Comments on: Activity is the new download

By: Fritz

Fritz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:18:08 +0000

Finally TB gets decent feedback/responsiveness. Thank you!

By: Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 » Apfelcenter

Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 » Apfelcenter — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:00:25 +0000

[...] Thunderbird 3 liegt nun in einer neuen Beta-Version vor. Hierbei handelt es sich um die Thunderbird 3 Beta 2. Die Beta 2 enthält viele Bugfixes, sowie neue Features wie eine Archivfunktion und eine neue Aktivitätsanzeige. [...]

By: david ascher - » Thunderbird 3 beta 2

david ascher - » Thunderbird 3 beta 2 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:15:20 +0000

[...] feature worth highlighting is also not fully deployed, but already useful. The Activity Manager was born out of a recognition that Thunderbird 2 is pretty bad at telling you what it’s doing. It says a lot of things, it [...]

By: Bryan Clark » Blog Archive » Activity Manager… Activity!

Bryan Clark » Blog Archive » Activity Manager… Activity! — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:47:38 +0000

[...] been a while since my first post on the Activity Manager for Thunderbird. There was a lot of positive feedback from an Activity Manager talk we gave in [...]

By: Premson

Premson — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:31:06 +0000

Its really a good idea, I’ve got too many filters and a really slow connection, would love to see when my thunderbird is hung or actually processing the filters, while I am waiting.

By: Blair McBride

Blair McBride — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:08:46 +0000

I also disagree with Gabe (and therefore agree with Thomas). To me, it is important to see granularity in message checking, due my slow connection. However… I agree with Gabe in that it should be a transparent process – unless I want that additional information. In other words: progressive disclosure.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:16:07 +0000

> I don’t CARE which of my accounts is being checked
I disagree with Gabe. People with several accounts would like to know which account is being checked e.g. to see if every account is checked for new mails and how many new mails every account is downloading.
The Progress Meters and History of Activity are also good ideas for a better visualization of the actions of Tb.

By: Crow

Crow — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:31:20 +0000

It will also be nice to have something indicating total kb downloaded of message. I use GPRS to download and like having a strict control on how many MB I’m downloading.

By: Tom Servo

Tom Servo — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:38:57 +0000

I like the retooled download window (Message Activities). I’d figure it allows for easy diagnosing when my mail servers are acting queer again.

By: morsik

morsik — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:54:01 +0000

Functional status-bar is THE BEST, I think.

By: Andrés G. Aragoneses

Andrés G. Aragoneses — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:53:30 +0000

In general the messages end up lacking meaning because there is too much information running by. Not only that, the information is besides incorrect.

By: Fabrice

Fabrice — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:14:20 +0000

Some good ideas but useless for TB.
This kind of gadget are using CPU (and increase global warming) for few interresting information.
Are “we” looking at our TB every time? no

By: Gabe

Gabe — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:34:01 +0000

Too much information.

I don’t CARE which of my accounts is being checked, or how many messages have been downloaded. The only events I really care about as a user are:

* a message arrives in my inbox
* the server rejects my credentials.

I don’t particularly even want a throbber telling me that messages are being checked. The client should be intelligent about getting me my messages as quickly as it can, and I should be able to trust it to do that for me.

Rather than checking on a fixed schedule, my mail client should adjust the frequency of its checks based on how many messages I tend to receive on a given day at a given time. “Checking for messages” should not be a user-visible process.

By: Kent James

Kent James — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:45:42 +0000

One issue I face with junk processing status is there are different levels of progress. Currently the status bar gives % complete of each email download. But because that is many per second, it just shows a series of random flashes. Me, I want to show % progress in processing a batch of 1000 messages for junk. So there are sometimes multiple levels of progress. Many programs have two different bars to solve this problem.

By: Blair McBride

Blair McBride — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:41:00 +0000

Seeing those mockups, I prefer the more visual feedback methods of using the progress bar. I figure I’m already reading tons of text emails, I’d rather not have to read more just to figure out what’s going on in my mail client. It takes time and cognitive effort.

Saying that, the “About 1 minute remaining” part of the status message has its place. If its an action that may take some time (such as sending photos on a slow connection), I don’t want to have to remember when it started, just to estimate how long it will be before it finishes. Showing the approximate time reminding fixes that.

By: maddox

maddox — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:33:08 +0000

Eudora always had a nice status pane.

I found the following video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x26c4FTRaU8 where a guy shows how to configure eudora. In this video at 4:30 you see the status pane in action. it shows you precisly what the client is doing. Which account load which mail, how big is and so on. Always three actions at a time.

I’m dying to see this in thunderbird. I looking forward your work (addon or builtin?)

By: John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:10:34 +0000

Love the activity manager idea and the more verbose status bar info.
I could only suggest to use less of the space for the progress meter, have it avoid colouring either the info type icon and the activity dropdown button at either ends.

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:56:20 +0000

The Tb Progress History Extension should be something for you to look at when Thunderbird activity.

You can find it here: http://forum.addonsmirror.net/index.php?showtopic=2031&mode=threaded

By: Håkan W

Håkan W — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:05:11 +0000

Looks promising!

By: ovidiu

ovidiu — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:50:34 +0000

1. essentially resolves one missing thing for outlook/oe parity, the send receive feedback. Which is confusing anyway regardless of outlook experience ..
2. adds great feedback resulting in “reliability” from the user + usage pov
3. could that stand for “undo history” (and more, of course ..) as in so many apps now?

great ..