[HN Gopher] Thunderbird Supernova Preview: The New Calendar Design
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Thunderbird Supernova Preview: The New Calendar Design
Author : HieronymusBosch
Score : 247 points
Date : 2022-11-09 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.thunderbird.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.thunderbird.net)
| ajmarsh wrote:
| I wonder if it's some of the same work BetterBird is doing?
|
| https://www.betterbird.eu/
| linker3000 wrote:
| Just please please please fix the calendar so that online meeting
| links make it properly into the notes section of appointments.
| defulmere wrote:
| The only new Thunderbird calendar feature I'd like to see it the
| ability to turn off calendaring in Thunderbird.
| paxys wrote:
| Very relieved to see that the new calendar looks...like a
| calendar. It is definitely not an area that needs some radical
| redesign. Incremental quality changes are the way to go.
| clircle wrote:
| Really looking forward to the firefox sync integration!
| vondur wrote:
| I'd really like it work with Office365 out of the box. I know
| there are add-ons that do it (Owl being one of them), but native
| support just like the support for Gmail accounts would be great.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Looks nice to me, granted I have not been following Thunderbird,
| as I believed it to be dead[0] over a decade ago. Its nice to see
| that the community has keep it alive!
|
| For Thunderbird users, do you find it interfaces well with Google
| Workspace Email (Gmail) and Calendar? I prefer native clients to
| their interface usually but Apple Mail isn't the greatest so I've
| been using the web interface and I don't particularly enjoy it.
|
| I use BusyCal for calendar and I like it, but I'd love to have it
| in a "suite" like this, just makes things easier.
|
| [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/6/3142046/mozilla-halt-
| furth...
| RachelF wrote:
| I've used Thunderbird with GMail for years, using POP, not
| IMAP.
|
| It works well. However, in the last few months, the GMail Spam
| filtering service has stopped working with POP. Items marked as
| Spam in GMail still get downloaded.
|
| I guess Google wants us to use their web-client.
| jraph wrote:
| What are the benefits of using POP instead of IMAP?
| warent wrote:
| Presumably privacy and security related. IMAP keeps a copy
| of the email on the server, while POP deletes it
| brnt wrote:
| Pop can be configured either way, but what I wonder:
| doesn't this presume you only ever use one client? For me
| that would not work at all. Unless you sync mail between
| your clients another way, then I am all ears.
| gsich wrote:
| No, because you can keep the mail on the server. But you
| said that yourself.
| Grazester wrote:
| I learnt this the hard way in the early days of
| interneting. Lost all my emails after an IBM hard drive
| died on me and my email client was using POP to retrieve
| mail.
| gw98 wrote:
| DeskStar? I also lost everything to one of those drives.
|
| Fortunately I had (some) backups
| kevincox wrote:
| The only problem I've had with GMail via Thunderbird is that
| some orgs block IMAP access.
|
| I've been quite happy with Calendar as well. You don't get
| real-time sync and all of the Google Calendar goodies like
| viewing other people's schedules, adding Google Meet links
| easily, room booking and probably more are missing. But I've
| found that using it as mostly view-only works well, then I
| schedule meetings in the webUI.
|
| That being said the calendar interface has been fairly awkward
| in the past, so I'm really excited about this new version. I'm
| sure there will be some rough edges but if they can fix the
| alignment of events with respect to start+end time and make the
| view/edit dialog less awful it would be a huge win.
| pachico wrote:
| This is an honest question from someone who didn't use nor
| install Thunderbird for over a decade.
|
| Is it better than Google calendar? I mean, am I missing a lot by
| using the Google apps as they are from a browser? I hope I am, to
| be honest, so I can give it a try.
| gombosg wrote:
| One advantage is that it supports displaying events from
| multiple Google accounts at the same time. :)
| pachico wrote:
| Weirdly enough, this is what happens in mobile too but not in
| desktop, for reasons that are unknown to me.
| Animats wrote:
| Do not want mail program talking to some third party cloud
| service.
| rexreed wrote:
| Such as an email server (POP, IMAP, SMTP)?
| codeulike wrote:
| Ouch
| Animats wrote:
| That's the second party. Some outside cloud provider
| connected to the mail client brings in a third party.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I thought the user was the second party.
|
| Anyway, assuming you're talking about Sync, I find it quite
| helpful for the browser so have no issues with it being
| extended to Thunderbird. It is, as I understand it, always
| optional, and I even believe it's possible to self-host it,
| though I haven't tried.
| Certhas wrote:
| I do as long as it's end to end encrypted.
|
| That said it would be even better if I could sync through my
| own Nextcloud instance instead of through Mozilla Sync.
| sureglymop wrote:
| You can? I sync multiple nextcloud accounts with Thunderbird.
| Calendars and contacts with caldav and carddav.
| [deleted]
| awill wrote:
| This looks very good, but it's still a long way away.....
| zahllos wrote:
| Be nice of them to fix outstanding bugs, like the
| nondeterministic turing machine that is doing anything with
| certificates in Thunderbird e.g.
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1481969
|
| The javascript disaster that is the compose window refuses to
| find certificates that NSS finds, because... something to do with
| intermediate certificates.
|
| Signing messages is a feature thunderbird has had forever, yet is
| unstable and nobody is dealing with the obvious open issue in
| their bug tracker, open since v60 and ignored.
|
| Honestly what I want from an email client is this, plus cardbook
| (the default address book can't talk carddav, what century are we
| in), plus calendars. That's it. That's what I want a mail client
| to do.
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| This would look a lot better with 'real' event titles. The top
| level picture has "Event title" repeated about a million times,
| so everything looks the same; in practice events are much more
| distinct. The later ones are slightly better, at least.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| > 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).
|
| Phew. I was a bit worried that tab support was going away because
| the UI in the screenshots with the giant search bar in the top
| toolbar doesn't seem conducive for it. I'm curious to see how
| tabs look/work with the new UI.
| INeedMoreRam wrote:
| I use Thunderbird exclusively for personal accounts and Outlook
| for my employer.
|
| Very excited to see Thunderbird calendar being modernized since I
| feel like it's always been a step behind Outlook's.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Since I already have Thunderbird, I'm starting to wonder if I
| should swap off VueMinder for Thunderbird's calendar. Anyone used
| both and thoughts?
| donatj wrote:
| What are the odds of this coming to a standalone Sunbird client?
|
| I've never really liked my email and calendar being in the same
| app. Especially not the same window, makes cross referencing a
| PITA. One of the things Apple gets right.
| java-man wrote:
| the grid lines seem too intense (dark). please make them the same
| intensity as the calendar border in the top left corner.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| While it looks nice, can I please not have another problematic
| Thunderbird update, please.
|
| I am still on 91.13.1 because 102 is causing various issues, most
| (maybe all) of them already reported.
| INeedMoreRam wrote:
| I upgraded to v102 and have had zero issues.
|
| In fact, it runs perfectly on my Kubuntu machine.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Which experience does nothing to help the poster you're
| replying to.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I think it's meant to help _other_ readers of the post.
| Krasnol wrote:
| How could it help if OP didn't outline any issues he might
| have?
|
| Both comments are the same thing just from opposite sites.
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| Everytime an application I use daily gets a redesign, my palms
| gets sweaty
| majkinetor wrote:
| Great update. Its awesome to see sync is getting implemented,
| that makes on-boarding on new machine trivial. Calendar needed
| this too.
| extr0pian wrote:
| I've been using Thunderbird for both work email and personal
| email (via Protonmail Bridge) for a few years now. I'm really
| stoked to see it's getting the attention it deserves.
| RachelF wrote:
| Yes, it is great.
|
| I have to use Outlook 365 and am surprised how much better
| Thunderbird is than Microsoft's offering.
| zerr wrote:
| Are they using vanilla JavaScript?
| gespadas wrote:
| I can't wait !!!
| notesinthefield wrote:
| Do CardDAV and CalDAV work natively yet?
| gespadas wrote:
| They work already! When I add my email account, Thunderbird
| automatically configure my email, my calendar, my contacts, my
| tasks... all from my server. I even don't have to configure
| them each one manually.
| beanaroo wrote:
| This looks great!
|
| One minor thing I'd like to see, and I don't know if this is to
| do with the underlying calendaring spec, is the differentiation
| of physical location and online meeting.
|
| Some events may have both and I have found the "Join" buttons on
| desktop notifications for Outlook/Teams to be pretty convenient.
| darkwater wrote:
| Wow, super neat! I use TB as my daily driver but for calendar I
| resort to the GCal webview because is almost unusable, especially
| the "view event" window which is also an "edit event" window and
| that is very visually cluttered.
|
| Can't wait to test this on my laptop!
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| This doesn't look all that different to the existing calendar
| really. They have moved the events section to the side instead of
| at the top and changed some of the sectioning going for the
| material view where the distinction between elements is just
| replaced with background coloured space. I am largely indifferent
| to this change, it doesn't look like its big or important or
| functionally impressive in any way. I am not going to collapse
| the weekends and it seems to be the only other new feature being
| offered is messing with colours for categories. I suspect most
| people use calendars for categories already, this may be an
| improvement for some people but its really not worth trying to
| merge calendars for this purpose as an existing user unless they
| make that easy (which there is no suggestion they will).
|
| Change for fashion sake and nothing that users have been asking
| for, sums up all development out of Mozilla at the moment.
| Accacin wrote:
| It's easy to say that, but I've had friends and colleagues not
| want to use Thunderbird because of it's UI. Honestly I think
| this would be enough to make them take a second look.
|
| The fact that you are indifferent (as am I) is a _good_ thing
| as far as I 'm concerned.. They've made it more attractive to
| new users and also haven't alienated their existing user base.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| There are so many things that could be better though that
| users actually request. Fixing the whole event -> View ->
| Edit that appears in windows (instead of tabs like emails)
| would be nice. Being able to select drag when you want to
| view as well since the top left calendar becomes largely
| useless. They could clear up the start/end display so events
| not crossing days didn't display the date twice. Would be
| nice to be able to review an event quickly just by clicking
| on it once instead of having to open and close a window,
| summaries have too much burden to them to appear modern.
|
| Its a really old UI style from the 1990s and I am not seeing
| anything in this suggesting that will change. People will
| very quickly realise it does not behave in a modern way once
| they try to use it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I wonder if people reporting issues is a negative signal
| for the priority of fixing them?
|
| Like if someone cares enough to report an issue, they're
| probably invested and will stick around. If they didn't
| care, they wouldn't bother to report the issue.
|
| You need to fix the issues that cause people to just give
| up and go elsewhere - the issues that don't get opened!
| yakubin wrote:
| The last redesign (the mail client, not the calendar) is what
| prompted me to finally abandon it. Each redesign in Mozilla
| products, be it Firefox or Thunderbird, seems to make them
| worse. At that point I don't know of a good GUI mail client for
| Linux[1]. I'm spending more and more time on Mac these days,
| where in the case of mail clients I'm using Mailmate and am
| very satisfied.
| malfist wrote:
| I completely disagree with you. Should we go back to 90s
| website design just because users didn't ask for modern design
| practices?
|
| Thunderbird's calendar redesign brings it in line with what
| customers expect from a calendar app and make it more user
| friendly.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > I completely disagree with you. Should we go back to 90s
| website design just because users didn't ask for modern
| design practices?
|
| So, a bunch of text with the content you want/need and a
| photo?
|
| And we replaced that with multi-megabyte javascripts,
| autoplaying video ads, floating bars, breaking infinite
| scroll, breaking ajax, refresh that returns you to another
| page, not-working "back" buttons, popups asking to signup for
| a newsletter, to register, to fill out a survey, cookie
| popups, a bunch of sliders to disable all of them,
| notificiation request popups, location requests, etc?
|
| Yeah, i like even this:
|
| https://www.spacejam.com/1996/
|
| a lot more than:
|
| https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/
| tomtheelder wrote:
| There were plenty of terrible, unusable sites in the 90s,
| and there are tons of great ones now. People look back with
| crazy rose tinted glasses at these sorts of things.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| cnn.com is ~23 megabytes today.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk is 8.5mb, two bottom bars
| (accept cookies and login/signin), and after scrolling a
| page and a half down, i get a popup forcing me to
| login/signup.
|
| Even relatively empty google is 1.8mb
|
| This page (HN) is one of the few, that are not bloated,
| and allow you to read stuff without giving your personal
| data.
| bashinator wrote:
| Please, yes.
| gsich wrote:
| Is Thunderbird a website?
|
| SerenityOS has a better UI than all other Linux
| distributions. 90s inspired. So yes I guess?
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Only if you are nostalgic for that sort of thing. It's not
| actually any better to use than basically any other distro
| I've tried.
| gsich wrote:
| Not necessarily. The space waste in "modern" distros is
| insane.
|
| Not only Linux DEs are to blame here, Windows does it to
| (sometimes). Probably all stemming form the handicapped
| mobile interfaces.
| pmontra wrote:
| > Should we go back to 90s website design just because users
| didn't ask for modern design practices?
|
| At least for news sites yes, please.
| tintor wrote:
| news.ycombinator.com uses 90s website design and works
| great
| torstenvl wrote:
| Yes. Emphatically yes.
|
| https://isp.netscape.com/
| Finnucane wrote:
| >Should we go back to 90s website design
|
| You mean, like the one we are all reading right now?
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| Oh god, can we? Please?
| krick wrote:
| Yeah. Honestly, I guess I cannot speak as a Thunderbird
| calendar user anymore, but precisely for that reason: it sucked
| so much compared to ubiqotuos Google Calendar, that I somehow
| couldn't justify using it anymore. Then I stopped using Google
| too, but I use desktop email client much less anyways now.
|
| I'm not sure what really changed here. Maybe I should try and
| see it, but... really, I wish they'd just copied Google
| Calendar UI completely, making it an offline copy. Surely it's
| not perfect, but it was so, so much more fluent the last I
| tried. I mean, for me, it kinda did everything I wanted to, the
| only problem I ever had with it was that it's Google.
| brnt wrote:
| I for one am glad with this visual cleanup. Thunderbird looks
| cluttered, and at least for me most of the clutter isn't
| useful, unlike certain other very busy, dense interfaces.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Thunderbird's current UI makes it look like abandonware. It
| needed a UI refresh. The fact that they've managed to do this
| and make it look fresh while still not changing the workflow
| and the functionality drastically, so it won't trouble long
| time users, is a great achievement.
| pmontra wrote:
| I can keep working with the current (and past) Thunderbird
| interface forever. Some software is done and it needs updates
| only to keep up with changes to the OS and to protocols.
| Thunderbird is one of them IMHO.
|
| I don't even use IMAP, nor calendar. I download from POP3
| servers and use the calendar on my phone instead.
| Certhas wrote:
| So you're not the target audience for this at all then.
|
| If they get to a point where Android and Desktop
| Thunderbird have email, contacts and calendars synced, with
| a UI that's as nice as this mock it will be fantastic.
| atoav wrote:
| It certainly doesn't feel like it tho.
| TylerE wrote:
| Isn't, it, basically? Isn't 99.9% of the world using some
| sort of webmail/office/apple mail?
| acabal wrote:
| I have to disagree. I've been using Thunderbird for well over
| a decade and I appreciate that the UI hasn't changed much. As
| I get older I much prefer software that changes slowly and
| incrementally, if at all - and sometimes _no_ change is good,
| especially in the UI.
|
| UI is the part of software most prone to fashion. Fashions go
| in and out, and UIs and their usability goes in and out with
| them. I would rather stick to a usable, well-known UI than
| have TB be trendy and strictly worse, like the "flat
| everything" fad, or the "you don't need options" fad, or the
| "header bar" fad.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| OP said the workflow hasn't changed, only the aesthetics.
| Are you saying TB's workflow _has_ changed, not just the
| aesthetics?
| teirce wrote:
| I specifically have not picked up Thunderbird as a local
| mail client because it looked like Mozilla would drop it at
| any moment.
| fikama wrote:
| I am not sure if you aware but Thunderbird was indeed
| droped by mozilla and now it is independent project, with
| quite a lot money from donations so they seem to be good
| for the future
| teirce wrote:
| That's right, it had been so long that I had forgotten.
| Thanks for reminding me.
|
| Edit: Taking a further look into the history, it looks
| like the project has been under a lot of turmoil WRT
| shutting down and being revived. Explains why I have
| avoided it for so long.
| lavventura wrote:
| In future it would be cool to see integration of Emacs's org-mode
| agenda
| coolwulf wrote:
| In principal, you could syn your org-mode agenda with Google
| calendar then view it in Thunderbird
| https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-google-sync.html
| kayson wrote:
| Really excited about the addition of FFSync, but man do I wish
| they would properly open source the backend so I can self-host
| it. (There is some code available online but it doesn't really
| work)
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| I really really like that Thunderbird is getting maintenance and
| new features even when I thought it had been abandoned by Mozilla
| years ago. Though I'm currently using Mail.app (and having used
| web mail before), I'm curious what happened, who are the
| developers, how the funding is going, what the relation to Moz
| is, and whether I should switch?
| rendx wrote:
| https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
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(page generated 2022-11-09 23:00 UTC)