I installed Thunderbird 3 a while ago. But before posting about it I thought it would good to test, check its new features usefulness and then, yes, post some comments on it. Today I decided to do the post. For that I visited the Mozilla website, searching for the top features for Thunderbird 3. They are described in the image above, and will be commented bellow:
- Tabs: at the first glance I thought that tabs would change the way I work with Thunderbird. Since when Galeon, an old web browser, added tabs to the browsing experience, that I never wanted anything else. Then, when hearing about tabs on Thunderbird 3 I got excited. But now I can’t see where are the tabs experience. I can’t add a tab with other account (I was trying to put different inboxes in different tabs) or a tab for each account. But or that is not possible, or it is too hidden for finding it. The only place where I saw tabs showing on was during search…
- Better Search: yesterday I finally discovered how to turn off the new search system. It is fancy, it shows graphics, it has a nice user interface, it does not work! Why are some mails found and not shown? Why some folders are not being indexed? Why indexes are not updated when I move a file? Last months I tried not to use the search engine because I was frustrated with it. Now, old search is back. Great.
- Archiving: the archiving feature might be interesting if the search works, something like Google Mail. In fact, they started with that idea: never delete a mail, archive anything, we will find it. Yes, it was they tagline. Now they are using tags (folders with a different name) so you can organize your email. If Google Mail did this, from an archive to a set of archives, why is Thunderbird trying to create an archive for everything? I use for years different folders where I copy mails to, organizing them as I like. If just these folders were indexed…
OK, now I wonder: why did I update? Probably I will ask the same about Firefox 3.6. Please, Mozilla! Look into usability. Look into usefulness. Forget fancy and eye catching features that use resources and have no real use!