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I've spent the last two years building a new email client

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Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#131

Post by dogma1138 »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #125
dogma1138 wrote: post #24

No offense but unless it’s a 1st party client email clients are something that is very hard to trust. Who controls your client has access to your inbox with most services even the few that have separate IMAP/POP3 passwords like Hushmail can be compromised through it. If your client also integrates with encryption or worse takes charge of it my encryption key is also now at risk. Lastly since email today is pure HTML…

Few webmail "clients" are open source and many native clients like e.g. Outlook are also not open source, yet these are very popular. Unless you use a highly trustworthy email provider, considerations about client programs are kind of moot anyway. I'd personally be more picky about my mail provider and not use any offerings by Google or Microsoft, for instance, because they are stock market companies with interests t…

Outlook is trustworthy for the most part at least as far as security goes MSFT isn’t fooling around and it’s an enterprise product.

And yes choose your email provider based on your threat model but there is nothing wrong with Google or even MSFT for most people security wise privacy is a different concern but these are different threat models.

An email client won’t prevent my email provider from snooping on me (E2E maybe), and no email provider could prevent my client from snooping on me either.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#132

Post by SyneRyder »

apta wrote: post #106
SyneRyder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Btw where are the electron haters?! Hi! I'm here! ;) I mentioned Electron in my comment, and Electron is a deal-breaker for me... but I would much rather encourage the work and effort that is going into this. If the product is successful and profitable, maybe it can be ported to native frameworks a few versions later. And considering the rumours about macOS, probably wise to avoid writing native Mac code just now.

> And considering the rumours about macOS, probably wise to avoid writing native Mac code just now. What rumors?

Apple is dropping Intel chips & replacing them with their own CPUs in Macs in 2020 [1], and working on a unified development API where you'll develop one app for iPhone & iPad that will also run on the Mac, so you won't need to write Mac specific apps anymore [2] [3].

It's all rumour & could be wrong. But there's some who feel macOS only has a couple of years left before being discontinued. In that climate, an Electron app is smart because it will be easy to port to iOS / newOS.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-20/apple-is-...

[3] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/05/01/scuttlebutt-regarding-app...

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#133

Post by Lio »

yani wrote: post #74
muszc-master wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug. 2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list 3. Re: turn off conversation v…

300MB of ram sounds like a lot to me. What are you storing in memory that is that large? If I dont use the app for 1 hour will it stop using the memory?

I'm sure that a client like Mutt would use much less but considering that many emails have embed HTML and would ideally use a modern web view to render correctly, how much overhead is there from from using Electron/chromium if you're going to load all of that anyway?

I couldn't find exact figures for MS Outlook but Office 365 seems to require 1Gb as a minimum.

A quick look at the Gmail tab I have open in Chrome seems to be taking roughly 390Mb so this would seem to be an improvement over that.

As a genuine question, what sort of size would you expect for an optimised native app with the same functionality?

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#134

Post by muszc-master »

raimue wrote: post #120

What would be the reason to limit access to the beta with a waiting queue? I can see reasons to use this approach for a web app, for which you have to ensure that it scales with the number of users. There is no such problem for a standalone desktop app, though.

You are right in this respect, the reason for limiting access right now is that I don't want hundreds of people to experience and report the same bug, if I let a few users at a time try it, I can fix the bugs they report so the users in the next batch won't experience these bugs.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#135

Post by Etheryte »

brandonwamboldt wrote: post #119
Kliment wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the base cost of using electron (along with the associated CPU usage). It's terrifying but you get that much usage even if you're not storing anything in memory.

Well that's just not accurate. With our Electron app, the main process consumes 40mb of RAM, with each window using 30mb of RAM, so if you have a windowed app, thats a minimum of under 70mb of RAM (results will differ, our app is quite large).

Yeah, this is realistic. I wish people would stop perpetuating the myth that "That's just how Electron is". It's perfectly possible to write Electron apps that don't automatically hog half a gig of RAM.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#136

Post by tobyhinloopen »

This is just advertising... showing a product on HN, but requiring you to "invite" others? Too bad, I was actually willing to try the software.

I'm not going to invite others if others can't use the software, or without trying it for myself first...

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#137

Post by pjmlp »

vijaybritto wrote: post #93
pjmlp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a matter of skills doing native UIs.

Yes, exactly! Not everyone has the hardcore skillset to make great cross platform software. So much so that even behemoths like Microsoft write electron apps to get work done. He is using his web skillset to make a product that runs everywhere. If anything, this shows some serious good qualities in the developer that he wants to get the product to multiple people and not ponder over perfection.

Actually I meant that 2 years should be enough as well not 5+, given the adequate skillset.

As for Microsoft, I think that have been invaded by JS devs on their way to re-invent and refresh the company's culture.

Regarding the OP, yes he should be appreciated by taking the effort of spending two years doing this software, it is just a pity that it yet another Electron app.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#138

Post by Insanity »

oldcynic wrote: post #130
Insanity wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean, you cannot see anyone preferring an Electron app over a native app?

That's almost never the choice though is it? Who offers an Electron app and a native app? So the choice becomes use an Electron app or something else entirely.

Electron app versus using their website I guess. In which case I use their website.

But I agree, it's almost never a choice, but it's a hypothetical

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#139

Post by rootlocus »

pjmlp wrote: post #66
dri_ft wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 'native' is the wrong word, but I meant non-web-app.

Electron apps are web apps "sold" with Chrome. Like buy one, get two for free.

The OP clearly means not hosted remotely / not requiring a server to set up, but somehow everyone thinks this is a great opportunity to mention that since it uses the same underlying front-end technology, there's no distinction, and it's actually worse.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#140

Post by y_molodtsov »

oldcynic wrote: post #130
Insanity wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean, you cannot see anyone preferring an Electron app over a native app?

That's almost never the choice though is it? Who offers an Electron app and a native app? So the choice becomes use an Electron app or something else entirely.

The choice is actually more interesting. Although big companies such as Slack potentially have resources to support development for multiple platforms, even they can implement new features faster due to Electron. Think about all those small teams that just wouldn’t be able to port their apps anywhere without it.

So in some ways I’d probably prefer a good Electron app.

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