thunderbird
Difference between selected/unread or read/unread e-mails still not easily noticeable
Checklist
- [X] I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same feature request.
- [X] I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
- [X] This issue only contains a request for one single feature, not multiple (related) features.
App version
8.0
Problem you are trying to solve
Marked mails have nearly the same grey than unread messages.
Suggested solution
Is there any possibility to change marked mails' colour to get them distinguishly different from the unread messages' grey?
Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details
No response
Sorry - I just saw I slided into thunderbird... My issue had to point at k9mail for android.
No worries, K-9 Mail and Thunderbird for Android have the same base code. We did make a few tweaks in #8387 but it still seems to be a common complaint.
Just to add a note -- it looks like dark mode will distinguish between read and unread fine in my opinion. This is probably because it uses a regular grey and black
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Light theme is distinguishable to my eyes but I can see the problem.
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Screenshot below from Gmail actually has the same issue with the white and grey thing, so it's not just specifically an issue to K9/Thunderbird:
Just my thoughts on this: In the recent past I wondered why in the messenger Signal the unread messages are not good distinguishable in comparison to WhatsApp. My conclusion was, that in WhatsApp the continues colored dot with the number of new messages and the colored date of the message makes the huge difference. So you can literally swipe the fastest you can through the messages and still notice the difference because you know that you just have to look to a color in the right.
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So maybe something like this could be a solution to color the date of the message if it is unread in the accent color (blue)? Of the app
How did you have this gray & black distinction? I do not have it on TB Android 8.0. There was such a distinction in previous K-9 Mail, but not in TB!
How did you have this gray & black distinction? I do not have it on TB Android 8.0. There was such a distinction in previous K-9 Mail, but not in TB!
You have to activate it in: Settings > General Settings > Display > Change colour when read
What's the core of the issue? The title says "read and unread", but the description talks about "marked mails...unread messages". And just to clarify: Marked is equal to selected to my understanding.
I think, the mails' color in dark mode is hardly to distinguish between marked and read (contrary to the description) mails.
The color contrast between unread to read or marked is fine for me.
All with "Settings > General Settings > Display > Change colour when read" checked.
What's the core of the issue? The title says "read and unread", but the description talks about "marked mails...unread messages". And just to clarify: Marked is equal to selected to my understanding.
The title has been changed by @kewisch:
kewisch changed the title changeable colour of marked mails Difference between read and unread e-mails still not easily noticeable
I just replaced 'read' by 'selected' to clarify the colour-problem.
K-9, until a recent version, used a color to mark emails so it was easily distinguishable from greyed read emails instead of both using shades of grey. Can this just be reverted? Even better give the user a choice on the shade/color.
How did you have this gray & black distinction? I do not have it on TB Android 8.0. There was such a distinction in previous K-9 Mail, but not in TB!
@Agreborig For some reason the quoted images didn't load but you were asking in respect to mine on looking at the URLs. These screenshots were from K9-Mail on Android 12; system theme set to dark mode (my K9 follows the system theme choice of Light or Dark).
Our design team is working on this.
One of the problems is that too many states are currently communicated via a background color.
- Read/unread (when enabled in settings),
- selected,
- and opened message in split-screen mode.
If we can find a way to make read and unread messages easily distinguishable without changing the background color that would make many other things much easier. One of the reasons read and unread messages (without having "Change colour when read" enabled) can be hard to distinguish is that some device vendors use default fonts where bold text looks very similar to normal text. On other devices it's quite easy to tell the difference.
Some suggestions to solve the issue:
- Take a look at how the GMX mail app solves it in the dark mode. They color the title of the mail in blue if the mail is not read/looked at yet and in grey if you read it.
- Alternatively you could add a blue(or customizable colored) dot in the top right corner for each e-mail list element that dot is removed after the mail is read.
In dark mode I find it really confusing, when the option for background colors of read and unread messages are grey and black, because I expected the colors to be switched. Because the high contrast option, in this case black felt more natural and attention grabbing to be feel like the unread mail indicator but it was not.
So please fix that and consider my two suggestions.
In general it would be nice to be able to customize all kind of colors. And share and download profiles. These color profiles could be saved as a .json file for example.
Noting here there was some work on this in https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/pull/8596 but we need to do some follow-up for the message list item.
Some recent screenshots of K9 6.804 (left, good contrast between read and unread) vs Thunderbird 11.0b2 (right, very little differentiation) for reference:
@nclm I still don't think thats enough/good enough.
Yes exactly my opinion as well, I’m sticking with K9 6.804 for now because Thunderbird is barely useable for me until this is solved.
Yes exactly my opinion as well, I’m sticking with K9 6.804 for now because Thunderbird is barely useable for me until this is solved.
I recommend using Settings -> General -> Display -> "Change colour when read" -- it uses different background for unread messages and basically makes the issue go away.
I recommend using Settings -> General -> Display -> "Change colour when read" -- it uses different background for unread messages and basically makes the issue go away.
Thanks! Sounds good and I just tried it, but I barely can see the difference. When I put the screen luminosity at the brightest (which I don’t usually do), I can see a very slight difference of background, but otherwise it’s almost the same.
Thanks! Sounds good and I just tried it, but I barely can see the difference. When I put the screen luminosity at the brightest (which I don’t usually do), I can see a very slight difference of background, but otherwise it’s almost the same.
Weird... on my device it's very noticeably different:
(Thunderbird 10.0)
Indeed, that looks alright. Here it is on mine:
(Thunderbird 11.0b2, Android 13)
Yes exactly my opinion as well, I’m sticking with K9 6.804 for now because Thunderbird is barely useable for me until this is solved.
I recommend using Settings -> General -> Display -> "Change colour when read" -- it uses different background for unread messages and basically makes the issue go away.
I have that setting turned on, in dark mode, but for me the colored backgrounds, it feels a bit inversed for me. Unread messages have a grey background and read messages a black background. If I could customize it, it would be better, because like this it does not feel intuitiv for me.
But, as my first comment to this topic, if you could just set a read and unread, title color or have a customizable dot color as indicator, that would be the minimum I wish for, and when I see how long this issue is open, I wonder if it is a priority thing, because it can't take very long to implement such basic customization.
But, as my first comment to this topic, if you could just set a read and unread, title color or have a customizable dot color as indicator, that would be the minimum I wish for, and when I see how long this issue is open, I wonder if it is a priority thing, because it can't take very long to implement such basic customization.
I think customisation is great, but more important is a safe default. Right now, it seems that:
- The default doesn’t enable distinguishing between read and unread messages, making Thunderbird mobile hard to use in practice.
- There is the background option which could be a solution: but 1. it’s not enabled as a default so hard to discover, 2. the default background colours are not enough, or have a reverse logic, for some users.
To me the ways to go are:
- Either fix typography by default (just as it was on K9) so that it works for most users + Fix the background option and keep it optional for users who want even more contrast.
- Either fix the background option and make it the default.
Customisation can be on top of good defaults.
Hey folks. The message list is the contentious item, the problem is that there are just so many different states to take into account and there is some legacy baggage in the message list that makes it hard to just apply the new things. Here is what we think it should look like as a default:
@kewisch And which mails are read/unread in your example image? I can't distinguish that, from a first look. And that's the issue.
Thanks for sharing! Looks promising.
For users that don’t have the contact roundels, would you move the little yellow and green spots (which seems to do quite a lot of the work here) within the text-only cards?
I’m afraid only having the subject line bold or not might be too little (in contrast with K-9 which has difference in both the weight and the shade of both the subject line and the author line).
@kewisch To my expectation the mail content in your example should also be darkened (like in @nclm 's screenshots of K9 6.804). In your current example, it's still hard to distingush at first glance.
Especially because there is a light blue and another light grey subject line, both bold. So are both of these meant to be unread? I'm not sure, what is what in this example.
But that's only my taste and reception...
Ah, it took me a moment to notice the small mail state labels on the left.
Well, as I wrote before, I think an additional darker mail body for read mails would improve the situation. Second the blue subject line should have a stronger color adding more contrast to mark new mails. To me it's too close to the light grey of the unread messages.
Hey folks. The message list is the contentious item, the problem is that there are just so many different states to take into account and there is some legacy baggage in the message list that makes it hard to just apply the new things. Here is what we think it should look like as a default:
IMHO it doesn't distinguish well between read/unread… +1 to what @bigboipete said:
To my expectation the mail content in your example should also be darkened Well, as I wrote before, I think an additional darker mail body for read mails would improve the situation.
Would it be possible to have bolder/thinner fonts as well?
If we change the background it would not work well with selected/active states. Indeed the indicator is used for unread/new states in this case. I don't quite recall what we'll do when the contact picture is disabled, but we'll certainly need to show the state in some way. Here is the full set: