Customize controls
I have been using Thunderbird for many years as my email program. I have liked it very much because it is very simple and intuitive. It is especially useful to me because I can add a table and make my art announcements with beautiful and easy to use type size and color changes.
When I began using thunderbird I could change the type size easily, with numbers up to 72 point. Several years ago you changed this to a system with only a fixed number of options. An add on for the initial type system wasn't available. With difficulty I have been able to work around this (by adding my type in Word and then pasting it in) but it is very awkward. That version is 60.9.1
About a year ago you introduced 68.110, which totally changed how the table or background and type are colored. Again, you had a beautiful and intuitive system with two buttons, one for type, one for backgrounds with many color options. It is now a convoluted color wheel that is very, very difficult and is NOT an improvement in ANY WAY. I do not want to update for this reason.
Is there any possibility of having both the initial type size and color changes added back on the new version as add ons or in any other way?
edited for formatting
Modified by Andrew
All Replies (4)
Thunderbird has never had the capacity to specify a font size in points, only pixels. SO I am really not sure where I should even try and answer your questions. As for the change to a colour wheel, that will not be going back.
Hi Matt, I had been using Thunderbird for quite some time and forgot the font system in points was an add on or plug in that I installed. When Thunderbird went to 60.9 that point system add on for font size wasn't available for that Thunderbird version. Is there any possibility of a font system in points available as an add on or plug in for the new Thunderbird 68.110? Is there any possibility of the 2 button color change system for font and background color available as an add on or plug in for Thunderbird 68.110? Any suggestions or help with these issues would be very much appreciated. Thanks very much.
Thunderbird has changed how it deals with font size. You will notice that it shows Tiny, small, medium, large, Extra large and Huge.
But this is difficult to understand what that equates to in font size pixels.
It means the actual size is not hardcoded into the emails. It has been done to help people choose the size they want to see because there is nothing worse than people sending emails trying to dictate the font size. Screen resolutions are different and so are peoples eyesight. So if you used medium and large for normal and headers with very large for super headers, then you know the headers will appear larger than the normal text.
It means medium is whatever you have set on your system. So a medium to you could be a size 12, but to me it's 16. You may have set up font sizes that use a small eg: 10, but when I see that email, there will be no difference because I've also set up a minimum font size of 16 or if my minium was 14, then small = 14 and tiny would also be 14.
AS example: the image below shows on left side a normal setup where arial font is size 14 and where tiny is allowed as minimum font size 10, so small is 12, medium is 14, you get the idea. The one on the right has had the minimum font size changed to 14, so now tiny small and medium all look the same size.
Sorry to say it, but there are very few addon extensions now available as it requires some serious complete rewriting of code and many authors do not have the time and inclination to learn new code and do complete rewrites. The authors are not employees of Thunderbird they are people like you and me. There has been talk about setting up addons where people pay for their use, after all it does cost time to create and maintain, so why not pay something as it benefits you. But as it is, there is not much activity on the addon extension front.
re :2 button color change system Are you using a MAC by any chance ? Thunderbird for mac has been now setup to use the MAC own colour picker.
jzver said
Is there any possibility of a font system in points available as an add on or plug in for the new Thunderbird 68.110?I think toad hall has covered the font thing in enough detail. But other than folks usually in corporate livery) trying to make everything conform to a corporate communications palate. using normal is really a most compatible result. specifying points or pixels is the least compatible. If you have to specify font size the recommended thing is to specify it in EM.
But the underlying issue is HTML has deprecated the size attribute in HTML. So in the future will see size being set in CSS, so a style will be required for each size. Messy to say the least to manage something all browsers and mail clients so quite nicely by themselves.
Is there any possibility of the 2 button color change system for font and background color available as an add on or plug in for Thunderbird 68.110?
The change removes all control from Thunderbird and moves it to the operating system. You request to set a colour and the operating system pops up it's colour selector. This is a non trivial change as previously the colours you could choose were actually defined in the code for Thunderbird in code that dated back to NEtscape opensourcing navigator. Despite being "standard" colours the changes are pretty major.
That does not preclude an addon popping up at some point, but as the editor is still experiencing change it is not somewhere most addon developers that are already not working with it will jump into. Almost all of the recent email on the addon developer list is about the editor. https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/addons
Personally I do not think the user interface is ideal, but I really do not know what they should change to make it more functional with the new selector still available. I have a feeling some sort of selection history grid might work. Be a best of both worlds. But I have no time to pursue a bug.
Modified by Matt