Well, I would offer 2 thoughts regarding T-BIRD 128. In fact, T-BIRD in general. THUNDERBIRD is the de facto standard in independent e-mail clients, 'owning' the lion's share of the market. So1, given that status, the folks who put in the effort to program its many features should be commended. However, given that praise, I also agree that making changes for the sake of making changes IS extremely disruptive & alienating. One glaring example from a bygone release update was to turn off the links which appeared on the left side of FIREFOX, so to reset it, one had to go through a series of steps, steps not immediately easy to locate. In the case of T-BIRD, I've had several similar issues going back to the days of Rel. 5n.nnn, and it has been extremely annoying to say the least. But, MOZILLA is not unique in this tragedy. MICROSOFT is t he prime leader in 'change for the sake of change' syndrome. Every release of Windows brings a wwhole new set of these situations. The desktop presentation of XP was perfect, but in the immediate following releases, they felt compelled to change the format. WHY? Millions upon millions of users were very comfortable with the way it was. What is lost at the keyboards of many programmers is that the general user public just wants to get their work done. By analogy: If I need a screwdriver to work a screw, that's what I need. I expect that every time I pick up a screwdriver, I need to go to the instruction booklet to learn how it is used! The comment, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', SHOULD BE the absolute mantra for all softwate programming projects.
