Maybe I just have large hands but I have no problem with the buttons being on top 
1 Like
But I and many, many other users have.
I canât think of any good reason, why such an impactful move on the UI after more than a decade with a bottom navigationbar was really nessecary. We donât talk about minor optics here. It profoundly changes the way of using K9 on a smartphone.
2 Likes
No. That post was deleted because it doesnât even attempt to answer the question " Why was the account overview screen useful (to you)?". I feel I was very clear about the fact that such posts would be deleted from the thread.
1 Like
There are literally scores of posts in various threads on this forum site now that explain why so many of us like having the account overview screen. Please please please reimplement that screen and allow us to have it be the initial screen when we open the app. Thank you very much
2 Likes
You also said we need to convince you which comes as extremely arrogant and condescending esspecially considering you locked the thread so soon. Really telling that you donât care about what we want/need or that you destroyed our daily workflow.
I hope thatâs not the case, but thatâs how youâre being perceived right now.
Like the other contributer said, itâs been so long that this version has been in the works. Possibly you are too far disconnected about what made 5.6 great.
2 Likes
The motivation is google derates and or blocks outright apps that donât follow googles specific material design. Developers go with whatâs easy in the provided toolset. Hence why every app looks the same now.
Cketti has decided to become a full time open source developer, got promoted to implement jmap into k-9 for 6 month and wants to go on to make a living out of k-9.
Thatâs a sole decision he made for his very own sake. Itâs all open and transparent if you do a little search.
Itâs no fault to get payed for open source development, but if going this way, a fork would have been the way to go, imho!
Contributing to an oss project and taking it over to get payed, do fund raising, etc is something completely different.
May I ask when the project has decided to be owned over to cketti and provide his living?
A clean, honest and honorable solution would have been to fork and go on from there, doing what one likes with the forked project. Thatâs what forks are for and there are quite good examples in the oss world!
The way cketti went is quite questionable, imho.
Leaving k-9 as it is, fork it, rename it and do whatever you want with it would have been ethical!
4 Likes
I donât see any ethics problem here. The prior versions are all still in the git history, so if some developer or group decides that they wish to pursue development on the older code base, it is trivial to fork it and run with that (as some have done from time to time). To suggest that it would be more ethical for the owners of THIS project to fork THEIR OWN code makes no sense, since they wouldnât be maintaining the old code anyway.
Personally, I have used k9mail for a considerable time, since right when it was started (some time around 2009 I believe), to the moment when imap push was (temporarily) disabled, at which point I dropped it for FairEmail, which has shown to be far more robust and a better fit for my use. So naturally Iâm interested in where k9mail is going in order to evaluate if it offers me a good incentive to switch back. Well maybe one day, but not yet. Who knows, this is a major UI overhaul and is bound to have some rapid changes over the next little while.
4 Likes
The ethical problem is how he took money and wasted it by ruining K-9 by turning it into every other email client out there. Why did they bother?
And now treats his users with disrespect.
3 Likes
Thatâs total BS man ⌠beta versions on f-droid were available for literally years, so you could had a look where it was going before donating.
I myself would welcome the general overview screen, still donated and Iâm happy OSS developer could dedicate his time to the project 100% (which I do for many project each month).
4 Likes
Very few have the time or ability to run beta builds.
2 Likes
Maybe it helps people to understand the current situation if I try to explain my view of the K-9 Mail project.
I work on K-9 Mail because itâs the app I want to use. Having the app work for me is my primary goal. I imagine itâs the same for everyone else who has ever contributed to the project.
Like many other open source projects we package the app and make it available to the world. There is a bit of hope that this will attract new contributors, who in turn will help to make the app even better. But mostly itâs done because it doesnât cost us anything. If the app works for us, it will probably work for others, too.
Sometimes I implement features that people ask for, but that I donât use myself. In part thatâs because I like technical challenges. But helping others also feels good.
I canât speak to the motivation of other contributors. But I imagine Iâm not unique in this regard.
Having a lot of users or good ratings in the Play Store is not something that is important to me. Sure, it kind of feels nice to know that a lot of people use something you have worked on. And the large number of users that find the app valuable is what brings in enough donations so I can dedicate a significant amount of my time to K-9 Mail. But being âsuccessfulâ was never a goal. Creating the app I want to use is my main motivation.
With that in mind, most of the answers to the questions that have been asked should be obvious.
Why did you remove/change X?
Because itâs not important for my email workflow. And probably not to that of any other developer who contributed to K-9 Mail in the past 2 years (thatâs how long the UI is roughly in the state that it is in now).
Some features are cheap to maintain, some expensive. When something requires a lot of work, but nobody is around to put in the effort, itâs often easier to just remove a feature.
I donât feel like I owe users of the app anything. Most of the time I do enjoy helping users, or implementing features I donât use myself. But K-9 Mail is not a product. There are no customers. We create the app we want to use. And if you like using the result, thatâs great. If you donât, thatâs fine, too.
K-9 Mail is an open source project. If you donât like the direction the app is going, you can always fork it, or, assuming most of you arenât developers, pay someone else to modify K-9 Mailâs source code to create the app that you want. I think thatâs quite a great deal for a free app (that doesnât track or otherwise monetize its users).
EDIT: You might want to read the follow-up here.
9 Likes
Here you are folks. Writing is in the mud.
Move on. He does not care and is unwilling to fix his disaster.
EDIT:
I will echo the previous poster that said 5.8 should have been a fork. Fine, you wanted to make it what you wanted. Fork it. Take your own advice. By doing what you have, youâve effectively destroyed peoples email workflow with no recourse as downgrading is broken on many devices. So now people are left with a giant mess to fix to be able to move to a different app.
12 Likes
Thank you very much for explaining your motivations on the (further) development of K9.
Itâs true: you donât owe anyone anything in this regard, and itâs your right to shape the app to your own likings first.
Please let us know in some time, if we can expect K9 to bring back the account overview and bottom navigation. This was/is important for many of us.
Then everyone will be able to move on and make his/her own decisions of which app to use in the future.
Thank you again for all youâve done so far,
sincerely,
G. G.
4 Likes
Thank you for being honest. I appreciate your being upfront about changing this app solely to match your own work flow and owing nothing to users. Most people wouldnât be brave enough to admit something like this because it is sure to alienate the entire user base. But it is helpful to know your motivation, as now we have the facts needed to decide if that is what we are looking to support, or if itâs time to move on to a new app, or revert back to the old version. I had no idea this app was made by you and only for you or I wouldnât have wasted your time by posting my thoughts here. Cheers, best wishes, and enjoy your very own personal open source project!
3 Likes
Iâve been using K-9 mail for several years and didnât realize it was not a âproduct.â As with many others, I was taken aback when I did the upgrade this morning and found a totally different UI. As with many others, my main disappointments are the lack of the accounts screen (I have five addresses I check regularly) and moving the navigation and trash buttons to the top of the screen. I donât have large hands, but I could easily check messages and mark some for deletion by using one hand. Now I have to use two hands. It would be great if the accounts screen could be returned as an option and the location of the navigation and trash buttons could also be an option. Iâll try the new UI for a few days but will likely be one of the users who goes back to the old version.
3 Likes
Just by interest:
Why didnât you create a fork for your needs instead of develop the original version?
2 Likes
I often used âIâ because I donât want to speak for other people who contribute to the app. Their motivations might be different. While I put in more work than others, K-9 Mail is not a one-person-project. We create the app we want to use.
Thereâs no conflict among contributors that would require someone to fork the project. Thereâs only a few people using the app that donât like the direction the app is going.
1 Like
Thanks for reply.
There is no need to have a conflict before creating a fork 
Developing an original app means high responsibility for all current users. A fork is easier to do. You wonât get the same amount of feedback. Positive and negative feedback.
3 Likes
well, with all due respect I strongly tend to disagree with that impression âŚ
12 Likes