Desktop Settings: Removing technical jargon

Looks very promising to me and adresses a lot of my concerns with TB as a rather new user. Working for a middle sized NGO we’re on the brink of moving from Outlook to TB. Poor user experience with settings is one of my main concerns for this. It definitly needs cleaning up and a more streamlined approach.
So keep up the good work and all the best to team Toto!

Hi Flo, thank you so much for the feedback! We will be doing another round of research soon and we would love to get your thoughts on the new way we want to group information to make it easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for.

Definitely looking forward to seeing the improvements. I get a lot of use out of Thunderbird at work and at home, on Windows and on Linux. I know I found the scheduling menu to be confusing. I’m hoping to see that get some love as well. I’m also looking forward to improvements to the Exchange compatibility. Currently, I’m having to use The Owl extension to get all of the features I need at work.

I’m wondering if usability tests have been done on the use of toggle buttons. I never understand if they’re on or off. Check boxes seem to be more obvious to use. I know that toggles seem more modern but they seem to be more complex to use.

Apart from that this looks very interesting thanks for sharing.

A while ago I read a post saying that you should very rarely use toggle buttons or checkboxes. Instead you should use radio buttons with each option spelled out.

So instead of:

[ x ] Show senders’ profile pictures.

You have:

( * ) Show senders’ profile pictures.
( ) Only show senders’ names.

This makes it clear what the consequences of the different states of the setting are, and also makes it easy to expand if you ever need a third option (e.g. “Show profile pictures for contacts only.”)

Thank you both for bringing this up! This is an important UX challenge and something we are going to address in the next phase.

Toggle switches can easily become confusing if it isn’t obvious whether a setting is currently ON/ OFF (labels can help here). Checkboxes are great because their checked state is universally understood for selecting multiple choices. Radio buttons (spelling out each option) are super helpful when a setting’s consequences aren’t obvious or when there are 2-5 choices. The only tradeoff is that spelling out every single setting can make a page feel long and overwhelming to scan.

In this first pass, we focused strictly on rewriting the text to remove jargon. In our upcoming navigation and layout phase, we’ll be thinking through these exact controls to make sure every setting clearly shows what it does and the implications.

I have lousy vision and need high contrast dark mode with no bright decorations.

I see:
—
Message reader style:

Enable dark message mode
Force the message body to follow dark themes

Show dark message mode toggle
Show a toggle in the message header to quickly disable the dark message mode

Theme: Thunderbird
—

None of those options are nearly as helpful as the Dark Reader extension, which I use full time. But they do seem to interact with it…

My constant problem is that links in messages are unreadably dim. If I manually select them, they match the adjacent text. But if I select the full text or use Ctrl+A, the background gets lighter – which makes the text harder to read. But the images get dimmer, which is good for me.

Maybe your team could take a look at this?

Since the ‘Desktop Calendar: A Design Journey’ post has closed comments, please move my comment there:

I’m delighted to see the calendar modernized with genuine attention to user requests. The design looks excellent already!

I’d like to share some suggestions for improving usability:

Productivity Features (these could attract more users too)
* Display event duration on hover
* Add a search function with a counter showing the number of events found (similar to the mail view) and total time (This could easily summarize how much time is spent on different recurring events.), plus optional statistics
* Implement a Gantt chart view

Usability Improvements
* Enable inline editing of existing events without requiring an additional click
* Add an option to start an event immediately, not just at the next hour
* Simplify event copying by defaulting to the current calendar, or use a submenu with all calendars including the original (similar to moving emails between folders)
* Ensure mobile and small device compatibility

I look forward to seeing these features implemented and hearing community feedback.

What about text boxes that appear after you hover over an option or click on a “?” next to an option that spells out exactly what is meant, when there could be reasonable doubt for users?

Hi Guys,

By following my changes to Thunderbird ‘Minumise’ . ‘SIZE – RESIZE’, ‘CLOSE’ menu will allow the trial of aligning touch screen sensitive points and touch points. Starting at the point vertical against the left hand side. Move out 10mm and drop down 10mm. this point must align exactly draw a red line with a texta pen. Repeat at 10mm intervals, Then repeat at 10mm intervals down the screen. Load Thunderbird and if the mouse target is exactly at the center point of the red squares drawn a touch with a digit will result in the touch working and the desired action taken. Please move all mouse targets to align with red touch targets repeat for every menu and
function key. Please change all static values for touch points to align with red marked points. The result will be a complete touch enabled Thunderbird.

I hope this helps as I only have touch enabled laptops. Ron (Rotten Ronnie) .
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