State of the Thunder: Mozilla Connect Updates
Welcome back to the latest season of State of the Thunder! After a short break, we’re back and ready to go. Michael Ellis, our Manager of Community Programs, is helping Alessandro with hosting duties. Along with members of the Thunderbird team and community, they’re answering your questions and keeping everyone updated on our roadmap progress for our projects.
In this episode, we’re talking about our initiatives for regular community feedback, tackling a variety of questions, and providing status updates on the top 20-ish Mozilla Connect Thunderbird suggestions.
Community Questions
Accidental Message Order Sorting
Question: Clearly the number one issue with Thunderbird that breaks for many of my clients is that if they accidentally click on a column header the sorting of the message is changed. “My messages are gone” is what I then hear all the time from my clients. It would be wonderful if the sorting of the message could be locked and not changed through such an easy operation, which often is invoked accidentally.
Answer: This is a great usability question and a complicated one. Alessandro recommends switching to CardsView, as it’s harder to accidentally change. This one one of the reasons we implemented it! However, we can definitely explore options to lock the message order in through enterprise policies. We would want to be mindful of users who wanted to change the order.
Michael discusses the option of a pop-up warning that could inform the user they’re about the change the message sorting order. Increased friction through a pop-up, though, as Alessandro and Jesse Miksic from the design team both point out, can cause its own issues. But this is certainly something we’ll look into more!
Move Focus Keyboard Shortcut
Question: Could there be consideration to add a keystroke to immediately move the focus to the list of messages in the currently open mailbox? Even better if keystrokes that would automatically do this for the inbox folder or the default account.
Answer: Alessandro notes Thunderbird already has this ability, but it’s not super noticeable. The F6 key allows you to switch focuses between the main areas of the application. So we’re approaching this problem from two directions: implementing tabular keyboard navigation and customizable shortcuts. We don’t have an expected delivery date on the latter, but we plan to have a searchable keyboard shortcut hub. We know our interface can be a little daunting, and we’re tackling it from multiple angles.
Option for Simplified Thunderbird?
Question: I work for a company which develops a Raspberry Pi-based computer made specific… specifically for blind consumers. Thunderbird is installed on this device by default. Many of our users are not tech-savvy. and just want a simple email client. I would love to have an easy method for removing some of the clutters with the goal of having a UI with fewer controls. Currently, users often have to press the tab key many times just to move to the list of messages in their inbox. For some users, all they really want is the message list and the list of folders, with the menu bar open, and that’s it. A bit like we once had with Outlook Express.
Answer: Alessandro and Ryan Sipes, our director, have talked about the need for a lighter version of Thunderbird a lot. This would help users who don’t need all the power of Thunderbird, and just want to focus on their messages (not even their folders). However, Ryan doesn’t want a separate version of Thunderbird we’d need to maintain, but to build a better usability curve into Thunderbird. Answering this question means having a Thunderbird that is simple by default, but more powerful and customizable if needed, without upsetting our current users.
Heather Ellsworth from the community team also supports the idea of a user preference for a lighter Thunderbird. At conferences and co-working spaces, she constantly hears the requests for a slightly simpler version of Thunderbird.
Thunderbird PPA
Question: I’m using Linux, one of the Ubuntu-derived flavors. And I have Thunderbird 128.14 ESR installed through the Mozilla Team PPA. I would love to know when the ESR version of 140 will be available in this PPA.
Answer: Heather, who works a lot with Linux packaging, takes this question. This PPA isn’t an official distribution channel for Thunderbird, which leads to some confusion. Our official Linux packages are the Snap and flatpak, and the tarball available on our website. A community member named Rico, whose handle is ricotz, maintains this PPA. In the PPA, you can click on his name to learn how to contact him for question like this.
Top 20-ish Mozilla Connect Posts
If you’ve ever posted an idea to make Thunderbird better in a blog comment, social media post, or a SUMO (Mozilla Support) thread, you’ve probably been prompted to share your suggestion on Mozilla Connect. This helps us keep our community feedback in one place, which helps our team prioritize features the community wants!
Where we’re falling short, however, is keeping the community updated on the progress of their suggestions. With a dedicated community team, this is something we can do better! Right now, we’d like to provide a quick status update on the top 20-ish Mozilla Connect posts related to Thunderbird.
Sync
We implemented this in the Daily build of the desktop app last year, using a staging environment for Firefox Sync. But Firefox Sync is called Firefox Sync because it’s built for Firefox. Thunderbird profiles, in comparison, have a lot more data points. This meant we had to build something completely different.
As we started to spin up Thunderbird Pro, we decided it made more sense to have a Thunderbird account that would manage everything, including Sync. Unfortunately, this meant a lot of delays. So Sync is still on our radar, and we hope to have it next year, barring further complications.
GNOME Desktop Integration
Yes, we’re working on this, starting with native desktop notifications. Ideally, we want to be integrated with more Linux desktop environments through expanded native APIs.
Color for Thunderbird Accounts
We already have it! You can access your account settings and customize the colors of each account.
Show full email address on mouse-over
Already have this too. If this doesn’t happen, it’s a bug, and we’d definitely appreciate a report at Bugzilla.
Don’t save passwords as plain text, but rather integrate with the OS storage system
We’re exploring this as both part of our increased native OS integrations and strengthening and security integrations with Thunderbird.
Thunderbird should, by default, have all telemetry as an opt-in option, or have zero telemetry
We’re already adopting opt-in telemetry for an upcoming release of Thunderbird for Android, and we want to make this the default for desktop in the future. While desktop is currently opt-out, Alessandro stresses we only have a few limited telemetry probes for desktop Thunderbird. And those probes can show how the majority of users are using the app and help us avoid bad UX choices.
Thunderbird for iPhone and iPad
In progress!
JMAP Support
Currently in the works for the upcoming iOS release, with plans for support on desktop and Android. Thundermail will also come with JMAP.
Firefox Translate
Exploring this is low on our list right now. This is both because of performance concerns and we want to be very cautious with anything concerning machine learning, which includes translation.
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Our Next State of the Thunder
Anxious to know the rest of the top 20 Mozilla Connect posts? Join us on Tuesday, September 16 at 3 PM Pacific (22:00 UTC)! Find out how to join on the TB Planning mailing list. We think this will be a great season and who knows, by the end of it, we may even have a jingle. See you next time!
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