OT: Thunderbird

[GB]

A long time ago, I edited the interface to remove the reply button, so there was just the followup button. Unfortunately, it's updated itself and undone that. How do I alter it again, please?

[newshound]

With difficulty. There is some stuff on the web about it, but I gave up. I only submit about one post in ten to the authors and almost all of them have that blocked. I am *hoping* that Mozilla come up with a fix relatively soon.

I thought about shifting over one of my machines to Outlook (I already use that elsewhere) but even though I have Office 365 MS seemed to put some huge obstacles in the way. Related I think to the fact that the "login" MS account on the machine is different to the "software" MS account.

[Fredxx]

Look for the addon, "Message Header Toolbar Customize".

It does the trick for me. I'm using Thunderbird 78.5, I believe the most recent version.

[alan_m]

+1 I asked recently because an update put the reply button in the most prominent position so I was accidental pressing that rather than follow-up

I was recommended Message Header Toolbar Customize which allowed my to rearrange the options

I used the beta version dated 31 Oct from here

Once installed and restarting Thunderbird the buttons with text changed to default icons. A right click on any of the buttons in the newsgroup posting header produces a configuration screen giving the option to restore text rather than icons and gives the ability to re-order the list. Note follow-up = smart reply in the customise list.

There is also an option to hide buttons/options

[Andy Burns]

The ability to edit the toolbar was removed in the the latest major version, but there is a new add-on "Manage Header Toolbar Customise" that gives you back the same editing, it's a little kludgy, but you only need to run it once.

You'll find it inside TB's add-on search.

[Algernon Goss-Custard]

Why would they do that?

[Andy Burns]

Don't know, it was originally mentioned in the 78.0 release notes as

Known Issues/Unresolved/Mail header toolbar (Reply, Forward, Archive, Junk buttons) no longer configurable

But nothing has been done since ...

[newshound]

Thanks. Can't remember where that went wrong for me before, but I will try it again.

[Jethro_uk]

Why does a dog lick it's balls ?

[Clive Page]

The only explanation that I can come up with it thatit gives programmers a feeling of power. It seems that every application that I use regularly, like Thunderbird and Firefox, keeps nagging me to install updates that will reduce the functionality that I've come to rely upon. Sometimes the excuse is "security, you know".

It's such a shame that what start out as good products get progressive ruined. One expects this sort of mindless vandalism from the likes of Microsoft as they need to keep issuing incompatible versions of Word, Excel, etc to keep making money, but I naively hoped that open-source products would be different.

[alan_m]

Often open source has the problem of people adding functionality because they think it is "Kool" but is of no practical use to anyone else.

[Jethro_uk]

I'd much rather they fixed the f****ng bugs in the existing product before "improving" it. Because once a bug creeps in, it's practically impossible to get it fixed.

I reported the bug in Pan Newsreader a while back about the spellchecker. Tumbleweed. Not even a cursory confirmation from anyone, let alone a discussion.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Unfortunately not all users have the same attention span to deal with changes, or are inquisitive to hover with the mouse pointer to see that things are clickable.

The GUI is a computer game mainly for the young. We should have stuck with CLI.

[Jethro_uk]

I disagree. As a crusty,.

A good* GUI can enforce an underlying logic to a sequence or part of a programs operation that CLI simply can't.

For example a panel that's greyed out unless a checkbox is selected. Which immediately tells the user that the parameters within only apply to that option. And so on.

Much harder to do that with a CLI. Especially if it's badly written and (for example) just ignores supplied parameters sliently, rather than warning you they only mean anything if another parameter or switch is supplied.

*Aye, there's the rub.

[GB]

You posted that shortly after you posted "£12 for a f****ng knob". :)

[John Rumm]

Its normally far more prosaic. Typically when some underlying bit of code needs to change for other reasons, you find that there are some unique quirks of the old code that show up in dependencies - so to transition the bit you need to kill off anything that relies on the quirks of the old stuff. Sometimes the bits removed get re-implemented later, sometimes not.

Security is not an "excuse". If there is a critical vulnerability in the old version then its appropriate to apply pressure to the users to either ditch it ASAP or at least make an informed choice / implement mitigations instead.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Eudora mail - a pop mail client - essentially did in 2000 what Thunderbird does for me today.

Somewhat better. obviously its style was - what its style was! You couldn't have half a dozen different ways to present the same information. My elderly neighbour manages to accidentally reconfigure everything on his computer whenever I go to visit it and I spend hours putting it back the way it was that he is used to,.

Another elderly (sod it, *I* am elderly) friend still uses XP and IE because he found a way to save links to interesting sites not as bookmarks, but as icons on his desktop. That's how *he* likes to use it.

In short really so much developer time is spent on 'chrome and tailfins' rather than a decent chassis.

If I had time I'd write a simple mail and usenet client...that couldn't be configured by the user AT ALL beyond keying in names and passwords.

Back in the day applications on mainframes and minis that were accessed with vt100 or Wyse 50 terminals were not user configurable,. The result was that the user spent an hour learning the 5 keystroke combination to get to whichever screen they wanted, not three days trying to make it happen with one mouse click.

And they worked far faster as a result. Having to stop typing to grab a mouse and click on it, is absolutely counter productive especially to touch typists.

It is all about 'designed to sell but not to *work*' philosophy. The theory that bells and whistles sell product, and you stay in business by delivering ever more complex shiny toys to people who never ever learn to use them, but have endless fun playing with the user interfaces.

Straw poll, how many people here own a programmable microwave and use more than at most 3 programs?

I regards myself as a more than average cooker, if not in quality in time spent and meals served, and I use my microwave daily. It is a professional catering device with just two knobs. Power, and time.

Whenever I have visited friends who have more complex ones, they have never ever been able to program it for - say - '3 minutes at 600W please'.

In fact it has been clear that most of them use it to de-frost or reheat at most half a dozen different items - they never cook anything in it at all, and they have no idea what 90% of the programs do. One supposes that the touch screens and LCD displays render it somehow attractive.

When I ad decent eyesight and used a manual camera, I would decide what to focus on, turn the focussing ring till that bit was sharp, using a split image rangefinder, compose the shot and take it.

My Nikon 200DX has over 160 different focussing modes, and just to select one of them takes me longer...than focussing its predecessor did.

of course there is a workaround..

"You have to change the camera settings to where the camera will only focus by using the back button. Then focus on the bird house and don't touch the back button again. Place the camera to point where you want to try to catch the bird flying and then use the shutter release button to take the photos that you want to take."

was a response to someone trying to defeat the auto focus. Or rather get the autofocus to behave as THEY wanted and not as the software designers THOUGHT they wanted.

"Creeping featurism" is the bane of the software industry. If only programmers were paid to use less RAM and make things run faster

And instead of making it well infinitely configurable write a decent manual that doesn't tell you what it does, but how to make it do what you want.

I wanted to write a letter that would be boiler plate, and have te date automagically updated in weekday, ddth of xxx 20xx style, in libre office.

All the instructions and 90% of the web searches referred to doing this on the spreadsheet. Finally I found a web page that said 'how can I do this WITHOUT RIGHT CLICKING ON IT AND SELECTING IT EVERY TIME. a feature that was nowhere documented in the first place! The answer of course that you couldn't do that. You had to create and use a 'template' or edit a 'default template' which turned out to be another impossible undocumented task.

The problem is its all either written by coders who have no idea how the product will be used, or by art students who don't care as long as it looks cool.

[The Natural Philosopher]

correction: no practical use to anyone ...

[Andy Burns]

My dad occasionally rings to say he can't do $SOMETHING in thunderbird, when I remote onto his system, he's often hidden half the toolbars or maximised one or other of the panes in the layout ...

[No Name]

oh yeh, Quick Assist on Windows 10.....