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Thunderbird Supernova Preview: The New Calendar Design

In 2023, Thunderbird will reinvent itself with the “Supernova” release, featuring a modernized interface and brand new features like Firefox Sync. One of the major improvements you can look forward to is an overhaul to our calendar UI (user interface). Today we’re excited to give you a preview of what it looks like!

Since this is a work-in-progress, bear with us for a few disclaimers. The most important one is that these screenshots are mock-ups which guide the direction of the new calendar interface. Here are a few other things to consider:

Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Monthly, Weekly, Daily Views

Thunderbird 115 Calendar Mockup: Monthly View
Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Monthly View

The first thing you may notice is that Saturday and Sunday are only partially visible. You can choose to visually collapse the weekends to save space.

But wait, we don’t all work Monday through Friday! That’s why you’ll be able to define what your weekend is, and collapse those days instead.

And do you see that empty toolbar at the top? Don’t worry, all the calendar actions will be reachable in context, and the toolbar will be customizable. Flexibility and customization is what you’ve come to expect from Thunderbird, and we’ll continue to provide that.

Thunderbird Supernova 115 Calendar Weekly View
Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Weekly View

Speaking of customization, visual customization options for the calendar will be available via a menu popup. Some (but not all) of the options you’ll see here are:

Thunderbird Supernova 115 Calendar Daily View
Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Daily View

You’ll also see some new hotkey hints in the Search boxes (top middle, top right).

Speaking of Search, we’re moving the “Find Events” area into the side pane. A drop-down will allow choosing which information (such as title, location, and date) you want each event to show.

Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Event View

Thunderbird 115 Calendar: Event View
Thunderbird Supernova Calendar: Event View

The Event view also gets a decidedly modernized look. The important details have a lot more breathing room, yet subheadings like Location, Organizer and Attendees are easier to spot at a glance. Plus, you’ll be able to easily sort and identify the list of attendees by their current RSVP status.

By default, getting to this event preview screen requires only 1 click. And it’s 2 clicks to open the edit view (which you can do either in a new tab or a separate floating window). Because you love customization, you can control the click behavior. Do you want to skip the event preview screen and open the edit screen with just 1 click? We’ll have an option for that in preferences.

Feedback? Questions?

Life gets busy, so we want our new calendar design to look and feel comfortable. It will help you more efficiently sift, sort, and digest all the crucial details of your day.

Do you have questions or feedback about the new calendar in Thunderbird Supernova? We have a public mailing list specifically for User Interface and User Experience in Thunderbird, and it’s very easy to join.

Just head over to this link on TopicBox and click the “Join The Conversation” button!


21 responses

Chuck wrote on

Really excited for this release! I’m really happy to see Thunderbird getting the love and attention it deserves.

Yoni wrote on

Great. I was trying out thunderbird and complained to one of my friend about the calendar…
Thanks!

Jeff Henriquez wrote on

I love the new UI. Great job everyone!

Mac Jones wrote on

Gorgeous!

JobC wrote on

It looks great. What calendar app backends will it connect to? Or better put how can I share my calendar with my wife or coworkers?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

The calendar redesign in question won’t have any impact on which providers are supported. We’re evaluating our provider support, but that isn’t a part of this effort.

BjornW wrote on

Thank you for sharing your design ideas!

A few suggestions to consider:
– Use mock up data instead of ‘Event title’ repeated multiple times.
– Use different languages such as Finnish or Welsh to see how well the design works with languages that usually have words much longer than English has. Combine multiple languages in one view
– Combine timezone differences
– Make the current time ‘red stripe’ in day view more prominent, or customizeable by users.
– In the Tiny calendar overview with all days of a month and small blue dots for events: make the dots less or more prominent depending on how ‘full’ the day already is. For instance a smaller blue dot indicates I still have 50% unscheduled time. A bigger red dot indicates the day is fully booked etc.
– In the calendar overview allow the use of both start & end times (duration) for a scheduled event
– Allow times & dates to be displayed separately from the language & internationalization settings. So for instance I like my interface to be in English (US), but the other internationalization settings such as 24hr clock or not, dates to be Dutch.

Looking forward to the new design!

Marcel wrote on

Slick!

Paul wrote on

Looks great! Looking forward to the new design. Thanks for the suggestions in the last comment. All good. Would like to add displaying multiple time zones. I work remotely and have clients inn multiple time zones. Would be great to see the different time zones in the calendar views.

softedge wrote on

i’m a long time user of thunderbird, from almost day 1, and have always preferred this access portal to my 4 email accounts. i very much appreciate the work done and like the recent updates made to the interface. i look forward to similar updates to the calendar. again, thank you for all the work done. cheers, softedge

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Thanks for sticking with us!

Axel wrote on

The new UI looks lovely.

Sylvester Duda wrote on

Really amazing stuff! I just downloaded v102 and felt like it was lacking severely in UI/UX polish, but this is really exciting. Thank you all for the hard work ❤

Rohan Richards wrote on

Oh this is great, I might have missed it but when will this be available?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

This will be included in our next major release, which coincides with Firefox’s next major release (We call them ESR or “Extended Support Releases”) in July 2023.

Dwaraka Nath wrote on

It’d also be good to consider built-in Exchange support for calendar that would make calendar overhaul even more exciting

David wrote on

Very impressive design, I think it will put your competitors to shame. Can’t wait to get it.

Karl Voit wrote on

Hi,
Personally, my most important view is the week view (only).

If I could wish for a week view that supports my requirements:
I’d make the left hand side column with the “New Event” button and the calender much narrower.
I’d hide the right hand side column.
I’d transpose the week view such that Monday is on top, Tuesday is below Monday and so forth. This allows me to read my events that always do have almost more than five words in their title. Transposing the view allows for always reading the whole title. (This is different to other cultural regions with, e.g. japanese characters or such)

Martin wrote on

I like it! And I wished it was possible to choose the range of days shown in the “main view” by dragging a range in the small month overview. So you could choose to show 1,2,3,4 or five weeks and would not be limited to either one or four weeks.

Will wrote on

Mozilla you are awesome! The new UI looks stunning and I’m glad to see Firefox Sync being implemented into Thunderbird.

Comments are closed.