<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<h4>TL;DR</h4>
I've been thinking about the web tabs and the rss dashboard
experiments. I think a very nice project could be a Thunderbird home
tab, just like the Firefox home tab. It could unify web tabs, rss
dashboard, and possibly other information, into a single page that's
your entry point into Thunderbird, and that also gives you an
overview of everything that happens in your Thunderbird. Plus, it
could provide a consistent experience between Firefox and
Thunderbird.<br>
<br>
<h4>Rationale</h4>
Alex Faaborg has been talking recently about the Firefox home tab
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2011/04/13/the-firefox-home-tab/"><http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2011/04/13/the-firefox-home-tab/></a>
that he envisions for Firefox 6. He wants it to store various pieces
of information: people, websites, history, bookmarks, tabs and tabs
groups... I'm stricken by how useful that could be for Thunderbird
as well. Think about the various types of actions you do with
Thunderbird:<br>
- check new mail,<br>
- check rss feeds,<br>
- tweak account settings,<br>
- email people,<br>
- open web apps into Thunderbird tabs,<br>
- etc. etc.<br>
<br>
All these actions match what Alex describes in his blog post, and I
think we could display each one of these items into a Thunderbird
home tab that's your entry point for Thunderbird. It would allow you
to:<br>
- have a widget that displays most recent emails,<br>
- have a widget that displays most recent RSS feeds,<br>
- have an area that allows you to customize settings for each one of
your accounts,<br>
- have an area with your favorite contacts,<br>
- have an area that allows you to open web apps such as Facebook and
Twitter as Thunderbird tabs,<br>
- etc. etc.<br>
<br>
(Each one of the bullet points above is supposed to match the
corresponding bullet point from the first list). It would look like
a Firefox app tab, glow when something new happens, etc. etc. Alex's
home tab is constantly open and appears leftmost in the Firefox tab
bar. I think that's something that could prove relevant for
Thunderbird as well. Various UI items are not discoverable easily
(think account settings vs. general settings), and I think it could
provide a great starting point for all your Thunderbird-related
actions.<br>
<br>
<h4>Mockup</h4>
As a proof of concept, and just for RSS Feeds, I've uploaded my RSS
Dashboard experiment to AMO
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/rss-tab/"><https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/rss-tab/></a>.
It's braindead simple, and works minimally, but I just wanted to
show that we could build cool stuff with just a few lines of JS in
Thunderbird. If that were ever to happen, we could reuse the code
from the RSS Dashboard, and from Webtabs, to create a great
experiment.<br>
<br>
If anyone stands interested, I'd love to implement this and devote
some time to this, as I believe it's highly valuable. However, the
catch is I'm <b>pretty bad at design and UX</b>. Therefore, I don't
know who's the right person to ping for this. With Mozilla Messaging
now being reintegrated into Mozilla,<br>
- can we expect Firefox UX people to be interested in contributing
to this?<br>
- can we expect Bryan and Andy to be interested in this, or are they
going to be more focused on F1-related stuff, and not available for
Thunderbird work?<br>
<br>
I'd love to hear your thoughts about this! Do you think it is a good
direction? Do you think I would be wasting my time?<br>
<br>
Have a nice Sunday all,<br>
<br>
jonathan<br>
</body>
</html>