Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ivelope.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 608 posts

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

#241

Post by dotancohen »

arifmeticus wrote: post #237
dotancohen wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

>FWIW I use the Telegram client which is an Electron app What OS are you using Telegram in?

CentOS 7.3

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

#242

Post by d-sc »

dotancohen wrote: post #232
blowski wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you build something "to use as little RAM as possible, given that it's using Electron"?

OP says that it uses "only 300 MB" of RAM. For an application that deals with primarily with downloading, uploading, and displaying text. How would you respond to someone saying "I raise small mammals, well small given that they are elephants"?

I call the F150 pickup I drive small. It is compared to the F350’s and semi that I’ve also driven.

In absolute terms it may be big. But for an electron app it’s probably not too bad.

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

#245

Post by badsectoracula »

Lio wrote: post #133
yani wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> considering that many emails have embed HTML and would ideally use a modern web view to render correctly

It might be me, but i prefer them to be rendered incorrectly in a text-only view :-P. I use email since the 90s and so far i do not think i can come up with any case where the HTML in an email was actually useful and not used for fluff (which i do not mind but can do without), branding (which i do not care at all about) or -way way more often- advertisement.

Also almost all HTML mails i've seen come in text-only version too and any useful bits are attachments anyway.

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

#246

Post by dotancohen »

kristiandupont wrote: post #234
dotancohen wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible It's _either_ an Electron app, _or_ built to use as little RAM as possible. I'm not an Electron hater, but if you are starting out with Electron then you are already at a far disadvantage both technically (see aforementioned RAM usage) and politically (many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons). FWIW I use the Telegram client…

>many people won't use them, mostly for the technical reasons I really don't think that's true outside of the HN echo chamber. Like OP, I am using a Macbook Air which is hardly a supercomputer and vscode runs perfectly fine on it.

There is almost universal hatred of the Slack app in our client relations department, due to performace. All use Mac laptops or Windows desktops, none of them know the term "Electron".

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

#247

Post by dogma1138 »

rsp1984 wrote: post #153
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…

So unless you have the source or show an audit from a respected firm (c53, isec etc.) its going to be quite hard to recommend to anyone to take the dive and try this out. Please. How many times a day do you enter a password somewhere on your computer? Do you look at the source or ask for an audit for every one of those apps?

Not as many times as you'd think and again that us utterly irrelevant.

It's not how many time you put it in it's into what and then what that thing can do with it.

Not all passwords are equal and for most people their primary email is the domain admin/root credentials for of their life.

And it isn't relevant if I personally audit every application or not I can build a trust model based on my risk appetite and the threat models that are relevant to me and the situation and everyone does it even if they are not aware of it.

I can put my trust in a specific vendor based on their business model, their reputation, the resources they have available and my experience with them and the legal frameworks surrounding the service/product. I can put my trust in the community at large in the case of open source products because while individually neither myself nor most other user validate every line of code and every commit it is possible and the community at large does do that.

Let me ask you this I this wasn't and email client but say a thick client for your online banking would you still ask me the same question? bare in mind that having your email compromised today is considerably more damaging than someone logging into your online banking as it's much easier to sort the latter and there are also considerable mitigating security controls around it.

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

#248

Post by IncRnd »

SquareWheel wrote: post #75
yani wrote: post #57

You are not weird. More and more people think that Electron is bad

This is an "all my friends voted for..." argument. Electron applications such as Slack, Discord, and VS Code have ballooned in popularity over the last year or two. Hacker News comments are not representative of the whole.

You discounted an "all my friends voted for..." argument with a different "all my friends voted for..." statement.

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

#249

Post by dotancohen »

SyneRyder wrote: post #51
red_admiral wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choice is between paying with money and paying with my personal data, managing my e-mail is one of the things where I'm happy to pull out the credit card. (That's why my e-mail accounts are on places like fastmail instead of gmail.) I get paid money for the software I develop too, after all.

For some of us, email is so important that we are prepared to pay a LOT for a really great client. I'm currently paying around $150/year for Photoshop - email is more important to me than Photoshop. For the right program, I would happily pay $99 for a major release. I think that's what I used to pay for Eudora many years ago. Postbox currently only charges $40 for a lifetime free-upgrades license. In my case, they ar…

What features of Postbox do you use that are not available in Claws (or derivatives) or Thunderbird? Serious question, I've love a better email experience.

In any case Postbox is not available on Linux, but I'd still like to know.

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

#250

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

jk2323 wrote: post #116
muszc-master wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During development of this client, I fully understand why there aren't more email clients out there. GPG is coming!

Also, Gmails search function is a blast. Much worse in Thunderbird, annoying in Evolution.

I recently switched from Thunderbird to Evolution and I have to say the search in the latter is bordering on completely useless...
Post reply on HN