Thunderbird:Preference Settings
For documentation of ideas from bug 448716, Preferences UI clean up.
Mile stones
The list below is a proposal for how the goal of cleaning up the Preferences menu could be archived.
- Deciding for tab lay out (Thunderbird:Preference_Settings#Reducing the number of sub-tabs)
- Making mock ups of all tabs with options included
- Deciding on options that can be deprecated
- Deciding which options should be moved to other tabs
- Deciding which options should be moved to a new Global Account Settings menu
- Re-evaluate the options in the Preference tabs to avoid having to increase the window size.
- Making mock up of Global Account Settings menu
- Deciding which options should be moved to other tabs
- Clean up current Account Settings
- Submit bug reports
We currently working at the first bullet point.
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.
The Global Account Settings menu would have the same tree layout as the individual accounts. So the tree would look like:
Global Settings Server Settings Copies & Folders Composition & Addressing Offline & Disk Space Junk Settings Return Receipts Security Account 1 Server Settings Copies & Folders Composition & Addressing Offline & Disk Space Junk Settings Return Receipts Security Account 2 Server Settings Copies & Folders Composition & Addressing Offline & Disk Space Junk Settings Return Receipts Security
In Preferences I think the following belongs in a Global Account Settings menu:
- Forward Messages: [Inline/As Attachment]
- Auto Save every [ ] Minutes
- The whole Composition->General->HTML section
- Configure text format behaviour [Send Options...]
- The whole Composition->Addressing section
- The whole Privacy section that being:
- Junk
- E-mail Scams
- Anti-Virus
- Passwords
- The whole Attachments tab that being:
- Attachments folder
- Download actions
- Determine how Thunderbird handles return receipts [Return Receipts...]
- [v] Compact folders when it will save over [ ]KB
I suggest those to be moved to a Global Account Settings menu, because each of these are direct email or folder related.
If you look at Edit->Account Settings->Return Receipts Thunderbird have already introduced the Global Settings concept. What Thunderbird here means by "Global" is "what have been configured in the Preferences".