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Thunderbird’s Future Home

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#71

Post by noinsight »

newscracker wrote: post #56

Last year when donating specifically to Thunderbird was made possible on mozilla.org, I donated to the project because it has provided a lot of value over the years. Recently I started looking at the discussions on the tb-planning mailing list and it looks like we'll get a revamped (fully rewritten) Thunderbird. That sounds like a very long project to me - probably a few years just to bring it to what Thunderbird alr…

Are you referring to this addon? https://github.com/Ericsson/exchangecalendar

It seems to be dead currently, seems it stopped working in the latest Thunderbird release and the author is unresponsive.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#72

Post by svdr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37
elipsey wrote: post #35

My CS instructor once asked everyone in the class to "raise you hand if you still use an email client." My hand was the only one that went up, and a couple of people laughed and said "really?" I think that was almost 10 years ago.

I use e-mail client (Outlook) at work. Two reasons: - it's very convenient for accounts you check only in one place - it's infinitely more convenient than any browser-based interface besides GMail that I've seen so far I'd be using a client for my personal mail too, if configuring Emacs to work with GMail wasn't such a pain. Also, don't tell me that on your phone you check your e-mail through a browser!

I do, with fastmail.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#73

Post by sedachv »

Twirrim wrote: post #70
xaa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unfortunately HTML email is the way of the world Is it really? I still use mutt, and I have found 99% of the time, heavy HTML in e-mail means the mail is spam. Occasionally an important e-mail (bank, etc) might contain a few HTML links, easy enough to visually parse. Real individual people IME send plain text, even non-techies.

Have you been using it in an enterprise scenario? Essentially the main email clients people use, Outlook etc, all default to HTML emails these days. Plus there is a big love of embedded images in signatures, different fonts around the text in their signatures.. all sorts of stuff. Roughly 90% of the direct email I receive in my inbox comes through in HTML form. Plain text is more often coming from mailing lists and a…

> Plus there is a big love of embedded images in signatures, different fonts around the text in their signatures.. all sorts of stuff.

IMO not displaying people's dumb signatures is a big advantage of text email clients. I switched to mu4e with w3m this year after about a decade of gmail use, and get and reply to a lot of HTML emails. I used the plain-text toggle in gmail all the time, and now w3m automatically does it for me. Never going back to webmail.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#74

Post by xaa »

Twirrim wrote: post #70
xaa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unfortunately HTML email is the way of the world Is it really? I still use mutt, and I have found 99% of the time, heavy HTML in e-mail means the mail is spam. Occasionally an important e-mail (bank, etc) might contain a few HTML links, easy enough to visually parse. Real individual people IME send plain text, even non-techies.

Have you been using it in an enterprise scenario? Essentially the main email clients people use, Outlook etc, all default to HTML emails these days. Plus there is a big love of embedded images in signatures, different fonts around the text in their signatures.. all sorts of stuff. Roughly 90% of the direct email I receive in my inbox comes through in HTML form. Plain text is more often coming from mailing lists and a…

> Have you been using it in an enterprise scenario?

Yeah, sort of, an academic/hospital setting. Actually, I combined my academic and personal e-mail addresses into one at a custom domain, and forward other accounts to it, which annoys some colleagues.

Most people here use Outlook. Sometimes people might have a mailto: link in sig (which gives me a chuckle as it's pointless), but I don't ever remember encountering embedded images.

The biggest human offenders for sending HTML-heavy e-mails are university-wide announcements. In my mind, these fall closer to spam than ham, and what useful information is in them can usually be gained from the title.

> Roughly 90% of the direct email I receive in my inbox comes through in HTML form.

Same, because I haven't bothered to set up spam filtering. But of the e-mails I actually want to read, well below 5% do.

> Plain text is more often coming from mailing lists and automated systems that email me.

Fascinating. For me it is just the opposite. People don't usually seem to bother using HTML, consciously at least. But automated systems use it quite liberally.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#75

Post by closeparen »

elipsey wrote: post #35

My CS instructor once asked everyone in the class to "raise you hand if you still use an email client." My hand was the only one that went up, and a couple of people laughed and said "really?" I think that was almost 10 years ago.

My company GMail session is invalidated every time I quit Chrome, and there's a moderately annoying 2FA process required to log back in. Thunderbird's IMAP credentials always work.

I don't use it all the time, but sometimes I want to read my email without digging out my phone.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#76

Post by tjoff »

elipsey wrote: post #35

My CS instructor once asked everyone in the class to "raise you hand if you still use an email client." My hand was the only one that went up, and a couple of people laughed and said "really?" I think that was almost 10 years ago.

I don't get how anyone (that are somewhat computer savvy) can live without one. Sure, webmail is an awesome backup for when you don't use your main device. But seriously, gmail and the like are absolutely horrible to use compared to a real client.

I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#77

Post by ashark »

tjoff wrote: post #76
elipsey wrote: post #35

My CS instructor once asked everyone in the class to "raise you hand if you still use an email client." My hand was the only one that went up, and a couple of people laughed and said "really?" I think that was almost 10 years ago.

I don't get how anyone (that are somewhat computer savvy) can live without one. Sure, webmail is an awesome backup for when you don't use your main device. But seriously, gmail and the like are absolutely horrible to use compared to a real client. I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late.

> I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late.

I'd say it's entirely that. Sync was so often half-broken with real email clients across multiple devices that having no offline access was a price nearly everyone was willing to pay to fix that, provided the web client were good enough (and, clearly, the problem was so bad that it didn't even need to be that good).

[EDIT] Also: accessing your email on devices you don't own/control.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#78

Post by dotancohen »

newscracker wrote: post #56

Last year when donating specifically to Thunderbird was made possible on mozilla.org, I donated to the project because it has provided a lot of value over the years. Recently I started looking at the discussions on the tb-planning mailing list and it looks like we'll get a revamped (fully rewritten) Thunderbird. That sounds like a very long project to me - probably a few years just to bring it to what Thunderbird alr…

That fully rewritten Thunderbird will apparently be based on Electron, the Javascript GUI.

The CPU-thrashing, memory hungry, battery killer Electron. I do not want an email client, or any other software that is meant to run constantly in the background, to be written in Election.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#79

Post by dotancohen »

newscracker wrote: post #56

Last year when donating specifically to Thunderbird was made possible on mozilla.org, I donated to the project because it has provided a lot of value over the years. Recently I started looking at the discussions on the tb-planning mailing list and it looks like we'll get a revamped (fully rewritten) Thunderbird. That sounds like a very long project to me - probably a few years just to bring it to what Thunderbird alr…

That fully rewritten Thunderbird will apparently be based on Electron, the Javascript GUI.

The CPU-thrashing, memory hungry, battery killer Electron. I do not want an email client, or any other software that is meant to run constantly in the background, to be written in Election.

Re: Thunderbird’s Future Home

#80

Post by ashark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37
elipsey wrote: post #35

My CS instructor once asked everyone in the class to "raise you hand if you still use an email client." My hand was the only one that went up, and a couple of people laughed and said "really?" I think that was almost 10 years ago.

I use e-mail client (Outlook) at work. Two reasons: - it's very convenient for accounts you check only in one place - it's infinitely more convenient than any browser-based interface besides GMail that I've seen so far I'd be using a client for my personal mail too, if configuring Emacs to work with GMail wasn't such a pain. Also, don't tell me that on your phone you check your e-mail through a browser!

> Also, don't tell me that on your phone you check your e-mail through a browser!

Basic-html gmail, yes.

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