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Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

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Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#231

Post by triclops200 »

ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

I personally use mu4e. If you've tried it a year or so ago, it has made many improvements since then. It is terminal based, but I find I can't use thunderbird any more after switching.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#232

Post by jimktrains2 »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #45
crististm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been brainwashed about the "community" stuff. Mozilla _is_ a corporation. Linux is built by a corporation. Last time I checked, less than 18% of Linux patches were from independent contributors. Everything big enough to be known by Joe average hobbyist is built by a corporation. Let's see the community in action taking the lead when Mozilla drops the ball.

What features are you missing from Thunderbird?

Not becoming horribly slow when mailboxes get large?

Better and faster search?

(Both are issues with needing to compact the mailboxes by hand.)

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#233

Post by hga »

castell wrote: post #104
creshal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it feels like everything was already invented in the 60's. Reading up on the capabilities of early mainframes is eye-opening if you (like me) grew up on Pentiums.

Yes, especially the MULTICS operating system was so advanced and dozens of decades ahead that we still borrow from its concepts. It had for example 16 security rings. Intel CPUs support only 4 CPU rings, and Windows e.g. uses only 2 rings (for kernel mode and user mode) (hypervisor mode uses another ring in recent iterations).

Initial software based Multics had 64 rings, and as I recall only 8 in the hardware versions. No more than 4 were needed in practice: 0 for root, 1 for mail (e.g. you could delete mail you'd sent to other people from their mailboxes if they'd not read it yet), 4 for normal users, and 5 for some stuff that e.g. allowed anyone to use, but was restricted at touching anything deeper in the system.

AMD dropped rings in their 64 bit architecture which Intel was forced to adopt, so they're becoming a historical curiosity.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#234

Post by islandtech »

ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

For Webmail or IMAP mail, look no further than Fastmail. These guys know exactly what they are doing with IMAP and they can easily accomodate your multiple accounts.

I've been a Fastmail user for almost a decade. I've never been happier with any email provider (or any provider, to be honest). You pay for the service, but it's worth the money and more. You are treated like a valued customer and the support, if needed, is rapid and professional. I cannot recommend Fastmail enough.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#235

Post by scrollaway »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #228
scrollaway wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also forget: - There are far fewer native components, leaving accessibility down to the developer of the app and making it nonexistant. - Platform integration is impossible, which means there is no way for the framework, for example, to create widgets differently on OS X, Windows or Linux (these platforms have many different conventions) - Theming globally becomes impossible. If you want to write a dark theme for…

> "Platform integration is impossible, which means there is no way for the framework, for example, to create widgets differently on OS X, Windows or Linux (these platforms have many different conventions)" So web apps can't have reusable components now? > "And having access to all the latest JS additions! ... that were copied from other languages you could develop desktop apps in, because JS is a terrible hack." WebA…

> So web apps can't have reusable components now?

I'm not saying they can't, I'm saying they don't. You go ahead and try to fix that, create widget#772981 that still won't support typed-selection, or will break with large text or what not... I've seen too many of those, most of them bad, and none of them standard. So far, React is the only thing that even comes close to a sane model for a contender to UI development on the desktop, and it still mostly fails the accessibility checkbox.

> WebAssembly will take over for web apps eventually.

More eventualism. Do you have evidence for that? Do you even have evidence that it'll be better than what we have now in other languages if it does take over?

> UX knowledge isn't toolkit dependent

A lot of it is. You'd be surprised just how much UX is crammed into Qt Widgets for example. Years of experience making them more accessible, more usable, more consistent with the platform they're running on, etc.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#236

Post by jccc »

islandtech wrote: post #234
ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

For Webmail or IMAP mail, look no further than Fastmail. These guys know exactly what they are doing with IMAP and they can easily accomodate your multiple accounts. I've been a Fastmail user for almost a decade. I've never been happier with any email provider (or any provider, to be honest). You pay for the service, but it's worth the money and more. You are treated like a valued customer and the support, if needed,…

ultramancool wants a desktop email client. Many people strongly prefer to do email on the desktop outside of a Web browser.

(Fellow FastMail user here. They're really great.)

EDIT: Well, I see her/his comment about Webmail albeit as a second choice. It seems the preference is for a desktop client, but I shouldn't assume.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#237

Post by codelitt »

ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

I think a lot of people are forgetting that there is still a community developing it since Mozilla stopped "updating" it, beyond maintenance, in 2012. The product isn't dying, just will no longer be Mozilla backed. I assume that maintenance, like ongoing updates, will be passed to the community and hopefully another company steps up to back the project.

Repo for Thunderbird: https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#238

Post by codelitt »

oneJob wrote: post #169

If this was an open source "project", rather than a "foundation" whose mission is to build a better web for its users, I'd say it was their call and that's the beauty of OSS. This is not that. This is another decision in a long string of decisions which are either not in their users' interest, questionable, or poorly communicated and implemented. If I were to give the benefit of the doubt here over the question of wh…

As I mentioned in another comment, Mozilla stopped developing updates back in 2012 and passed it to the community. I imagine the maintenance will move likewise.

If you're upset about decisions that have been made with Thunderbird, submit a pull request.

Here's the code: https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#239

Post by toyg »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #211
izacus wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention death of accessibility features - those HTML apps are effectively unusable for disabled users because they don't implement accessibilty features available in native UIs.

It's possible to build websites with accessibility features, is it not?

Partially, but the point is that you're (manually and expensively) reinventing the wheel that desktop toolkits had already built for you.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#240

Post by ZenoArrow »

toyg wrote: post #79
ZenoArrow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You and me could find crazy that people would openly choose to use IDEs built on HTML/CSS/JS" Why is that crazy? Makes perfect sense to me, especially as the performance of the programming language element improves. Ultimately these IDEs are sure to make use of WebAssembly, which should take away the remaining performance concerns.

It's crazy because, apart from performance concerns (it looks like we love to make our computers slower and slower every 10 years), you're just discarding all the features of the containing desktop OS. Formatted copypasting, usability features, network features, etc etc... you'll have to reimplement them all, solving all the problems that systems developers solved 10 or 20 years ago. The OS will become little more th…

Let's look at the Atom/VS Code use case...

> "Formatted copypasting"

Do you need this for a coders editor?

> "usability features"

Like what?

> "network features"

Which network features do you need for a coders editor? In the case of Atom/VS Code, can't think of a single one that a browser engine doesn't already provide. Not going to need things like AD-integration, etc...

> "The OS will become little more than a very expensive pixel pipe."

If that's what people want, then so be it. I see no problem with simplifying the OS, most of them are already too bloated.

> " But that's what people like, because C++ is hard, native widgets are hard to customise, and everyone loves designing interfaces, so that's where we're going."

The main advantage is the cross platform compatibility. If certain OS vendors didn't make it hard to build apps that utilised a common base then there'd be much less drive to produce web apps. It has very little to do with the complexity of C++.

> "I anyone ever starts making javascript-optimised CPUs and GPUs, they're going to make billions."

As I've said a number of times now, the final target with web apps won't be JS, it'll be WebAssembly.

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