it sounds like I would reevaluate this in a year and upgrade then or one year later.
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Comment 10•1 year ago
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it sounds like I would reevaluate this in a year and upgrade then or one year later.
You are talking about an e-mail client (!). You really don't want to install security updates (!) for such an important component for at least one year (!) just for cosmetic (!) reasons? What could possibly go wrong with such an attitude…?
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