Open Bug 601339 Opened 14 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Why is the "Advanced..." preferences dialogue for default display font selection in Thunderbird *so* complicated?!

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Preferences
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: filmil, Unassigned)

References

Details

For the love of God, people, can you please simplify the font selection dialog in Thunderbird?! I used Thunderbird for years now, and frankly, I have no clue as to how I should set the font size in it. The font selection dialog has about 20 different font encoding settings, each with 3 dropdown boxes to select various sizes, and 4 additional dropdown boxes, each with 4 to 50 varieties. How many settings is it total? Do you seriously think that's an usable interface? And on my machine (Linux, Fedora 13), changing most of these has actually no effect to the display of the messages whatsoever. There is no preview that shows what happens, so for me setting right font sizes is a great big blindfolded hunt. I've spent the last half an hour trying to find a way to make the huge default font for Thunderbird 3.1 (newly installed) smaller. And failing to set the fonts with what I guessed would be the right settings (they weren't), I just started going through all of the many options and changing *every* font setup from the dropdown box, in search of the right settings combination. Go on and call me stupid if you must, but that user experience blows and sucks at the same time.
This sounds like a support request, can you go to http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/ and ask for help there.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Ludovic, this isn't a support request. It's reporting a bug that says that the font selection method in Thunderbird is too complex to be useful and is bad user experience. Thunderbird is making this very necessary action into a long-lasting and laborious process. *That* alone is a bug, and the solution is not to educate the users how they should suck it up and take their medicine, but instead change the dialog into something that can actually be used.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: INVALID → ---
xref bug 452711 and bug 469303 (and possibly others). Filip, please tone down your language. Thanks. Any specific suggestion you have in mind?
(In reply to comment #3) > Filip, please tone down your language. Thanks. Done. > Any specific suggestion you have in mind? I have 2 particular problems with the dialog. At this point I can only explain what they are, I'd have to think hard about a solution. 1) There are completely separate settings per each of the > 20 supported encodings. Why not have a single, unified setting across encodings? 2) It would be good to see immediately how a change of fonts affects the display.
You are probably aware that the font-chooser dialog was largely "inherited" from Firefox and is roughly the same in other Gecko-based applications. I've added the user-experience lead to this bug as I believe he had already some thoughts on this issue. A preview (2) definitely would be helpful already, but some propagation of common font selections from one region to others (1) sure would be desirable as long as they aren't compatible with a given region. Bryan, any thoughts (or potential work already) on this as an alternative or on top of what Firefox does?
(In reply to comment #4) > 1) There are completely separate settings per each of the > 20 supported > encodings. Why not have a single, unified setting across encodings? Will not work for all encoding there are languages which doesn't work with common symbols and alphabets. But some encodings can be split because use same set of fonts.
Status: REOPENED → NEW
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Version: 3.1 → Trunk
I've just responded to yet another forum thread where the user was confused about having to pick font and size separately for each language group. > (In reply to comment #6) there are languages which doesn't work with > common symbols and alphabets. But some encodings can be split because use same > set of fonts. Thinking about this it implies that the ability to specify separate fonts for specific language groups has to be retained, no problem with that. However, a category "All Languages" (and selected by default) may be possible which only offers fonts applicable to UTF-8 encoding. Per definition, UTF-8 covers all language groups, correct? Thus, a font safe for UTF-8 should contain the subset needed to represent a different language-specific encoding. If that assumption holds, this may be a feasible solution of the problem. Only if a user explicitly selects a specific font for a specific language group, that would override the default picked for UTF-8 encoding.
> There is no preview that shows what happens, so for me setting right font > sizes is a great big blindfolded hunt. This is bug 33340 for SeaMonkey, which apparently never has been promoted to a Core bug (but then, each application may need its own implementation for that).
(In reply to comment #7) > Thinking about this it implies that the ability to specify separate fonts for > specific language groups has to be retained, no problem with that. However, a > category "All Languages" (and selected by default) may be possible which only > offers fonts applicable to UTF-8 encoding. Per definition, UTF-8 covers all > language groups, correct? Thus, a font safe for UTF-8 should contain the subset > needed to represent a different language-specific encoding. Sounds good to me, AFAIK UTF-8 covers even some ancient languages which not in common usage anymore. Also fixing this bug may resolve Bug 323747
(In reply to comment #5) > Bryan, any thoughts (or potential work already) on this as an alternative or on > top of what Firefox does? We did some work for the 3.0 release cycle to simplify the default font choice. Previously you always had to open the (now advanced) font dialog. With the current system it should be changing the font for your chosen language and UTF-8 which often covers what you're looking at in the message reader. I would love some help making changes here, we have an issue that the underlying font system is provided by gecko/firefox and does not suite our needs very well. For Thunderbird you want to be able to choose a default font for messages sent to you while in Firefox this font chooser is only useful when a site doesn't specify any kind of font (most often directory listing pages). i.e. they aren't likely inclined to really fix it as it's complicated and not part of most FF users experience. That said, there is still a lot we can do in the preference selection system to make sure it changes the font (at least) for the message/charset you're looking at.
(In reply to comment #10) > Previously you always had to open the (now advanced) font dialog. With the > current system it should be changing the font for your chosen language and > UTF-8 which often covers what you're looking at in the message reader. This seems to work but doesn't change the fixed-width font (e.g., when changing the font size in that dialog it only affects the variable font). Maybe that existing solution can be extended somehow to be more general, where I realize that there isn't much space in the general Display Options dialog.
Can we have STR, actual and expected result for this problem? There are 4 different places in the UI to select fonts, and bugs that do not state clearly what they are talking about are not actionable and should be closed.
(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #12) > Can we have STR, actual and expected result for this problem? There are 4 > different places in the UI to select fonts, and bugs that do not state > clearly what they are talking about are not actionable and should be closed. Hi Thomas. If you want a clear actionable bug report (I don't know what STR is:(), here it is: - There should be only one place to select fonts in the UI, not 4. If, however, you think that Thunderbird's font selection is fine as it is, it's OK by me to close. Cheers, f
(In reply to Filip Miletic from comment #13) > (In reply to Thomas D. from comment #12) > > Can we have STR, actual and expected result for this problem? There are 4 > > different places in the UI to select fonts, and bugs that do not state > > clearly what they are talking about are not actionable and should be closed. > > Hi Thomas. > > If you want a clear actionable bug report (I don't know what STR is:() STR stands for "Steps to reproduce", i. e. you need to give detailed step-by-step instructions how to get into that situation, part of the User Interface (UI) etc. which has your problem, so that others evaluating this bug can reproduce the problem on their own installation of TB. Having good STR is absolutely crucial for the success of your bug. You don't have to take that from me, take it from here (which is linked on bugzilla.mozilla.org (BMO) front page): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Bug_writing_guidelines > Steps to reproduce are the most important part of any bug report. If a > developer is able to reproduce the bug, the bug is very likely to be fixed. If > the steps are unclear, it might not even be possible to know whether the bug > has been fixed. That document also links to this one: https://quality.mozilla.org/docs/bugzilla/starter-kit/how-to-write-a-proper-bug/ > > If you want a clear actionable bug report [...], here it is: > > - There should be only one place to select fonts in the UI, not 4. I'd advise to find out about the different UI parts and their functionality first before recommending to remove or combine them, which does not make sense at all (E.g., we obviously need different preference settings for Display vs. Composition). And again, it is not clear at all what you mean. You want to remove font selector from composition toolbar? you want to combine font preference settings for Display and Composition (from Tools > Options > ...) ? If yes, how (mockup screenshot)? Or what else? So no, it's still not actionable without much further detail. > If, however, you think that Thunderbird's font selection is fine as it is, > it's OK by me to close. The problem is that you still haven't made it clear *which* font selection you are talking about, so I have no way of telling if it's fine or not. With thousands of bugs around, you can't expect *us* to waste time trying to guess or derive where you are instead of you just telling us how you got there. Like this: Appmenu (or traditional Tools menu) > Options > Display > Formatting > Fonts > Default font > Advanced... Also, I understand the structure and behaviour of that font selection you are probably talking about has changed since you first reported this bug, which just adds to the need of spelling out what exactly you want to change.
Whiteboard: [incomplete]
Summary: Why is the font selection in Thunderbird *so* complicated?! → Why is the "Advanced..." preferences dialogue for display font selection in Thunderbird *so* complicated?!
Summary: Why is the "Advanced..." preferences dialogue for display font selection in Thunderbird *so* complicated?! → Why is the "Advanced..." preferences dialogue for default display font selection in Thunderbird *so* complicated?!
(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #14) > Also, I understand the structure and behaviour of that font selection you > are probably talking about has changed since you first reported this bug, > which just adds to the need of spelling out what exactly you want to change. I solved the problem by no longer using Thunderbird. OK to close, as far as I'm concerned. :)
I agree it's quite a mess :( Maybe we could do something like comment 11.
Whiteboard: [incomplete]
See Also: → 1378237
Severity: minor → S4
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