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Help me understand Mozilla philosophy

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What is going on with the designers of Thunderbird, and Firefox?

There was a time when they had these programs working real well, they were user friendly and intuitive.

Lately, with each release, more and more functionality seems to be push off into "add-ons"

For example, in Thunderbird the "Mark" button toggled the email as read or not and there was a little down arrow to the right I could click with more options.

Now, the little arrow button is still there, but it is always a drop down menu, so to mark a message as read I must make 2 clicks. I asked for help, but got a response to "try these addons"

There have been similar changes to Firefox.

Are the designers getting lazy and relying in third party people to do their work for them? Perhaps the new breed of designers are simply unable to it include working solutions in future versions? Is there a management decree to stop making these programs good, and off load these features to the end user (now I have to spend a lot of time researching a solution, and installing an add on that may or may not do what I want)

Perhaps there is some financial incentive, I guess it saves Mozilla labor costs of they can get volunteer third party people to do their work for them.

Thoughts?

Mark.

What is going on with the designers of Thunderbird, and Firefox? There was a time when they had these programs working real well, they were user friendly and intuitive. Lately, with each release, more and more functionality seems to be push off into "add-ons" For example, in Thunderbird the "Mark" button toggled the email as read or not and there was a little down arrow to the right I could click with more options. Now, the little arrow button is still there, but it is always a drop down menu, so to mark a message as read I must make 2 clicks. I asked for help, but got a response to "try these addons" There have been similar changes to Firefox. Are the designers getting lazy and relying in third party people to do their work for them? Perhaps the new breed of designers are simply unable to it include working solutions in future versions? Is there a management decree to stop making these programs good, and off load these features to the end user (now I have to spend a lot of time researching a solution, and installing an add on that may or may not do what I want) Perhaps there is some financial incentive, I guess it saves Mozilla labor costs of they can get volunteer third party people to do their work for them. Thoughts? Mark.

All Replies (3)

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I think a more general statement of your question is:

Why is everything getting simplified/hidden in UI design? Is it because people in focus groups do not like clutter and cannot visually process a lot of controls at the same time, or is it the more general trend toward mobile-first design and "modern" theming, or a combination of both.

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1. Firefox and Thunderbird are different companies and entirely different development teams.

2. There is actually a ton of good work happening in Thunderbird desktop the past few years, in a very professional manner. https://blog.thunderbird.net/category/thunderbird/ covers much of it.

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Hello

In addition

Re-implement spin button for Mark button in unified toolbar https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1843654

For information purposes Currently Thunderbird bêta https://www.youtube.com/embed/KtekUoF3Pxk

Thunderbird Monthly Development Digest: April 2024 https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/05/thunderbird-monthly-development-digest-april-2024

For information purposes https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/simplify-email-context-menu/idc-p/56964