07 Jul 2026
Planet Mozilla
Thunderbird Blog: Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback
A few weeks ago, we conducted hour-long conversations with 10 of our users to dig deep into how you manage your preferences and configurations in Thunderbird desktop. While this specific research cycle focused on the desktop experience, our ultimate goal is a holistic strategy that ensures our mobile settings feel like a natural extension of your workspace.
Here is a quick look at what we discovered, what you valued, and how your feedback is actively shaping our design roadmap.
What you told us
You are incredibly passionate about customization, and appreciate Thunderbird's robust functionality. Overall, a common thread that stood out was that most of you want to set up your space once and then make small tweaks to your preferences, you want it to look modern, and navigate effortlessly without running into issues with technical jargon.
Here are the key themes that emerged from our conversations:
- Ecosystem trust: Your commitment to Thunderbird is rooted in a deep trust for open-source software, the Mozilla brand, absolute transparency, and reliability.
- Set and forget: You customize extensively during your initial setup, followed only by minor tweaks to get your workspace just right.
- Clutter & noise: There is a strong desire to reduce workspace clutter and the cognitive "noise" within dense configuration menus.
- Search to navigate: While deep navigation menus can feel hard to find your way through, an in-app search function is your go-to for finding what you need quickly.
- The "inbox as a to-do list" workflow: Many of you don't just read mail, you actively treat your unread inbox as a task list or interactive to-do queue.
- Terminology barriers: Even for advanced users, many settings feel overly technical, which causes hesitation when you're trying to explore your options.
Improvements we want to make
We don't want to just make minor fixes, we want to design a better workflow. Based on your feedback, here are the core design actions that will be driving our next phase focusing on general and account settings:
- Demystify the language: We are planning to replace confusing technical terminology with plain, clear language, so you always know exactly what each function does.
- Streamline information architecture: We are regrouping settings into logical, task-oriented categories to make manual navigation smooth and intuitive.
- Bring context to privacy & security: Instead of a flat list of checkboxes, we want to add clear explanations around data security and defaults so you can make confident, informed decisions.
- Functionality meets modern UI: Thunderbird's robust functionality is its superpower, but a dated interface shouldn't be a barrier to entry for newer users.
- Accessibility update: Based on a community member's recent audit, we are also taking this opportunity to improve the overall accessibility of the settings experience.
What's next?
We are hitting the ground running with these insights. Right now, our team is actively:
- Finalizing our project scope to directly incorporate these research findings.
- Mapping out and proposing a streamlined information architecture for settings.
- Designing this layout holistically so that desktop preferences and mobile configurations
A massive thank you to everyone who offered their time and feedback for this study! We look forward to sharing more with you soon.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
The post Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback appeared first on The Thunderbird Blog.
07 Jul 2026 6:56pm GMT
06 Jul 2026
Planet Mozilla
Mozilla Localization (L10N): Giving Pontoon’s Editor Its Own Theme
Each year, Mozilla welcomes interns who work alongside our engineering teams on projects that ship to production and improve the experience for contributors around the world. This year, Ayush joined the Firefox Localization team to work on Pontoon, Mozilla's open source localization platform, where he already tackled several user-facing improvements while learning how large-scale open source software is built.
In this post, Ayush shares the story behind one of his first projects: giving Pontoon's translation editor its own appearance settings. From understanding long-standing design decisions to balancing accessibility with user expectations, he walks through both the technical implementation and the product thinking that shaped the feature.
You can follow Ayush's work on GitHub and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Introduction
Studying Computer Engineering with a Professional Experience Year (PEY) at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science gave me a variety of opportunities and companies to choose spending a year interning at. I chose Software Engineering at Mozilla because it's an open source company that puts people first, which matters to me a lot and allows me to equip my portfolio using snippets and examples from real code used in production.
I joined Mozilla's Firefox Localization (l10n) team as part of Mozilla Corporation's Firefox Desktop Engineering Team, based in Downtown Toronto. I officially began my internship on Friday, May 1, 2026, but I unofficially began in mid February. Since my team's flagship product's (Pontoon) codebase is entirely open source, I talked to both my manager and Pontoon owner right after signing my offer and got early access to our weekly meetings and some confidential data. I then started to learn as much as I possibly could.
Even before I started learning the codebase, just looking at the Pontoon's default translation UI was rather interesting because of our editor pane's glaring white color in dark mode/theme.
Even though I saw the issue (#4001) filed for working on that, I thought that the stark contrast was a stylistic choice because an average user would spend most of their time on said pane editing strings anyway, so I just went on with it.
However, once I officially started to work, I got my onboarding document and saw my starting set of issues. That's where I came across the very same issue (#4001) on my todo batch, which made me very happy since I could address it and I'd already looked at the surrounding context before working with it.
The Original Experience
At first, the user could only change Pontoon's appearance from their `profile menu` or Pontoon's `/settings` page. This is where they have the ability to change their appearance to `dark mode`, `light mode`, or keep the `system theme` that matches their device's preferences.
This is the view from Pontoon's Settings page.
This is the view from Pontoon's Profile menu.
Ironically, the dark appearance warrants a light themed `editor pane`.
There is also no option to change the `editor pane` appearance from the `editor menu`.
Design Considerations
In general, when a product has a large, established user base that has grown accustomed to a particular interface, it's important to approach visual changes with care. Even if a redesign is arguably more visually appealing and offers clear accessibility benefits, changing familiar workflows and appearance can still disrupt the user experience.
In fact, according to this Mozilla Research article I read, which explored browser choice design interventions, "It is important that the organizations tasked with designing and regulating current and future interventions (including browser choice screens) are mindful of the design principles we have articulated with this research."
Even though the relevance of said research is for the browser use-case, the impacts are for a user interface design like in this blog, as the article also mentions "The inertia is a strong force to overcome", and Pontoon's inertia dates back over a decade.
This meant that if we were to change the editor pane color, we would have to allow the user to have things as they currently are.
The New Experience
In the update Appearance section of the Settings page, users have the ability to change the main interface as before, but now have the ability to update editor to `dark mode`, `light mode`, or match their `main interface theme` to automatically sync the colors.
The editor theme remains light by default, regardless of the main interface theme.
This is the view from Pontoon's Settings page.
Editor appearance can also be quickly changed from the editor menu.
This UI now matches the dark theme, either by explicitly selecting it or matching the main interface theme.
Since the issue was with `dark interface mode` having a `light editor`, setting the default `editor` to `light` neatly agreed with how the UI looked before the changes were brought in.
Looking Ahead
These changes neatly allow the user to modify their theme keeping their general preferences in mind. The change is also remembered by Pontoon and stays consistent at every instance the user logs back in.
Furthermore, we now track if the user has interacted with the `editor theme` which gives us knowledge on if we want to eventually change the default editor theme, addressing the concerns of `UI inertia` brought up in Mozilla's research.
For more information and technical details, please visit: https://www.ayshush.us/mozilla/issue-notes/4001
06 Jul 2026 4:13pm GMT
About:Community: A new Firefox look, hidden features, and more
Hi Mozillians, welcome to another Mozilla community roundup!
This month, we're taking a look at what's next for Firefox. From an upcoming visual refresh and a peek behind the new design system to hidden features you may never have used before. We're also highlighting a recent Reddit AMA on the new Firefox product Roadmap and celebrating community contribution that's making collaboration in Pontoon even better.
Let's dive in!
✨ Firefox gets a fresh new look. Soon!
Firefox is evolving with a refreshed design that makes the browser feel more modern, approachable, and consistent across desktop and mobile. The refresh also extends to Firefox's voice and writing style, making product experience feel more human, direct, and unmistakably Firefox. If you're excited about these changes, make sure to keep an eye out for an upcoming foxfooding opportunity later this month!
Firefox can do all this?
Sreenath from It's FOSS rounded up 21 Firefox features that many users never discover. From the built-in Eyedropper tool and Picture-in-Picture to vertical tabs and other productivity features, there's plenty to explore. See how many you've already used! We could even turn it into a fun bingo at our next community event.
From the Reddit Community
Firefox leaders recently joined r/firefox for a live AMA to answer questions about the newly launched Firefox Product Roadmap. Community members asked about everything from Android improvements and Containers to Project Nova, PWAs, performance, and future browser development. The conversation generated a wide range of discussions and provided valuable insight into what Firefox users are most excited, and concerned, about.
Community spotlight
Collaboration in Pontoon just got a little easier. Thanks to volunteer contributor Serah Nderi, users can now edit and delete their own comments, while project managers can remove comments for moderation purposes. This long-requested feature helps reduce clutter, improve discussions, and makes collaboration smoother for localization teams.
P.S.
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06 Jul 2026 3:45am GMT