Why is there no "user guide" for Thunderbird?
I understand completely that the organizational mode for Mozilla software is entirely different from that of commercial software, so please do not imagine that I am expecting Mozilla to behave like, say, Microsoft (perish the thought). Having said this, it still is most unfortunate that there is no coherent, well ordered, topically organized guide for Thunderbird so that the user is not required to address each issue, as it may arise, in ad hoc fashion.
One would think that by now, many volunteers who answer questions here could easily put together a user guide for Thunderbird (and for Firefox as well, for that matter) that would pull together all of the scattered material into one wonderful unit. Naturally, such a user guide would not answer all questions, but it certainly could flag and help with those involving basic and intermediate usage.
For example, in preparing to send e-mails, I could not figure out how to populate "To," "Cc," and "Bcc" fields in multiple-recipient messages without a laborious process that seemed needless. There was no clear direction about the great side menu that appears in the "Write" mode simply by pressing F9. Finally, no thanks to anything intelligent I did, I managed to stumble across information about this. Of the various vexations I have experienced in becoming accustomed to Thunderbird, this has been the largest. But it and all the rest would have been easily managed if orderly, coherent instructions were available in a user guide.
Thank you.
Izabrano rješenje
1. Perhaps I am mistaken but I don't see that you stated where you started seeking the information you think is lacking? aka URLs
2. Are you asking for a "tutorial"? - there are plenty of examples on the web - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird thence to "Learn the basics" aka https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird/learn-basics-get-started
3. Or are you seeking a manual? like https://www.flossmanuals.net/thunderbird/
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One would think that by now, many volunteers who answer questions here could easily put together a user guide for Thunderbird
Well it is good to know that you think I could spend even more of my free time writing up lengthy help articles. The forum is full of help articles, but not everybody chooses to search for them, but I agree, you can never have enough.
re: There was no clear direction about the great side menu that appears in the "Write" mode simply by pressing F9.
Perhaps it is more to do with what you used to search for the answers. As my mother frequently points out. Easy when you know what words to use.
eg: In the case of your example:
In the search, I typed 'Write contacts' to get results, I also tested using 'addressing an email'
Selected Help Articles and thunderbird and located the above help articles on the first page.
Goodness. Not all of us have been here for a long time and understand the peeves of contributors, their time commitments to Mozilla, or, for that matter, how, in detail, Mozilla is organized in the first place. Are we expected to become expert in these things overnight? Would it not be more likely to develop a new Mozilla user into a contributor over time if present contributors were somewhat more tolerant of straightforward questions?
My question was a good-faith one. I have been using Thunderbird for exactly one week, stumbling around to learn how to do things that may be obvious to you and to some others but not to me. It was recommended to me by a friend, who does not do anything especially creative with it, so he is not much help here. Also, my experience with Firefox has been excellent, which seemed to be another good reason for adopting Thunderbird.
Your mother is perfectly right. Framing the question can be everything. Even Google, with all its sophistication, often requires repeated inquiries with varied wordings to get to the point. But I have learned that about Google through experience over considerable time. I have not had any considerable time with Thunderbird, but because I have some urgent e-mail needs that were being consigned to purgatory by my former and very poorly run web-mail operation, I have a need to get on with it PDQ. Furthermore, Mozilla support does not seem nearly so intuitive as Google does. [Don't lock and load: I am merely making an observation, not hurling a criticism.]
That is why I asked---without putting on my armor---about a user guide. With all respect to you and your generous contribution of time and effort to the Cause here, I still think it is a good question. Frankly, if I had the substantial degree of experience with Thunderbird necessary to do up a user guide, and if my technical computer skills and knowledge were more on the order of what yours probably are rather than what mine definitely are, I would begin a user guide right now.
Thank you.
Odabrano rješenje
1. Perhaps I am mistaken but I don't see that you stated where you started seeking the information you think is lacking? aka URLs
2. Are you asking for a "tutorial"? - there are plenty of examples on the web - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird thence to "Learn the basics" aka https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird/learn-basics-get-started
3. Or are you seeking a manual? like https://www.flossmanuals.net/thunderbird/
Your question was a good question and I agree more help articles is a good idea.
I hope you grasped what I was trying to helping you with on How to search for articles?
As you are a new user in thunderbird, here are a few helpful hints.
Most help on forums etc refers to the toolbars. Recent versions of thunderbird saw a change so that a new menu icon was added and the toolbars were not necessarilly all added. You can enable all the toolbars. see first image below.
There are some basic things which are good to know about maintaining a healthy Thunderbird:
Compacting..what it means and how it is important:
Where is the Profile folder located:
also
Profile backup:
IMAP Backup:
To Wayne Mery:
I posted no urls at all, but as part of this interesting and sometimes ascerbic instruction process, I now understand that I should cite urls, this evidently being part of the "culture" of this support venue. The next time I have a question---I will grit my teeth and slather on the urls.
Thank you for the links to tutorials and that manual (although a cursory look at the manual does indicate that it is hardly contemporary, but given your citation of it, I will anticipate some decent value from it).
To Toad-Hall: Your original and subsequent links are very helpful, thank you. Perhaps the better part of a "user guide" could be developed by the simple expedient of establishing a zone, place, site, or whatever the correct term is where what amounts to a sort of link table of contents could be listed, with each link-to-article arranged in the sort of order one would expect to find in the topics covered in the chapters of a user guide, or perhaps in alphabetical order in an index.
Probably those who are well acquainted with an open-source software operation such as Mozilla understand that much more acrobatic activity in pursuit of help is required as part of the "cost" of free software. I said that I had used Firefox for quite some time, but I have had very few issues requiring any help---so far---so this is my first time really interacting with the "Mozilla culture," if that is a term.
Thanks again.