Top 10 Annoyances in Mozilla Thunderbird
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mozilla Thunderbird as a desktop email client. In my opinion, it’s better than Microsoft’s Outlook in terms of ease of use, stability, and simplicity. Also, configuring account settings is much more intuitive and actually more powerful. It’s also certainly better than Microsoft’s Outlook Express. But regardless, I’ve had my fair share of annoyances with the client. Here I’ll point out a few of them:
- The UI is poorly designed. Don’t get me wrong, the UI is workable and allows you to configure lots of things, but quite simply, it’s ugly to look at. No matter what theme you install, the basic design is still there, and it’s not easily navigable.
- The message rules dialog box is too bloated. You have to click way too many times and customize way too many things in order for you to get it to do exactly what it is you want it to do. I hate to say it, but Outlook (and Windows Live Mail) have much better message rule controls.
- When I’m deleting emails one-by-one starting from the bottom and going up, if I click to skip over an email, the next one in line when deleted is the one below. This on many occasions has caused me to delete the very email I wanted to skip. Definitely a “bug.”
- Thunderbird is literally in lockdown mode while downloading new messages. One of my email accounts I can get anywhere up to 400-700 messages per day (mostly spam). I have plenty of CPU utilization and RAM left, but when I’m downloading all these messages, why does the entire application slow to a crawl? I want to read some of that email as it’s coming in, dangit!
- Junk mail – this is a big one. When I first started using Thunderbird, I was impressed with how acurate the junk mail filters were and how quickly it learned. But after junking out probably close to 50,000 emails, why exactly do I still get the exact same email over and over again? Why hasn’t it learned? I was impressed that Windows Live Mail actually caught those silly USNMA messages right off the bat.
- The address book is horrible. I can’t describe how terribly it’s designed. Now I realize why I’ve never used address book features in mail clients…
- And why the heck is the address book button in the tob bar? That’s a freaking control bar, not an “access the secondary features” bar. Everything else up there controls the email or emails in general. It should not be there.
- All of a sudden, my mail filters stopped working at some point. This was almost a year ago, and I still haven’t fixed them for the sole purpose of I had way too many and it would take up way too much of my time. Why, exactly did these just suddenly stop working?
- When Thunderbird goes to import mail from Outlook Express or Outlook, can it please at least warn the user that some things may not be copied correctly (ie, message filters?). And why can’t I import News/Blogs, Mail, and settings all at the same time?
- What the heck is the purpose of the “Go” menu option sitting on its own? It’s pointless. If it must be present, please combine it with the View menu like in every other email client…
So there you have it. I’m doing this in combination with my previous blog about how I was seriously considering switching permanently to Windows Live Mail for my desktop email needs. To be fair, my next entry will be The Top 10 Annoyances in Windows Live Mail.
6 Comments
the oracle
October 9th, 2007
at 5:03pm
Here I disagree. I think that Thunderbird is mostly a good product, and should get better if the Eudora people get their hands on it.
As for the loading of messages and reads during the process – that would require a much different code structure. Not many products thread well internally, Agent is the only one that comes to mind right now.
My gripes with Thunderbird are totally different. The last time I tried it I thought – This will be great to have it take care of RSS feeds, one less program on the machine – such was not the case. The RSS reader part of the program is FUBAR and needs to be fixed quickly or jettisoned.
Bryan Price
October 10th, 2007
at 3:39pm
I don’t run that many filters, but I do find that every now and then, Thunderbird decides to disable the filter, and usually more than one. Re-enabling them makes them work. But I can never get my stuff to archive automatically. I always have to run that filter manually.
Ted Sbardella
October 15th, 2007
at 5:54am
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/08/0344231
I is unfortunately having some support problems now. Email is so passe
Stan
October 15th, 2007
at 9:06am
You have some good points. I only get maybe half the spam you do, but Mailwasher takes them off the server(s) before I download with TBird.
My biggest gripe with Thunderbird is when composing new emails. I will often paste one or more screenshots, and then the “Attaching…” window will pop up and never finishs. It just stays in perpetual motion.. The status bar just cycles around and around.
I have a workaround or two, but they’re not very reliable.
I know I should save the shots elsewhere and ‘insert’ them, but if it works sometimes it should work always.
Stanley Baker
October 15th, 2007
at 11:02am
Thanks for the great Newsletter and your insights. foYour’s was one of my earliest Newsletters I have used. Since I have been using the Net since Compuserve was the only game in town it should say volumes about where your Newsletter stands in my book. That said on to the reply.
I am surprised at your response to the Thunderbird email client. I have used it since it came out since IE sucks so very much. Can I get an Amen!
You are right about Outlook but considering Outlook is a package paid for by you to Microsoft for big bucks and Thunderbird is free I cannot see how you can compare them as the mail program meets or exceeds Outlook’s user interface in most areas.
Filters are another story all together. Thunderbird does have filters you can use depending on your requirements but as noted not enough. Regardless, as it is designed for all users it is going to fall short for some and exceed in use for others.
As far as spam and malware I use my Google mail. I have email sent to gmail then have them forward it to my verizon account so it can be filtered and sent back to me. this will filter out the junk and evil mail sent by spammers and jerks ready to cause trouble just for fun. Once a week or so I go to Gmail and delete the Spam they caught. It usually has hundreds of junk emails. When I go through them I have found only two they have gotten wrong and they were ads from companies I use.
You might say that this is a mark against Thunderbird but considering the accuracy of Google’s email program it is a step any user should take regardless of what client they use. I hate using on line email clients because they are slow and too basic for my taste so I stick with Thunderbird. Together these two programs beat the competition by a country mile. How can you beat that. As far as the other issues you have such as importing I am surprised again because Outlook express and Outlook do the same thing.
Anyway I am going to have to disagree strongly with you observations
Michael
October 15th, 2007
at 6:42pm
Thunderbird, as freeware, is a decent application. I have used it for a brief time. Prior to getting Thunderbird, I was using Eudora. I feel really comfortable with Eudora. Thunderbird was a bit confusing and didn’t have the “warm – fuzzy” that I have with Eudora. I saw that, I guess last year, that Eudora and Mozilla were teaming up to create an email client. I believe the name was, or is, Phoenix. I haven’t been following the progress but, I’m interested to see what the final product is. I have switched back to my copy of Eudora for now.