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.
Addressbook details
For roaming addresing to be really useful LDAP+TLS (editable ldap address books) or WebDAV+TLS (upload/download .ldif files) support would really be required. The SSL support should offer client certificates from the store, so if the address book server demands the user's client cert they'll still be able to connect.
WebDAV has the advantage that tbird already has a degree of support for it, and it's easy to support offline.
Editable LDAP solves some concurrency issues (if the client is open in more than one place), but might be harder to make work offline. Slurping an LDIF doesn't seem too hard, though.
Overall I suspect LDAP is the best option for addressbook
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).
I'll be great if all messages from a given sender could be selected by holding the alt key while clicking on a sender (as in Eudora). This is a very easy but powerful feature to organize e-mails, e.g. to delete or move messages originating from the same sender or a particular mail list. (Similarly all e-mails from the same date or with the same topic could be easily selected by holding the alt key and clicking on the date or topic column.)
Global Message Filters
It would be great if it were possible to set up global message filters that affected all accounts in Thunderbird. That not only helps with managing spam and newsletters. For example this would make it possible to automatically move personal e-mails sent to an IMAP business account to the designated folders on a private IMAP account (and vice versa). These filters could have generic options only such as mark messages read or move them to the trash folder. It would also be great if during filter creation the sender or topic or recipient of the current e-mail is automatically suggested as filter criteria.
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 (fixed), 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".
- This functionality can already be achieved by searching for mail where the status "is not" read. (Tested in TB 2.0.0.14)
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/profileswitcher-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
- Bug 410333 has been fixed and checked in, thus this is no longer an issue. --Rsx11m
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 messages without Outlook. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297760
I totally agree - I will need this to transfer between different job sites (head office uses MS Outlook, feild offices are on our own - so we chose Thunderbird). I know I could forward, but I don't always have a connection - and often use a jumpdrive to carry info. andy
Commas in e-mail addresses
Commas in e-mail addresses shouldn't force Thunderbird to split these addresses 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.
- That has been filed and confirmed as bug 427474 --Rsx11m 18:20, 24 June 2008 (PDT)
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)
I'd like add a problem with signatures copied accross system boundaries (Windows to MAC). The signature files seem to default to the system code page. I had to edit all my sigs which I had copied from Windows to my MAC (or vice versa) to correct the national characters. I built in signature editor should take care of that.
Marcus von Cube 10:35, 16 June 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)
- What you are describing is a preference that can be set and unset, AFAIK. I know it exists in SeaMonkey. But automatically truncating all e-mail addresses is something that I want to see. -Mardus 01:11, 18 April 2008 (PDT)
- This is correct, the main intent of the comment was to confirm that what you describe is a problem. Forwarding inline is a necessity to modify the message, manually or automatically. --Rsx11m 05:36, 18 April 2008 (PDT)
Filter actions that integrate with the address book
Please add filter actions that relate to the Address Book, e.g.: Add Sender to Address Book and include in a certain group, Remove Sender from Address Book, Redirect Message to a person or group from the Address Book, and send a fixed message to a person or group from the Address Book. --Jh 06:35, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
Make Junk filtering cover multiple or all address books
Not sure if this has already been addressed, but I have a not-so-uncommon issue with the "Do not mark messages as junk mail if the sender is in my address book" filter.
My contacts are organized in several address books (Personal, Company, Clients, etcetera). This filter allows only one address book to be identified as those contacts never to be "junked". So while senders found in my Personal address book, for example, will never be treated as junk, it's possible senders from my other "safe" address books will.
It would be much preferable to extend this functionality to cover more than one address book at a time, or to all address books if desired. While I can't give an example where it would be beneficial, it would make sense to also extend such choice to the Collected Addresses.
JF 18:23, 4 May 2008 (PDT)
User definable smart URLs
Currently Thunderbird automatically converts email addresses and URL's into clickable URLs. It would be nice if I could define my own mapping for regular expressions into clickable URLs.
This would make it possible to turn phonenumers automagically into skype/voip URLs , addresses or zipcodes into google-maps URL's etc.
Jkl 21:24, 19 May 2008 (CET)
A Heavily improvement of MAPI-support
MAPI-support is still a major issue in Thunderbird. Providing MAPI-support in Thunderbird 3 would even address two of the four goals for Thunderbird 3 as described on the planning page:
Goal 2: To increase adoption of Thunderbird
Currently there's (very) low adoption of Thunderbird by users who need MAPI, because Thunderbird 2.0 doesn't fully support Simple MAPI. Increasing MAPI support would mean a new group of potential users.
Goal 3: To improve usability
Currently users have to experiment with 3th party plug-in's to make MAPI more or less functional. Also as described on MozillaZine, these plugins and their support are buggy. Native support for MAPI address the usability issue for these users.
Beside addressing these goals it would also target a bunch of bugs (a search on "MAPI" gave me 63 results), varying from minor to critical.
Finally, MAPI could then be used, for example, accessing hotmail-accounts. This would target goal 2 by the large userbase of hotmail and goal 3 which would lessen the need to use webmail-plugins which often trouble a lot of users.
Shadow_Dragon 17:44, 29 May 2008 (GMT+01:00)
Allow selection of specific point size for fonts in html messages
Currently, Thunderbird allows you to set the size of a font based on the web parameters - e.g., small, medium, large, etc. Other email clients behave more like text editors and allow you to specify font size - e.g., 10pt, 12 pt, etc.
List messages on two lines
When the panes are laid out in vertical view and the message list is too narrow to display all the columns, Outlook automatically switches to two lines per message. This allows room to display the message contents at a comfortable width.
--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)
Display favorite folders above folder tree
Currently, Thunderbird requires the user to click on the arrows to switch between folder views. But for many people, there's plenty of space in the left pane to display favorite folders at the same time as the folder tree. This would make it much easier to navigate between the most frequently used folders.
--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)
Display Account Name in bold only when there are unread messages
Currently, each Account Name is always displayed in bold, along with any mailbox that contains unread messages. This makes it difficult to tell at a glance whether there are any unread messages.
--Samk 10:44, 9 June 2008 (PDT)
Attachment Handling (at least on OS X)
Attachments are saved on the desktop and then opened. Some suggestions:
- Save the attachment to a temporary location and remove it later automatically
- Allow filing of attached (forwarded) mails into a folder
- Open JPGs inline (TB 2.0.0.14 on OS X keeps asking what to do.)
--Marcus von Cube 01:48, 16 June 2008 (PDT)
IMAP Threading Robustness
Thunderbird has some difficult-to-pin-down-and-reproduce issues with threading, especially on slow machines and on remote (eg X11 forwarded) displays. Most of the issues I've seen turn up on Linux builds.
The most common ones I see are:
- IMAP backend stops responding. It won't quit with the rest of the app, stops servicing requests for messages, etc. It doesn't die in response to SIGTERM, only SIGKILL.
- Sometimes attachments seem to be truncated on save from an IMAP account. A different amount of the file is written each attempt, and often an untruncated file is saved successfully. This is very hard to reproduce.
Allow folder creation in the file message dialog
It would be useful to be able to create a folder while filing a message. I sometimes want to move a message somewhere only to see that the destination folder hasn't yet been created earlier.
--Marcus von Cube 01:52, 16 June 2008 (PDT)
Allow group by some criteria and order by another one
It would be great to be able to group by name (from) and choose the order by date ascending or descending.
--Paulo Marques - 21 June 2008 - 18:30
Support multiple users and user account authorization
We really need an email client that will allow multiple users to manage their email one the same PC.
- Each user creates an "user account" in which multiple email accounts can be created. - The "user account" should be password protectable so that emails within an "user account" remains confidential. - Each user sends and retrieves his/her own emails and does not trigger a send/retrieve action for other "user accounts" on the same PC.
- Simultaneous access (Thunderbird muti-session) from PCs on LAN to the message store will be great.
SMTP (Outgoing Server) robustness
When moving a notebook between home and work, sending email requires a SMTP change due to ISP's requiring the use of their own SMTP servers. So if you use Thunderbird at work you have to change your SMTP server to that of the company's DSL ISP. When getting home, you have to change it to that of your 3G ISP.
Suggestions: - Thunderbird 3/4 should be able to determine which SMTP to use by sensing the network according to user specified data. - The user should be able to quickly access the SMTP selections from the "Compose a new message" window. Then after changing the SMTP server here it should remain changed for all accounts until changed again. - Thunderbird could attempt sending via a certain SMTP server, then, upon failure it should try the next server in the SMTP list. When a mail has been successfully sent via a certain outgoing server, that server should be set to be the current outgoing server for all accounts.
Additional Options for Date Column Format
Create additional values for the Date Column format. See page: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Date_display_format
The additional value would be formatted as follows:
Value Meaning Example date and time
5 Abbreviated day/date/time Fri 12/31/1999 10:23 AM
6 Customized using tokens %dow %mm/%dd/%yyyy %hr:%mn:%ss %ampm
The new value "5" would add to the current list of date format options. The new value "6" would allow the user to pick and choose from available tokens and select the order. This would allow more flexibility and user control of the Date Column.
- I definitely like option "6" for templating the date format, thus being independent from the operating system settings if desired. Like this case, using templates in addition to fixed sets of choices would be benficial, e.g., also for reply and forward headers. --Rsx11m 00:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)