Is this the new Thunderbird Logo? And Other Design Ideas for Thunderbird.
It’s the beginning of a new age for Thunderbird, with the team working on implementing changes grabbed from Firefox’s Photon visual refresh (and other “theme” updates). As we prepare for this beautiful new world for Thunderbird, we are discussing what the future will look like for version 59 (the next Extended Support Release, “ESR”), and beyond.
Of course, Thunderbird is not some commercial project where the direction is set from on high. Instead, we are a community of maintainers, developers, and users that set our own course and so oftentimes big changes come slowly as a consensus is reached and once that happens we focus our collective energy and work.
Lately, however, the project has been called “stagnant” and other clients have gained popularity with spearheading experiments in what a mail client looks like and how it behaves. Not to be outdone, I’ve collected some ideas that I’ve seen, and even asked some friends to share their ideas for what the future of Thunderbird looks like. But as a refresher, here is what you can expect from Thunderbird 59:
Notice that with Thunderbird 59 (above), the tabs have moved into the title bar, much like with the most recent release of Firefox. In addition, various small changes like icons and and the placement of other elements of the UI have been tweaked. The result are what I consider to be great, iterative changes, that make the experience a better one without alienating users who like Thunderbird’s existing layout.
With the new look, a new logo has been proposed:
Ideas for the future
Even though we are seeing changes with the UX/UI in the upcoming 59 release. I believe that we should have one eye on the present, and one on the future. Many agree that Thunderbird is a very stable Email client, however there is a perception that it has gone “stale”. Which I think is a reasonable response. The results of a survey that I ran recently of nearly 200 Thunderbird users featured many pieces of feedback that spoke about the design needing to be updated.
So I tracked down ideas, and asked friends what they thought of the current layout, and what I got in response was interesting enough that I wanted to share it. I ask that anyone looking at these ideas do so knowing that these are volunteers who work as UX or UI designers, sharing their own personal ideas about Thunderbird’s future look:
Friend Cale Lares, you can see his portfolio here, responded to my question about what he thought of Thunderbird’s current look rather quickly with ideas to what he thought the future of Email looked like:
In the two mockups above, you can see that the layout is quite different than what we currently expect from Thunderbird. The top left-hand corner features the accounts, with the left-hand side below that featuring an “Inbox” button, a “Sent” button, and a “Draft” button for viewing their respective folders. Below all of that in the bottom left-hand corner is a “Compose” button.
Still within the left hand column, you see the list of Email messages that have been received, they are consolidated into “conversations” the number of which being denoted by the grayed-out number next to an entry in the list. Finally you have a time-stamp and a preview of the most recent message in the conversation.
On the right-hand side you have the area where the Email is read, in the top-right hand corner you can pick which “view”, Classic or Chat-style, that you’d like to use when reading the content. Then, at the bottom you have the area where you can compose a reply.
Here is a breakdown of individual components (descriptions in the captions below them):
Finally, we have a nice little touch of functionality in the mockup below (which could integrate Pocket alongside existing RSS feed integration).
Other friends with the UX/UI background asked to comment on the current state of Thunderbird said that there is no lack of functionality in the application, but that there is a lot happening everywhere in the application: from complex menus to great features that just happen to be buried in obscure places.
I don’t think that we need to undertake any drastic changes at the moment, changes can be made iteratively over time. But I wanted to take the time to offer one vision for the future of the look and feel of Thunderbird.
If you are interested in discussing design, or have ideas of your own you can join the IRC channel #maildev on irc.mozilla.org — or you can join via Matrix/Riot here: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#thunderbirddev:matrix.org — you can also Email me directly at ryan@thunderbird.net for advice on how to share your ideas.
