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bbawt
Strollin' around
Status: New idea

I don't think I'm the only one who finds the font settings in Thunderbird confusing especially to a new user. I learned through Reddit to set fonts you go to Settings/General and have a default font to set, than in Advanced you choose "Latin" and set font styles there, then you choose "Other Writing Systems" and choose font choices there as well.  I don't actually know what font settings these control, or as a new user how I would know to adjust these. I also don't know how these interact with choosing a font when composing a message.  I could not find any information source that explains why fonts are set up this way or a guide on how to set up fonts properly.  I never had this issue using other email program such as Outlook, eMclient or BlueMail.

My idea to put forward is to revamp the font setting approach in Thunderbird to make font settings more intuitive, use plain language and/or to provide a guide to managing fonts in the program. 

2 Comments
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

SaltyKitkat
New member

I totally agree. After installing thunderbird, It takes me hours to figure out that my fonts are too small because of one value in
Settings > General > Language & Fonts > Fonts > Advanced > Fonts for Other writing systems
gives a too small number.

It seems insane and I don't think new users can easily get there. Maybe some users want to set different fonts for different languages and the "Fonts for ..." is for them. However, for most users who just want to change their font size, I don't think it's a good experience to going so deep and find an option in the loooong "Fonts for ..." list.

I know there's a font size option in TB menu but it doesn't work as expected. In my case, the font size shown in TB menu is 16 while the font size of my plain text emails is 12. And
1. email font sizes will change to TB menu size as long as TB menu font size is not 16. For example, when changing TB menu font size 15 -> 16 -> 17, email text just suddenly goes from 15 to as small as 12, and then from 12 to 17.
2. email font size seems changing with the TB menu font size. However, email text font size will go back to what it was when open another email.

So it doesn't work and seems buggy for me.