Thunderbird:Preference Settings

For documentation of ideas from bug 448716, Preferences UI clean up.

Reducing the number of sub-tabs

The current Preferences menu have 6 main tabs and 13 sub-tabs. The goal is to reduce the number of sub-tabs by increasing the number of main-tabs and maybe the window size.

The current window looks like this, where the first line is the title of the main-tab:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                                        |
| General | Display | Composition | Privacy     | Attachments | Advanced                                 |
|         | Format  | General     | Junk        |             | General                                  |
|         | Tags    | Addressing  | Scams       |             | Network & Disk Space                     |
|         |         | Spelling    | Anti-Virus  |             | Updates                                  |
|         |         |             | Passwords   |             | Certificates                             |
|                                                                                                        |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

In Firefox the Preferences looks like:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                                        |
|  Main   | Content | Applications |  Privacy    |  Security  | Advanced                                 |
|                                                             | General                                  |
|                                                             | Network                                  |
|                                                             | Updates                                  |
|                                                             | Encryption                               |
|                                                                                                        |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The proposed layout for Thunderbird looks like:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                                        |
|  Main   | Display |     Tags     | Composition |  Privacy   | Advanced                                 |
|                                                             | Addressing                               |
|                                                             | Anti-Virus                               |
|                                                             | Junk                                     |
|                                                             | Network & Disk Space                     |
|                                                             | Update                                   |
|                                                             | Certificates                             |
|                                                                                                        |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

In the above mock-up have the content of the main-tabs been set to:

• Main = General + Attachments
• Display = Display->Format + Privacy->Email Scams
• Composition = Composition->General + Composition->Spelling
• Privacy = Privacy->Passwords

Please open the Thunderbird Preferences menu to see what each tab contains. The window size may not need to be increased.