[mrweasel]

> What would a re-design improve

That is exactly the question people often forget to answer. We see this with both software and webdesign. Stuff gets a facelife, because it doesn't follow the latest trends. During the process features or design decisions made previously is often ignore or forgot, because they don't fix the new "vision".

In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows.

There is a lot of value in a stable UI. You can get caught in old or even deprecated libraries and UI interaction, that's a risk. There is however also value in being conservative and consistent. If you take an application(/web-application) like Chrome or Gmail, and you haven't used that in a few years, then you'll get overwhelmed. Something like Claws Mail or TextMate doesn't have that issue, you learned the concepts years ago, and they are just a valid now as they where then.

[ajot]

> In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows.

Since last year, they have a release branch (4.x.x) built with GTK+3. I know GTK 4 is on the way, but I think nobody is using it nowadays.

[ho_schi]

Gtk4 is just new. Adaption will require years.