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<div id="smartTemplate4-template">Dear Tanstaafl,
<br>
<br>
yes and no. While it's HTML output is horrid, I would dispute that
it is a bad editor, it is just port of their MS Office WORD engine
and produces very reliable results when you use it in a Corporate
(Outlook only) environment. The Editor of Outlook 2010 absolutely
runs rings around our Composer it has Style Templates, table
layouts with alternating shading and a lot of other
"Word-Processor" niceness. <br>
<br>
Of course the email client of Outlook itself is really bad
compared to Thunderbird, has issues with stability (at least in
my experience) is bloated, and its only saving grace is the
integrated Calendar and the connection to MS Communicator / Lync /
Company directory.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Why Microsoft decided to switch from IE to Word for the HTML rendering
in Outlook is just something I (and millions of other folks) will never
understand. The only rational reason I can think of is some kind of
misguided attempt to motivate Outlook users to buy Office (or at least
Word).</pre>
</blockquote>
I think you are thinking from the wrong direction. In corporate
environments, Office comes first, and email is bolted on. This
means documents have to be easily be created and shared with the
same Corporate format and Word + Excel + Powerpoint [+ Access
(shucks) hopefully not] are weapons of choice here.<br>
<br>
For a corporate user it is very important that a snippet they copy
from / into a word document "looks the same" when they paste in /
from an Email. The user does not care that there is a HTML layer
underneath. They don't even care that you can do awesome stuff
with HTML/CSS (text shadow / box shadow / animation) that they
can't achieve with their text editor. One thing that is really
important are persistent styles, and here is one of the problems
with HTML as we only have semantic markup (p,h1,h2,pre) but no way
to persist style sheets in classes that survive being copied into
other email clients.<br>
<br>
<img src="cid:part1.02090801.03050403@gmail.com" alt=""><br>
<br>
To get Thunderbird to a UI which has easy pre-definable paragraph
styles (like the Ribbon in Word) is actually one of my goals for
the next 3 years, but I am too much of a luddite to attempt it by
patching Composer - I am an Add-ons guy. The problem is that I do
not know how risky any development in this direction would be as I
do not know if (and when) Thunderbird decides to scrap the current
composer and replace it with another editor; which would
potentially invalidate any work put into this from an Add-on
perspective.<br>
<br>
It would be <i>absolutely fantastic </i>if the Tb-Planning team
could decide on a binding strategy for the way forward with
Composer as all we hear at the grass route level are rumors. There
are a coupkle of people who had written prototypes for other
editors (or intergration work) but seemingly this never
manifested. In the long term I believe Thunderbird should build in
(or License) its own Editor component independant of whatever
Mozilla / Firefox decides. <br>
<br>
Whenever the topic (composer / editor) comes up there is a
temporary flaming up of opinions and then it dies down again.
Thunderbird surely needs more than a basic editor (which gmail and
every other web client has) it needs a full layout design engine
which harnesses the power of CSS and is stable even when viewed in
different mail clients. It should support optional "compatibility
modes" where CSS rules are transfered from classes into inline
instructions so that users can choose slightly worse markup which
doesn't "change" when replied to with another HTML capable mail
client. <br>
<br>
From my own perspective, striking a balance between efficient
markup and multi-platform compatible rules is surprisingly
difficult, I have lot of difficult questions from users of my
"SmartTemplate4" Add-on, such as "how do I reply with blue text"?
Questions that seem incredibly trivial at first glance and become
a real nightmare when these emails are being replied to again and
again as class-based style rules can destroy quoted / nested
emails or even the future mails that will reply to your email. So
I believe we need 2 things: a better UI experience in Composer and
a more robust, planned approach to persisting style rules. I would
be open to discuss these in a work group; but I am doubtful that
using bugzilla is the right approach for planning this.<br>
<br>
regards<br>
Axel<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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51%,rgba(219,240,67,1) 100%);">
<b class="myName" style="text-shadow: 1px 1px 2px #DDD;
transition:font-size 0.5s;"><a
href="mailto:axel.grude@gmail.com">Axel Grude</a></b>
<br>
Software Developer
<br>
Thunderbird Add-ons Developer
<span style="color:#666666; font-size:xx-small">(QuickFolders,
quickFilters, QuickPasswords, Zombie Keys, SmartTemplate4)</span>
<br>
AMO Editor <img style="margin-top: 1em; float: right;
box-shadow: 1px 1px 2px rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.4);"
moz-do-not-send="false" class="myLogo"
src="cid:part3.03050006.02080308@gmail.com" alt="Get
Thunderbird!" height="15" width="94">
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<blockquote type="cite" style="margin-bottom: -30px !important;
padding-bottom:30px !important;">
<div id="newHeader" style="font-size: x-small; padding:1em;
background-color:rgba(220,220,240,0.4); border-radius:3px;"> <b>Subject:</b>
Re: The infamous Mozilla core editor<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a> <br>
<b>From: </b>Tanstaafl<br>
<b>Sent: </b>Friday, 06/03/2015 14:58:04 14:58 GMT ST +0000
[Week 9]<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="mid_54F9C07C_4010506_libertytrek_org"
cite="mid:54F9C07C.4010506@libertytrek.org" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On 3/6/2015 8:47 AM, Axel Grude <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:axel.grude@gmail.com"><axel.grude@gmail.com></a> wrote:
> I know there is a bug for this but I cannot find it:
>
> * In HTML mode, "Paragraph" style should be preselected, not body.
> * Enter should create / split <p> </p>
> * Shift-Enter should create <br>
>
>
> So many people get it wrong (only press Enter once) and then their
> paragraphs are "glued together". This is something so fundamental, and
> works so well in Outlook.
Well... I would challenge that at least. Outlook is one of the worst
when it comes to composing and rendering HTML email, due to its reliance
on a totally crippled HTML rendering engine (Word).
Why Microsoft decided to switch from IE to Word for the HTML rendering
in Outlook is just something I (and millions of other folks) will never
understand. The only rational reason I can think of is some kind of
misguided attempt to motivate Outlook users to buy Office (or at least
Word).
_______________________________________________
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<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning">https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
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