(The attached patch may or may not be a good starting point.)

Over to Khushil.

I've copied Alessandro and more support folks because my main reason for posting is to suggest a couple more additions to the help menu that involve support, website or publicity. I think we can decide quickly enough whether to do this for ESR68.

Part of the reasoning is many users don't download TB from our website (think linux and portable users, users visiting certain press articles or third party DL sites, etc), and so they will never have seen the website info before using the product. Another reason is we need to toot our own horn - existing users need to know this isn't a dead project or on life support. (Yes, we have the start page, but some users disable that)

Donations is already mentioned in this bug. And "keyboard shortcuts" and "features" menu items is also in the patch. Seem thoughts about "Submit feedback" [1] and features [2] below.

I suggest also:

• add something like "Volunteer" (aka get involved) - we always need more help in beta, support, etc - and you don't get that without asking. You've got to ask.
• add a menu item that shows Thunderbird is alive and well, with content that isn't static so they will want to come back for more. (One can argue the release notes does that - but that's about product, not about the organization) Perhaps the Blog?

Other suggestions?

[1] "Submit feedback" - we need to decide whether to have one at this time and where to point it - SUMO? We have NO means to aggregate SUMO feedback. Nor can we distinguish in SUMO which items are problem reports and which are suggestions or feedback. In short any suggestions we get are largely lost. So we have two choices - point users to SUMO and hopefully the link later to a proper survey tool. Or we put in the strings now but not expose it in the UI yet, and decide later where to point it to. (Firefox points to https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/ )

[2] "Features" - "Firefox Tour" points to a KB article in SUMO. But we currently don't have a good KB article. I suggest we point to https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/features/ (which will get even better after Alessandro's revisions)

Note

• one of the Thunderbird menu separator lines should be removed IMO, Troubleshooting should be grouped with Restart with addons disabled.
• help in the appmenu is missing a separator line below "release notes"

Maybe we could consider adding a direct link to our new and optimized developer documentation (https://developer.thunderbird.net/), since Ryan spent a lot of time on that one and it's looking pretty modern, and it's way easier to follow than the one on developer.mozilla.org.

Maybe we could have a generic menu item called "Developer Documentation", or we could even add a new section with links to specific pages, eg. "Add-on Documentation", "Report a Bug", "Fixing a Bug", etc.

I agree that a link to the Blog should definitely be in there.

Perhaps a different bug, but I also noticed that in Firefox clicking directly on Help doesn't shunt you to SUMO, it funnels you to the help submenu. I think I prefer that to Thunderbird's behavior, which sends you directly to SUMO.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #13)

• one of the Thunderbird menu separator lines should be removed IMO,
  Troubleshooting should be grouped with Restart with addons disabled.

Not seeing this separator on linux trunk at least.

• help in the appmenu is missing a separator line below "release notes"

The app-menu is broken on trunk. Revival and some redesigning in bug 1546309.

I think we don't want to add too many menu items only to link to the site.
We don't have any place to point "Submit feedback" to atm, so let's not add that.

To show Thunderbird is alive and well, can we just improve the What's new?
That's also a page we should consider popping up in a tab or into the browser at some good opportunity after an upgrade.

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #16)

• help in the appmenu is missing a separator line below "release notes"

The app-menu is broken on trunk. Revival and some redesigning in bug 1546309.

my comments about the separators are based on ESR.

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #17)

I think we don't want to add too many menu items only to link to the site.

I had thought about adding too much - but these are distinct pages with focused purpose, and Help is the smallest of our smallest menus (plus half the size of most menus). So I don't see a downside to adding a few items.

We don't have any place to point "Submit feedback" to atm, so let's not add that.

Are you saying also don't want to add placeholder strings?

To show Thunderbird is alive and well, can we just improve the What's new?

I don't think that will have the effect I am looking for.

(But it led me to discover, I think, that almost none of our SUMO KB articles point back to www.thunderbird.net )

I forgot "Donate" is also a new addition.

Maybe it would be less busy as two sections rather than three?

So I guess this should be the order :

help
keyboard (New, Link Added)
features (New, Link: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/features/)
donation (New, Link Added)
What's new
Release Notes
------------ (Separator)
Volunteer/ Get involved (New, Link to be decided, Label to be decided)(developer info can be part of this.)
Troubleshooting
Restart
------------ (Separator)
Blog (New, Link to be decided, Label to be decided)
About

Wayne, do you want any changes with the order? Can you help me with the links and labels?

I like this direction and the amount of links.
I would update the donation link to be "Make a Donation" in order to be consistent with other sections (About dialog, first page, etc.)

The blog link is this one: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
For the label, we could have:

• Blog
• Read the Blog
• Official Blog
• Thunderbird Blog

I'd also add a link below the blog to our new dev docs.
Developer Documentation: https://developer.thunderbird.net/

I agree the feedback item could be very useful, but we do have to find somewhere to point that to. So let's add the item, but hidden for now.

Neither Submit Feedback nor the Make a Donation should have ellipsis (Firefox have this wrong).

For the blog and developer documentation, it's hard to make a case for it. These are the things that can, and are linked from the thunderbird main page. Importantly, they are also NOT localized in any way, which is a show-stopper for in-product links.

More of mirroring Firefox, I'd make it sectioned by functionality (outside vs. internal ui)

Thunderbird Help
Thunderbird Website
Keyboard Shortcuts
Make a Donation
Submit Feedback

Troubleshooting Information
Restart with Add-ons Disabled...

About Thunderbird

This removes direct links to release notes, and the what's new page. It should all be easily findable through the website really, or something's wrong with the website (the website item is new addition)

keybaord shortcuts should be next to Thunderbird help.

The screen shots are Mac, so I assume that "About Thunderbird" has not been removed for the other OS.

For the blog and developer documentation, it's hard to make a case for it.

Developer may be a stretch. But our UX person has requested blog.

And so again I make the case for more direct visibility. We want to educate users, and we want more participation, then these things must be in front of our users eyes, which means in the product. Having it on the website is great, sure, it's available. But it's not in the product, so it's simply not visible to our users.

It seems part of what's driving your opinion is a fascination with minimizing the size of menu - I fail to understand how that trumps other goals.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #29)

keybaord shortcuts should be next to Thunderbird help.

Okay Cool.

The screen shots are Mac, so I assume that "About Thunderbird" has not been removed for the other OS.

Yeah, it is there.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #29)

keybaord shortcuts should be next to Thunderbird help.

Agreed that would make sense.

Developer may be a stretch. But our UX person has requested blog.

The thunderbird website is already featuring the blog. I don't want to have duplication, because if the menu is too long nobody is going to read it.

And so again I make the case for more direct visibility. We want to
educate users, and we want more participation, then these things must be
in front of our users eyes, which means in the product. Having it on
the website is great, sure, it's available. But it's not in the product,
so it's simply not visible to our users.

But we have the link to the website now.

It seems part of what's driving your opinion is a fascination with
minimizing the size of menu

Too long and people won't read through it. I think adding the donate menu is important, and if we link to many other pages on the site directly that will not be noticed enough. Also, the pages are not localized so not linkable to end users.

But we have the link to the "website"

I'll work with others in the next day to get a better solution

I guess the label could be "Get Involved" too. There's no saying in what anyone would want to be involved in so sending them to the thunderbird main page should be fine.

I've thought a lot about this and I think that "Developer Documentation" and "Get Involved" are reasonable inclusions in their own section.

We can see what the reaction is to that in the Beta and adjust accordingly.

but Developer Doc: Seamonkey used to have things like this in the menus but (I think?) even they stopped since the menu item is only relevant to 0.001% of the users (if we're very lucky!)

But sure, Get Involved is a different animal and could be useful. Let's include that one instead of the link to the main site, which is arguably less relevant to an existing user. Should link to https://www.thunderbird.net/get-involved/

That page seems to miss context atm, it should tell people right at the top we're an open source project, you can bla bla bla... At the moment if you get there without context you're really lost as to where you were taken. Ryan?

Thank you for considering Get Involved. Yes, we can definitely improve the Get Involved page in the coming weeks.

In general we should want to expose more of the product and the project to user, particularly to users not inclined to dig on their own, but might if hints in the product invite them to dig. Words that are inviting to users of all skill levels can generate interest.

"Features" had been suggested because it fits the goals above, and because most products have some form of features tour. Firefox has it as "Firefox Tour". Your starting proposal removed two help menu items but added back only one item, so I still think a features tour would be a good addition to the menu.

Related to those removals, I have serious reservations about removing both. I think we need to keep at least one. Firefox removed them because they decided they want to emphasize the update process. That's fine for them, their changes tend to be incremental and less disruptive, plus most of their users are not on ESR. This isn't true of us.

If we don't have a menu item how will we we communicate important release information to users when we do major ESR releases? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-60 is a good example what we needed to communicate for v60. Without that page we would have had more user frustration and many more support requests - both of which we want to avoid.

Bear in mind our help menu is very small - 5 of our 7 other menus are twice the size of Help as seen in this collection of screen shots.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #43)

+1 for all of Wayne's points.

Created attachment 9065921 [details]

• Thunderbird Features (until we have a proper tour): Love it! Note: Features page needs updating: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/features/
• Get Involved: Nice. In your proposal, is this covered by "Thunderbird Community"?

Related to those removals, I have serious reservations about removing both. I think we need to keep at least one.

+1. I agree with Wayne to keep at least "What's New" (linked to the major version support page):

• What's new: In the current order of things, the "New in Thunderbird 60" major version support page [1] seems more useful than "Release Notes" for (Sub-)Version 60.6.1 [2]. I believe for most users, the under-the-hood fixes of subversions (e.g. the latest security fixes) are not relevant at all. "Release Notes" for the latest subversion are sufficiently linked in "About Thunderbird" dialog. We should also try to better integrate/link these similar documents with each other, and consider reversing the logic: Currently, Release notes point to the subversion which isn't very interesting. Maybe they should always point to the major version [3] instead but have links to the latest subversion and the latest version. Also, the tabular style Release Notes [3] should definitely link to the major version support page [1], and maybe we'll have more creative ideas how to integrate the two better.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-60
[2] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/60.6.1/releasenotes/
[3] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/60.0/releasenotes/

Bear in mind our help menu is very small.

Indeed. I concur with Waynes notion that this is a rare spot where we can entice users to dig into something which they haven't seen yet. A general "Thunderbird Website" link may be less likely to achieve that.

• Thunderbird Website: I suggest that we linkify the word "Thunderbird" in the "About Thunderbird" dialog to point to the TB Website.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #43)

"Features" had been suggested because it fits the goals above, and because
most products have some form of features tour. Firefox has it as "Firefox
Tour". Your starting proposal removed two help menu items but added back
only one item, so I still think a features tour would be a good addition to
the menu.

Ok, maybe a Thunderbird Tour item would be nice.

Related to those removals, I have serious reservations about removing both.
I think we need to keep at least one. Firefox removed them because they
decided they want to emphasize the update process. That's fine for them,
their changes tend to be incremental and less disruptive, plus most of their
users are not on ESR. This isn't true of us.

I think the about page version could link to the release notes.
Not buying the argument that normal users would need to read these pages. I doubt they do.

If we don't have a menu item how will we we communicate important release
information to users when we do major ESR releases?

I'd like to open a page in the browser detailing saying we updated and here's the beef.

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #45)

Ok, maybe a Thunderbird Tour item would be nice.

+1

I think the about page version could link to the release notes.

There's a release notes link already in the dialog, should remain explicit imo.

Not buying the argument that normal users would need to read these pages. I doubt they do.

Please read my comment 44. We have many different versions of What's new/ Release notes/ major/minor version.
For any given version:

• release notes major release (that's interesting and informative)
• release notes minor release (that's stuff like security updates, typically not interesting)
• "New in TB XX major release" (that's very interesting and valuable as a support page, also to describe known issues)
  We need to integrate these better and make them more normal-user-centered. Probably emphasize the major release more.

If we don't have a menu item how will we we communicate important release
information to users when we do major ESR releases?

I'd like to open a page in the browser detailing saying we updated and here's the beef.

We already do that in TB browser, isn't it? But that's a once-only which I may not read after waiting for TB to update, and easy to close the tab, thereafter no longer easily accessible. When I start to see an issue (like broken addons), the page may no longer be available.

Based on Magnus comment 25 and Wayne's comment 43, I suggest this with minor changes:

• Thunderbird Help
• Thunderbird Features (until we have Tour; page needs updating: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/features/)
• Keyboard Shortcuts (logical order from general to specific: Help > Features > Shortcuts)
• What's new (focus on major version support info, like https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-60)

• Make a donation (more salient after new separator ^^; most wanted user action topmost)
• Submit Feedback (low-level involvement)
• Get involved (more involvement; needs context intro: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/)

• Troubleshooting information
• Restart with Addons disabled

• About Thunderbird

I've added one separator which emphasizes the donation link and makes for these clear sections:

1. Help (TB helps user)
2. Involvement (user helps TB)
3. Troubleshooting
4. About

Feedback welcome.

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #45)

...
I'd like to open a page in the browser detailing saying we updated and here's the beef.

Yes, that would be preferable. Not the same, but we had a migration funnel for version 3.0.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #43)

...
Related to those removals, I have serious reservations about removing both. I think we need to keep at least one. Firefox removed them because they decided they want to DEemphasize the update process. That's fine for them, their changes tend to be incremental and less disruptive, plus most of their users are not on ESR. This isn't true of us.

I mistyped above - Firefox decided they want to NOT call attention to release.

I'd like to open a page in the browser detailing saying we updated and here's the beef.

Filed Bug 1552725 - On updates, load What's New in a tab. Could be done also for release notes

Made a few changes to better align the keys with Firefox (makes it easier for future comparisons), and added the Thunderbird Tour item.

Off to try: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try-comm-central&revision=26e9452f285950577a5cf3f49bfd950ba72a0cbf

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #46)

I think the about page version could link to the release notes.

There's a release notes link already in the dialog, should remain explicit
imo.

There is not. Maybe you want to take on a bug to link the version number?

Please read my comment 44. We have many different versions of What's new/

We only support ~one version though. And if it's not something "new" it's not new.>

I'd like to open a page in the browser detailing saying we updated and here's the beef.

We already do that in TB browser, isn't it?

Nope. But we used to do it (inside Thunderbird) many years ago.

New try: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try-comm-central&revision=dd499822d74cc5b72ca9b4323b302740e43c8a08

Fixed the test failures. Will land this shortly.

Pushed by mkmelin@iki.fi:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/e31269a0705e
thunderbird help menu revamp. r=mkmelin

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #54)

Fixed the test failures. Will land this shortly.

How about you let me coordinate landings.

... and you didn't set the Target Milestone :-(

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #43)

Thank you for considering Get Involved. Yes, we can definitely improve the Get Involved page in the coming weeks.

I'll put giving the "Get Involved" page another overhaul on my task list.

Why did you remove the "What's New" menu item?
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/e31269a0705e#l3.24

See comment 51. What is it new from - we can't tell, that all depends on contexts. Essentially the menu item was lying.
In addition to that, we now pop up the what's new on upgrades, when it actually is new. And since that page is in the browser, you should be able to find that pretty easily through your history, in case there actually was something there you wanted to read up on.