App Tabs for Thunderbird
Nguyen Ngoc Trung
Abstract
Firefox introduced a great feature some time ago - the App Tabs. In Firefox, App Tabs are smaller size tabs, which are automatically loaded every time the browser starts. App Tabs might be a good feature to have for Thunderbird, which can differentiate Thunderbird from other mail clients. My basic idea is that there will be two types of App Tabs in Thunderbird: - Permanent (System) App Tabs: App Tabs that are controlled by Thunderbird itself, users cannot unpin these tabs. Tabs like Inbox, Home page, Chat app tab can be examples of Permanent App Tabs. - User App Tabs: App Tabs that are manually pinned and controlled by users.
Additional Information
Below is my proposal on how to implement the app tabs on Thunderbird.
- App Tabs will have the ability to support web apps (as a foundation for Home tab and Chat app tab).
- App Tabs will have smaller size than normal tab to save up space and the appearance of App Tabs will be the same as the one in Firefox.
- App Tabs are fixed on the tab bar and are loaded automatically every time Thunderbird starts.
- An App Tab can be a Permanent (System) App Tab or a user App Tab:
- Permanent (System) App Tabs is loaded by default and user cannot unpin it. Examples of permanent App Tabs might be Home screen, Mail Tab, Chat Tab, etc.
- User App Tabs are tabs that are pinned by users and can be unpinned at any time.
- Users should be able to see the option “Pin as App Tab/Unpin Tab” in the pop-up context menu upon right-clicking a specific tab.