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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

#401

Post by xorcist »

georgerobinson wrote: post #365
betteringred wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for writing new apps in HTML, I think Atom and VSCode are awesome, but I'm not for rewriting huge legacy apps to be HTML apps for no good reason. The reasons given, that XUL requires maintenance that Mozilla engineers don't enjoy doing, is a joke considering the amount of effort to maintain XUL is less than 1% of the amount of effort to move Firefox to HTML. No one has listed the ten awesome features that we'…

I really want to agree with you that Atom is awesome, and it is, in principle, but in reality a text editor should not be using 300MB of RAM. Sublime Text, which I consider to be a direct competitor, barely uses 20MB of memory on my machine even after hours of use. Heck, does Intellij even use that much memory? I'm just really discouraged with how more and more desktop apps are being written in HTML, CSS and Javascri…

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping used to be a joke.

Sigh. I feel old.

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

#402

Post by Semiapies »

udp wrote: post #329
Semiapies wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certainly at a loss for amother decent mail client that works on OS X and with Exchange.

I've been using Mail.app with Exchange for 3 years, never had a problem. Is there anything in particular missing?

I'll take another look, thanks.

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

#403

Post by bad_user »

toyg wrote: post #317
bad_user wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any denouncing of Facebook in a long time, even though they keep getting worse every month. I assume it is because people accepted they are assholes, they won, they can't be replaced and that's that. And personally I consider the backlash against Pocket to be either undeserved kneejerk reactions, or a discreditation strategy sponsored by Mozilla's competition. Because seriously, why aren't we seeing th…

The difference is that Google and Facebook have always been commercial entities with a profit motive, they are not public utilities. Exactly because Mozilla is (supposed to be) something else, it's held to a higher standard by its users and donors. > We could talk about [...] how Apple and Microsoft are blocking alternative browser engines But we do. In a way, Mozilla is what it is because a lot of people were pissed…

A "public utility" has very specific meaning, being an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service, that is subject to forms of public control and regulation and for which you pay taxes.

Is Mozilla subject to forms of public control and regulation? Do you pay taxes for Mozilla's existence? If not, then Mozilla does not qualify.

My problem is actually twofold. On one hand bashing Mozilla is like bashing a charity and most people doing it have never donated or contributed anything. But also I don't understand what's the freaking deal with that Pocket button, which is nothing more than a shortcut that consumes nothing, that can be easily removed and for which Mozilla got nothing in return for the deal.

This is why Free Software will never happen at scale. Far more aggravating than the problem of the business model is all the shit these people have to put up with.

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

#404

Post by dang »

dspillett wrote: post #94

Your link redirects people to a "no hotlinking" image when used directly. For those affected: if you find the page in Google by searching for "The CADT Model" it does let you see the content via that route.

cpach requested that we replace https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html with a link to the archived page in the comment above.

Since this subthread no longer applies, we've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655253 and marked it off-topic.

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

#405

Post by stuxnet79 »

smt88 wrote: post #370
stuxnet79 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting story tangentially related to this question. I just finished building my new gaming rig - the only thing left is a GPU which should be coming in the mail pretty soon. The CPU I have, a core i7 4790K, has a pretty decent GPU so I was testing it out the last couple of days. The first game I tried was GTA 5. It ran smoothly (albeit at the lowest possible settings and 720p resolution). I was pretty impressed…

How long was Thunderbird open before this happened? It could have been a memory leak, which can be really expensive when working with web-rendering software.

It was open for a bit. This experience has made me start to question all those times I had slow-ish response times and Thunderbird was open. Slowness or game choppiness should be unacceptable given that I have a 4.0 Ghz CPU and 32 GB RAM. I guess it is time to look for a new email client :/

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

#406

Post by nextos »

Karunamon wrote: post #244
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've moved to Mutt/OfflineIMAP on most every machine I own, and it's worked remarkably well. It's a CLI app, yes, but it outshines Thunderbird (and most other GUI clients, for that matter) in a number of ways: - FAST. Mutt lets you process thousands of messages in short order. Mutt is directly responsible for helping me dig out of a 50k deep email hole brought on by years of GMail's approach (archive, never delete) i…

I used to use offlineimap. Now I use isync. Much more efficient and simple.

I also recommend an indexer like notmuch or mu to gain Gmail-like search and agenda capabilities.

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

#407

Post by lfowles »

iSnow wrote: post #391
georgerobinson wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to agree with you that Atom is awesome, and it is, in principle, but in reality a text editor should not be using 300MB of RAM. Sublime Text, which I consider to be a direct competitor, barely uses 20MB of memory on my machine even after hours of use. Heck, does Intellij even use that much memory? I'm just really discouraged with how more and more desktop apps are being written in HTML, CSS and Javascri…

Considering my first 16 Bit computer had 3MB RAM and ran MS Word alongside a GUI, I am wary to say "Amount X of RAM is preposterous for a given task". As long as Moore's law provides enough lift under our wings, RAM usage is one of the less important aspects of an application. However, I fear the trend of building application UI's in HTML/CSS because invariably it will lead to wildly inconsistent look, feel and behav…

Reminds me of the quip that goes something like this: "What's the best way to save 10 dollars? Earn 10 dollars more."

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

#408

Post by dblohm7 »

kuschku wrote: post #267
cwyers wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, or Firefox as a web browser has to render HTML/CSS/JavaScript no matter what, and now that HTML/CSS is at feature parity or better with XUL in the space XUL is meant to occupy, it doesn't make sense for Mozilla to maintain two competing technologies when one receives 95% of their internal developer attention and 99.99999999999999% of external developer attention.

But, sadly, they aren’t replacing XUL with HTML. Instead, they plan to render the UI natively, with only "some" parts in HTML. So, instead of XUL + HTML, we’re going to get GTK + WinForms + Cocoa + HTML. Great, eh? And we lose the ability to style it with addons – your themes can only change the background image of the header bar, that’s it. And the remaining addons can’t modify the UI (tree style tabs, bottom tabs,…

Yes the plan is to replace XUL with HTML. I have no idea where you heard otherwise.

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

#409

Post by andreasvc »

ultramancool wrote: post #266
Karunamon wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've moved to Mutt/OfflineIMAP on most every machine I own, and it's worked remarkably well. It's a CLI app, yes, but it outshines Thunderbird (and most other GUI clients, for that matter) in a number of ways: - FAST. Mutt lets you process thousands of messages in short order. Mutt is directly responsible for helping me dig out of a 50k deep email hole brought on by years of GMail's approach (archive, never delete) i…

How well does mutt work with multiple accounts though? Last I saw it seemed more cumbersome than Alpine for that.

Works fine. You can switch between IMAP accounts like switching between folders.

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

#410

Post by toyg »

bad_user wrote: post #403
toyg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google and Facebook have always been commercial entities with a profit motive, they are not public utilities. Exactly because Mozilla is (supposed to be) something else, it's held to a higher standard by its users and donors. > We could talk about [...] how Apple and Microsoft are blocking alternative browser engines But we do. In a way, Mozilla is what it is because a lot of people were pissed…

A "public utility" has very specific meaning, being an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service, that is subject to forms of public control and regulation and for which you pay taxes. Is Mozilla subject to forms of public control and regulation? Do you pay taxes for Mozilla's existence? If not, then Mozilla does not qualify. My problem is actually twofold. On one hand bashing Mozilla is lik…

The problem is that Mozilla really really would like you to believe that they're doing a public service. "We keep the web open! We defend your privacy! Donate now or Bad People will win!" That's their message. So yeah, it's a charity, but they make it sound like it's a charity that must exist, so it borders on being a utility.

> most people doing it have never donated or contributed anything.

Since when, in order to criticise something you use, you have to join it first?

> But also I don't understand what's the freaking deal with that Pocket button

I'll bite. Two issues:

1) Pocket is basically a centralized service to keep track of your reading. This goes quite clearly against Mozilla's own message of placing privacy and users' rights above everything else. Shipping such a feature as opt-out and fundamentally un-removeable is just bad on every possible level; it could have been worse only if Mozilla had started routing all your traffic through Microsoft servers.

2) There are umpteen services like Pocket, always have been, and none of them ever got a button in Firefox. So why Pocket? Why not one of the bazillion other services? Who chose it and why? Does that mean FF's toolbar is now open for business? Who do I bribe to get a button? ... That's a very opaque and fundamentally corrupt process, in an organisation constantly preaching openness.

You can ask a priest how it feels having to constantly adhere to a higher moral standard; it's the price you pay for getting people to listen to you, trust your judgement, and give you free labor. At any time you can just stop preaching and go do your own thing, but then you can't expect other people to still follow you.

> This is why Free Software will never happen at scale.

Lol. Newsflash: it's already happened.

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