Thunderbird Revisited

[Moonchild]

I'm not sure what they did with Thunderbird 17, but the UI is horrible... I doubt I'll be putting the time in needed to fix all that up.

I looked at it in more detail and the last sane one is 16.* in the user interface department. I refuse to work on reverting this whole "app menu" craze back to the sane interface I had in v16. I guess they were going to make sure the client got crippled or became undesirable before pulling out?

[BloodMoon]

To return Thunderbird Portable to a sensible UI I've always relied on the xpDefault theme (by Michal Stanke)

more recently however I've additionally had to alter these preferences via the Config Editor....

mail.tabs.drawInTitlebar = false (since v17)
mail.chat.enabled = false (since v15)

PS. Long time reader of these boards, and PaleMoon user. Really appreciate your time and efforts Moonchild!
Mozilla had two really great products until they became star-struck by Chrome.

[BloodMoon]

In addition to my previous post... one can enable the "Menu Bar" via Toolbars then remove the unnecessary "AppMenu" button via the built in "Toolbar Customizations".

[mgagnonlv]

I am not sure about the difference in interface between versions 16 and 17. The most horrible graphic horrors introduced earlier were removed around version 13. The only significant horror introduced in version 17 is "mail.tabs.drawInTitlebar", which I have put to False anyways.

Ideally, other nice graphical improvements would be desired, such as:
– automatically choose whether text of tabs should be displayed in white or black according to background colour (right now, I use a userstyle to increase contrast)
– colour icons: similar to what one can get with NoGlass 0.8 extension (or more traditional icons), but without any effect on the background colour.

Another question for BloodMoon: "mail.chat.enable". Why do you turn it to False? Assuming you don't have any chat account, is there a gain in performance in turning off this preference?

Regards,

[Moonchild]

I'm looking at building a v17 with the "draw in titlebar" crud removed. It might actually be workable.
Also, "aero" has always been something I've been against in the mail client (v16 clearly doesn't use aero glass) so "adaptive" coloring is N/A in MailNews.

[BloodMoon]

@mgagnonlv - I use a dedicated IM client and prefer that unused "Chat" features aren't cluttering the Thunderbird UI. Any performance gains I assume could only be related to network connectivity.

@Moonchild - agree with your thoughts on aero/glass, it is simply unnecessary.

[fred8615]

I'm looking at building a v17 with the "draw in titlebar" crud removed.

Any chance you might also remove something else, say, the Usenet portion of Thunderbird? Nobody really uses Usenet for text anymore. It pretty much only remains in existence for binaries. And when it comes to binaries, TB, to put it bluntly, sucks! It doesn't do yEnc, which most binaries are encoded in now, and worst of all it doesn't combine multi-part posts. That's the real killer. TB as an e-mail client is fantastic. But in order to use it you have accept a more or less worthless additional functionality that most people probably don't even use, and can't use fully even if they do.

I would love to have a 64 bit e-mail *only* client.

[dark_moon]

Yeah, a new version would be awesome.

[Moonchild]

Yeah, a new version would be awesome.

A new version is on the "to-do" list.

As for usenet: people still use it for discussions - in fact, most public usenet servers block binaries
Just because people abuse it for file sharing doesn't mean its intended purpose is dead.

[fred8615]

A new version is on the "to-do" list.

Cool! Right now I'm using the 64 bit 16.0.1, even though it's almost a year old.

As for usenet: people still use it for discussions - in fact, most public usenet servers block binaries

I think they do that as much if not more for bandwidth than anything else.

Just because people abuse it for file sharing doesn't mean its intended purpose is dead.

I was going by personal experience. Nearly all the text groups I used to read were dying or dead already. So I quit entirely, and thus see the Usenet portion as a waste of space and resources.

[Moonchild]

I think they do that as much if not more for bandwidth than anything else.

Bandwidth is a consideration, sure, but if the service minus binaries would be useless, why would operators still run a usenet server at all? I think if there was no other real use for it than the use they are blocking (binaries), that there would be no reason at all to dedicate a server and resources to usenet at all, and they would just shut down

[nevadacrab]

Is a new version on the way? I ask because 16.1 has stopped working for me.
Background: I accidentally opened Thunderbird. It worked normally (except it does not automatically expand local folders). I closed Thunderbird and opened MailNews. It displayed none of my folders. Also (don't know if this is important), rather than displaying "MailNews" at the top, I see "-MailNews" (with an added "-").
Did some "upgrade" (now 24.0.1) of Thunderbird mess up my MailNews? I tried re-installing MailNews, both over my current installation and fresh (after uninstalling MailNews).
I can use Thunderbird but prefer MailNews. Any advice?

Also - I have MailNews on a second computer, running with no problem. I have Thunderbird on that computer also, but haven't used it in some time.

[nevadacrab]

Is this thread being monitored? My last post was on the 1st. I know there have been problems with the forum, but several other threads have been updated, while this one seems unaddressed. I also know that Mailnews is a low priority project and I am getting along with Thunderbird, but I have become spoiled by PaleMoon products. At least let me know this has been read. Thank you.

[Moonchild]

Later versions of software may perform database upgrades and changes. there's no guarantee that you can just swap back and forth between different major versions. Why did you use Thunderbird anyway when you had MailNews running?

I haven't had time to look at the mail client. The builds of v17 and later make it difficult to keep a sane interface as it's been "half-australisified" and is being stubborn when trying to restore a sane default interface set. I may be able to get a new build out based on 24ESR, but it's not trivial.

[nevadacrab]

Thank you for your answer.
I did not have Mailnews open, and I accidentally opened Thunderbird (from a drop-down menu). I have since disabled TB's "auto-update" feature.
I can get along for the time being with TB. In the meanwhile I will watch for a new Mailnews. Thanks for all your efforts.

[nevadacrab]

A thought:
If I saved the contents of my Thunderbird profile folder, Uninstalled TB, Re-installed Mailnews, and transferred the contents of my profile folder back, would I get Mailnews as I had it before? Would I save all of my email?
(I have Revo uninstaller, so I could do a thorough uninstall of Thunderbird).

[Moonchild]

No, a lot of the profile contents (including mail) is stored in database formats. If the databases have been updated, then they simply can't be read anymore by the older version. Copying the new format database back to the older program simply won't work. the only way you can recover is exporting all your mail/address data and re-importing it. Database upgrades are one-way.

[nevadacrab]

Alright then, I'll just Use TB till the next version of Mailnews is released. Thank you,

[Moonchild]

New product, new thread - will be closing this thread; further discussion please on the new FossaMail topic!
http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3460