Thunderbird:Thunderbird 3 Possible Enhancements
More flexible address book
- Variant number of email addresses, phone numbers and instant messaging nicks/addresses
- Integration of the birthday and anniversary fields into the GUI and the calendar (see MoreFunctionsForAddressBook and ThunderBirthDay)
Ingomueller.net 13:28, 29 January 2008 (PST)
See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424643
Network sharing of addressbook and calendar
- File based addressbook sharing: Allow users to connect to an addressbook on a network share. Editing LDAP entries would also be nice.
- File based Calendar sharing: WebDav is good, but currently broken in Lightning .7, SMB's would like an easy way to share Calendars.
Requested new feature: bi-directional resizing of attached photos
I do computer consulting, and support senior citizens who are trying to use E-mail. They have endless trouble with sending photos by E-mail. A typical problem is that they attach a high resolution jpg to an E-mail, and don't understand why it takes so long to send, and why their recipients say that they can only see a corner of the image. There are various applications which will resize a photo so that it is suitable for E-mail, then call up the default mail program and start a new E-mail with the image attached. However, if you have already started an E-mail and want to attach a resized version of a large image, you have to separately resize the image with another program, save the image to disk, then find and attach the resized image. I have found many people have a lot of difficulty learning this procedure. I also find people who can resize the image, but then save with the same file name, overwriting their original high resolution version on the hard drive, essentially losing their original photo.
What I would like to see is a function which monitors what attachments are made to an E-mail. If the attachment is a high resolution jpg, an pop-up box would say something like:
"The selected image is too big to be fully displayed inside E-mails. Would you like to send a resized image which is readily viewed on most computer screens? (yes/no)"
For the inverse of this, when reading mail I would like to see Thunderbird automatically scale attached high resolution images so that the whole image is seen on the screen. This is already working in Firefox, where large images are rescaled to fit, and the the unscaled image is available by clicking with the mouse.
HTML writing tools GUI redesign
The way tools are distributed in TB2.x is quite annoying and makes creating HTML mail a real pain. I think that most users do not really use more advanced HTML mail features because its not easy and obvious how to use them
Some particular things I would do:
- Move format tools from top menu to toolbar just above mail text area
- redesign right click context menu of mail text area to support some basic format settings
- redesign current editing toolbar with regard to new format toolbar or some other tools layout
- the toolbar/toolbars should show show current formatting of cursor position in text
OS X address book integration
It would be nice if TB could access the address book on OS X. Read-only access would be enough. Just so that, when typing the email address, TB can complete the addresses from the OS X address book.
Enhanded format=flowed delsp=yes
There is currently a quirk when sending text/plain, format=flowed messages: It works great when sending Western text. However, many Asian languages do not contain spaces. Thunderbird, when creating format=flowed messages, inserts a soft line break (a space-newline sequence). The resulting flowed text then has a spurious space, because format=flowed deltes the newline form the soft line break, but not the extra space. The cure for this would be to send format=flowed, delsp=yes text, so that Thunderbird removes the extra space. Thunderbird already handles format=flowed, delsp=yes text correctly for incoming mail, but it seems that Thunderbird cannot generate such messages. Details are in RFC 3676.
It is easy to see if the user replied or forwarded a message by the small arrow icons. However, there is no easy way to switch directly to the reply or to see to whom the message has been forwarded. Only one add-on addressed this problem ReplySearch, however the solution is not very convenient as for its speed and user interface. It would be great to have an option to be able to search linked messages (Outlook express was doing this very well, probably thanks to the fact that the mail was stored in a database structure).
Global Message Filters
It would be great if it were possible to set up global message filters that affected all accounts in Thunderbird. That would help with managing spam and newsletters. These filters could have generic options only such as mark messages read or move them to the trash folder.
Backup
Anyone who uses Thunderbird for business or uses it for any important emails considers backing up their emails important. Ideally this functionality would allow for accounts to be backed up individually, multiple but not all accounts, and all accounts at once. Restore would offer the same functionality.
- This functionality is currently available by the MozBackup
extensionutility. (sorry for the typo...)
- It's not actually an extension. It's a third party standalone tool. Ideally this functionality would be available in Thunderbird by default and would expand upon the functionality Mozbackup currently offers. Particularly the ability to backup/restore individual mail accounts.
Check default settings if they are still appropriate
A major revision is always a good opportunity to change things like default settings that have been around for a long time. A good example for this is the forwarding mode, which is "as attachment" by default and is cause for many problems and inquiries in user forums, especially for new users just migrating from other e-mail clients. Changing it to "inline" would resolve many issues. There are most likely other settings for which the default was set a long time ago, where it appeared to be a good choice at that time, but where it may no longer be the best choice today.
Searching for unread messages
Allow to search for unread messages (e.g. to create a virtual folder with all unread messages). Today it is only allowed to search the messages with the status "answered", "read", "new" or "forwarded" but not with the status "unread".
Profile switcher
Integrate a profile switcher. It is too complicated for inexperienced users to find out how to create a new profile and even more complicated to make icons with 'thunderbird.exe -P "username"'. A profile switcher in the file menu of thunderbird will allow Mama and Papa to create and switch profiles easily. (The very old Outlook Express has such a feature.) https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html made a prototype add-on. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245070 (and then also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374322 )
Convert to UTF-8 automatically
It is very, very annoying for users (e.g. my inexperienced colleagues) that they were often asked for "Convert to UTF-8?" DURING writing an e-mail or when sending. There should be an option to automate this procedure (always convert without prompting, aks before convert, or never convert) so that nobody has to answer this question over and over again. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414657 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410333
TNEF/dat attachments
It should be possible to open TNEF/dat mail attachments from Outlook in Thunderbird without the need of any third party program like Fentun. This is an usability issue.
See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77811
Reading Outlook MSG files
It should be possible to open/read mails from Outlook saved as MSG files on hard disk. Switchers from Outlook to Thunderbird have maybe saved many e-mails in the Outlook MSG file format (especially in companies). For that it's impossible to read such meassages without Outlook. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297760
Commas in e-mail adresses
Commas in e-mail adresses shouldn't force Thunderbird to split this adresses into several parts. When I read old Outlook messages I often see things like this: "Hauser, Frank <frank@hauser.bla>" displayed as "Hauser" and "Frank <frank@hauser.bla>" separately. I haven't found a bug but this related one https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242693
Self-adaptable Search Folders
A Search Folder lose a selected folder when it's renamed. Renaming of a folder shouldn't result in deleting in the selected folder list. The new name should be recogniced and automatically adopted. Also it is bad usability that sub-folders of selected folders weren't added to the list. If you create a new sub-folder of a folder which is already part of one or more Search Folder(s), a prompt should ask the user if the new sub folder can be added to the selected folder list(s). Or a checkbox should be added to the Edit Saved Search Properties: Automatically add sub-folders of selected folders.
Print output with name of receiver
When various people print their mails at one printer (e.g. at work or at home when separate profiles exist) it is very useful to see the receiver on top of the print output in big letters like Outlook do. So everyone who take the printouts can see at a glance to whom the printout belongs to. https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html made the add-on "PrintingTools" which allows a better visible header. But this add-on adds a second "File" menu entry for "extended print options" which isn't useful and user-friendly.
The Exit (ctrl+Q) menu entry in the Adress Book is confusing. Only the Close (ctrl+W) menu entry is enough. People tend to click Exit instead of Close accidentally and close the whole Thunderbird application instead of the Adress Book.
GUI to create/edit signature(s)
For inexperienced people now it is almost impossible to make and integrate their own signature(s) into Thunderbird. It is hard to find the signature option in the account options. And after she found the signature option, she has to create a signature outside of Thunderbird (as txt or html - how should she know that?). I suggest a simple GUI to create a signature per e-mail account (in txt and html format) and a "database" where this signatures are stored to include existing signatures in new e-mail accounts.
Thomas Lendo 23:20, 06 March 2008 (CET)
Built-in Help Viewer
Efforts to get an integrated Help Viewer for Thunderbird are ongoing since 2004 in bug 253334 and appear to have stopped about two years ago. Given that off-line help is an integral part of any application, and usually the first step of trouble-shooting, would be good to see it progressing for Thunderbird as well. Both Firefox and SeaMonkey have such viewers. The web-based help is not context sensitive and frequently considered insufficient, also not accessible when not connected. --Rsx11m 07:15, 23 March 2008 (PDT)
Built-in Notes Section
I know that this may be going to Microsoft for some people, but I actually like the notes tab that Outlook has. Although there has been an extension that allows you to associate a note with an email, I think if there was a notes component built into Thunderbird it would just add more functionality to it and create and even more robust email client.
Pasting attachments when composing mail
When composing mail, there’s currently no way to attach a file (which was added to the clipboard) by pasting it, using either ctrl-v or right-click on the mouse and paste in the attachment area. It would be very convenient to add such a paste functionality.
Pete 15:54, 11 April 2008 (GMT+02:00)
Truncate e-mail and/or personal data in forwarded messages
People often forward e-mail funnies around and this is usually one way how their and other people's addresses might get harvested, so there should be functionality that would truncate either the domain name or all or part of anything that precedes the @ character in the message body:
- Maybe I don't want to spread e-mail addresses;
- Maybe I don't want to spread people's full names;
- Or any combination thereof.
-Mardus 22:00, 11 April 2008 (PDT)
- This is actually a frequently seen issue on the MZ Thunderbird forums. Users want to see and edit the message before they forward it and are then irritated that the message shows up as an attachment (by default), thus is not accessible. The patch for bug 230448 would switch the forward default to inline, thus simplifying this part as well. --Rsx11m 16:27, 16 April 2008 (PDT)