Because when I think of what I need in an email client, I think "beautiful" not "functional". It's a tool not a work of art. I use it to get work done not stare at it in awe.
UX people have killed application software. I need basic tools to work, not make me excited to use them. When I pick up a screwdriver, I don't do it for the experience. Ugh.
You know what's a beautiful email client to me? Netscape Communicator 4.x
I think that's an exceptionally reductive and cynical take, without providing any real reasons for the hate, or how this update will reduce your usability of the application.
Tangibly, "beautiful" UX is code for "rounded corners and lots of useless buffer space in between the informative elements". This is visible in the screenshots in the link. Things are further apart, less dense, and therefore more "beautiful".
I agree that OP's take is reductive and cynical. I would add that in this case, as in essentially every other case where this is done, it is also accurate.
Give me the one on the right every day of the week and twice on Sunday. It looks like a professional application, a tool for getting work done. The one on the left looks like a toy website for newbies (or worse: Outlook).
I have a 32 inch 4K display and most of the designers seem to think most of that space should be filled by useless dead space and massive buttons like this is Windows 95 and the average user needs the "start" affordance (now tarted up with eye-catching bright colors!) to know what to click on. Apparently my head is expected to literally explode if I ever see two distinct lines of information separated by less than two line breaks.
This kind of infantalizing of the UI for can be defended in some contexts but here, it demonstrates that the designers do not know their target audience. This isn't the dial-up days, grandma doesn't read her mail on Outlook Express or any other local client, she uses a website like everybody else. The only people using actual local clients in 2023 are in enterprise (Outlook…) or are power users who want features they can't get on the web.
> Give me the one on the right every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
This is such an apropos example because the left-right windshield wiper widget to switch between the two screenshots referenced, ostensibly to give me a "beautiful" "experience" because two static thumbnails is for squares, is unusable and borderline broken.
This was not part of the war on information density. The 3 column layout was requested often. It is optional. It can show more messages and more of the message on common screens. Professionals do not use 32 inch 4K displays only. Sender above subject is faster to skim in my experience. Not to you maybe. You can use the old layout.
I dislike the blue new message button. Probably CSS can fix it.
>It can show more messages and more of the message on common screens
This is trivially disproven. Look at the screenshots provided. The "new" view shows 14 messages using the entire height of the display. The "old" view shows 14 messages… in half the amount of vertical space. Toggling off the preview pane would double it to around 28.
Even throwaway computers have wide aspect ratio displays nowadays, vertical space is at more of a premium than horizontal.
This trade-off of giving more space to the preview pane at the cost of halving the amount of inbox that you can see is, again, evidence of designers not knowing their target audience. One click to bring up a message is an affordance (arguably, a limitation) copied from the limited web clients that the user likely installed a local client to move away from. It's bad for security, it's bad for cognitive load (keyboard navigation of the list results in distracting flashing, and now there are two distinct interfaces to see a message), and all of these trade-offs come at the supposedly benefit of not needing to double-click to open the message?
> The guys down at the shop aren't talkin about how pretty the snap on tools are.
Got a new diamond turning lathe in the machine shop about a month ago, whew lad. Warehouse got a vertical stacker and started giving tours, lol. Our glass shop keeps the MRF machine so clean the repair techs claim we must not use it.
> Make it work. Make it easy to work with. Then make it pretty.
Any specific usability issues in mind about this 19 year old email client?
I agree in as much as I prioritize functionality (including responsiveness and lack of bloat) well above a beautiful UI. But I think that most peoples beef with UI/UX is that it often gets implemented at the expense of functionality.
Any UX that decreases functionality is not truly good UX. It is probably just flashy.
Also, personally, I don't entirely agree with your screwdriver metaphor. I have some beautiful old screwdrivers with lovely wood handles that I got as hand-me-downs. I do select them in favor of others for the experience. They are a delight for me to use (but again, most importantly, they are very functional).
Edit: Also, they claim in the title that this is a faster Thunderbird. I would consider that a big plus for functionality.
Horrible take. The aesthetics and user experience of an app has a direct correlation to whether the average user (which includes me, a programmer at Amazon) will use a tool.
> Horrible take. The aesthetics and user experience of an app has a direct correlation to whether the average user (which includes me, a programmer at Amazon) will use a tool.
I've stopped using Amazon Music because the UI/UX is unusable. I've cancelled Prime and shifted my shopping to other properties such as Walmart because the continual user-hostile UI changes have pushed me away as a customer. Example, now making it impossible to filter by Amazon.com as the seller so my searches are inundated by screens full of all-caps Chinese counterfeit shit, now with infinite scroll! Accessing customer service entails more and more dark patterns by the day, and arguing with AI chat bots because I can't even get a human into chat anymore.
As long as you're proud of your descent into a knockoff AliExpress, I support your efforts. The important distinction here is these applications were all fine, before the UX gods got involved in "beautifying" them to the point they became unusable.
You're replying to someone that works at Amazon, not to Amazon itself. You also have no idea if they work for the shopping part of Amazon or Amazon Web Services, which is a completely different thing. On top of this, half of your complaints have nothing to do with UIs. As if UI designers are to blame for AI chat bots and chinese counterfeits.
When picking up a pair of scissors, I do care if they're designed for right or left handed. And the handle, of the scissors or screwdriver, is it comfortable and durable? Screwdriver makers have long known not to make the handle of smooth metal. Is the screwdriver magnetic? Does it have swappable heads? Are the swappable heads reversible plug in and out, are they themselves reversible, giving me two cross and two straight heads in one robust non conducting, rubberised, shock absorbing screwdriver package? If mgnetic, how magnetic?
You've described ergonomics pretty well, but the trend of modern UX design is more akin to replacing the screwdriver handle with a hot pink veiny dildo, self-declaring it beautiful, and vehemently decrying any criticism to why these changes are unnecessary.
An app doesn't have to look like shit for it to be functional. It can be both.
If they think it needs to look like Netscape Navigator to be functional, then at least they should understand that they're a minority. Most apps are trying to serve most users, not the small group that prefers the Windows 95 style or a command line client.
The comment itself isn't very useful. Users of this site are not even the most supportive of modern UIs and will praise HN's look (and the old reddit UI), but what's exactly housemusicfan's problem with the new Thunderbird UI? What was made worse? It comes off as an "old man yells at cloud" type of comment and that won't gather much support.
The HN Brahmins are free to use this as evidence that their world view is superior, but my post sat at +8 before suddenly dropping to -4 in the span of a few minutes. So my assessment is the overall opinion is far more balanced, but the echo chamber always prevails, and it's much more difficult to dig yourself out of the hole once you've been buried within.
I do not treat post score as a popularity contest or validation that an opinion is correct (or not).
The sad truth is this industry is full of thin skinned prima donnas who love nothing more than "educating" their customers on what's best for them, whilst continually performing them a disservice in the form of UX "improvements" that literally no one asked for.
UX people have killed application software. I need basic tools to work, not make me excited to use them. When I pick up a screwdriver, I don't do it for the experience. Ugh.
You know what's a beautiful email client to me? Netscape Communicator 4.x