It doesn't look old, it looks overloaded and inconvenient. HN UI looks old, but it's the most convenient UI to use.

I think it's the UI an email client must have, no less, no more. I quote the post

> A UI that looks and feels modern is getting initially implemented with version 115 in July, aiming at offering a simple and clean interface for “new” users, as well as the implementation of more customizable options with a flexible and adaptable interface to allow “old” users to maintain that familiarity they love.

I don't understand why today's new users shouldn't be able to cope with an interface any old new user didn't have any problem using. However as long as they keep the promise not to take away the current convenient interface, they can do whatever they feel like to remove functionality for a dumb modern mode.

I will take overloaded any day of the week. I am sick of the trend of removing all widgets for some sense of a clean interface. I am on a desktop machine with a ginormous amount of pixels and real-estate. Show me all the buttons.

HN is really bad on touch devices. Call me young and naive, but I mostly read HN on the couch on my tablet.

I use HN half on my phone and half on my desktop. It's OK on both, I just have to zoom the upvote buttons sometimes before touching them.

HN is one of the best web sites for my phone. There are some improvements they could make but I would not call being among the top 5% best mobile websites being "really bad".

I mostly read HN on my iPhone using the website with the zoom cranked up a little bit and I find it works better than the variety of native clients available.

It's better than the average news site but worse than if they just spent 10 minutes adding some mobile CSS. I constantly log out accidentally on mobile.

True. There is even a media query that can detect touch devices: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/poin...

So they could keep the good old HN alive for PCs.

I use Hckrnews.com, which is convenient on my phone and allows me to filter posts in order to be focused with my time.

I'm still on TB68 because Enigmail was *broken after, and I think the UI is convenient except adding new accounts and managing SMTP servers.

*I send emails in plaintext, don't tell me about S/MIME.

Enigmail functionality is now built-in, it's quite nice!

When TB78 was introduced, the only supported S/MIME and did not allow inline encryption in plaintext. Has this changed now?

I use OpenGPG for signing and writing emails, they are plaintext encrypted. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-how... https://www.linuxbabe.com/security/encrypt-emails-gpg-thunde...

I don't love light gray on white just because comment got some downvotes. Finding that you got answer to your comment is also PITA, especially if it is something older than "right now".

Old reddit + RES is entirely better in every regard. New reddit is utter garbage tho.

I mean, dark mode would be nice.

Themes won’t get you what you want?

How do I install one on mobile?

Well tbh I didn't realize that Thunderbird had an Android release. Looks to be about a year old? That's super new in the history of Thunderbird, and I don't know anything about how it works.

If there's no theming support, then yeah, at minimum a dark mode is a totally reasonable request.

edit: or were you talking about HN?

On the other hand, I gave thunderbird a try after switching to linux and found their UI so bad that it was harming usability. After the app had finished taking up the screen with various controls, settings and the list of messages, there was a tiny window left over to read the email itself, and it seemed like the threading of messages was basically broken. It wasn't that it looked old exactly that bothered me (although it did), but that I was buried in a mountain of jank from the start.

I quickly found a new client, but not one I love. If thunderbird does get a UI overhaul I'd give them another chance, and it sounds like they're moving towards a UI that I at the very least would prefer.

> UI isn't a fashion show.

Yes, it is. At least, it is for UI designers.

Only for UI designers who put aesthetics before usability.

IOW, for most UI designers on current software products.

Very few changes I see these days actually improve anything; they are merely change for the sake of providing evidence to justify the UI designers' salaries.

If something already works, and we know how to use it, there had better be a damn good reason for changing it, because you are burdening thousands, millions, or even billions of people with yet another entirely unnecessary learning task in our already over-stressed lives.

We are far past the time when the new version of X will be seen by orders of magnitude more users than the previous version, so it'll be only the minority that have to relearn, and the majority will enjoy the improved UI (assuming that the new stuff is actually an improvement; BIG assumption). Today, most of it will burden existing users.

You want to make the colors prettier, add a dark/night mode, round the corners, highlight things a bit better? Wonderful. Just don't mess with the organization.

> Just don't mess with the organization.

And don't mess with discoverability and ergonomics. I hate buttons that don't look like buttons, controls littering the title bar so that I can't use it to move the window, etc etc

Also for the users. For my part, I appreciate if stuff looks modern. I understand the whitespace madness complaints, but a software which looks like 1999 is not something I want to work with.

There is a degree of modern style needed because Thunderbird does not exist in a vacuum. Windows evolved, macOS evolved, iPhone/Android look different than 1997 Windows .. which Thunderbird looked like the last years.

Meanwhile, the only major website my elderly dad, who didn't really start using the Web until something like 2015, can use unassisted with a fair amount of confidence, is Craigslist.

I'm skeptical that normal, non-technical users actually benefit from or even prefer all this crap. Someone does, but I'm not convinced it's them.

For anyone else who likes 1997-Windows-style software and can tolerate shareware, try Becky! Internet Mail: http://www.rimarts.co.jp/becky.htm

Next you'll be moving my steering wheel 'cause my neighbour repainted his house.

Ok, but whilst you wear your clothes out in front of people (a literal fashion show), few people parade their MUA's UI in front of their friends, do they? Like, get check the chrome in my mail program guys...??

I bet you can go on Slashdot and find a thread from a million years ago with people saying they will never switch to this trendy new Thunderbird and that you can pull their pine/elm/mutt from their cold dead hands. I remember a time when running X11 with twm and an xterm was considered too fancy

Minotaur!

By the time it was renamed Thunderbird, Netcraft had already confirmed /. was dead. Now get off my lawn!