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

291–300 of 608 posts

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

#291

Post by ynniv »

Qwertie wrote: post #283
ynniv wrote: post #262

I don't think this puts enough emphasis on the fact that it is a local client and not a web service. I see some people here griping about Electron, but the privacy implications of being a local app are way more important than the performance of the framework used.

Seems to be a proprietary application so app privacy went out the window already.

Privacy is a spectrum. You can choose to be at one end of it, but not everyone shares your opinion. As a local app your data has a different legal status, and you actually have a lot of control over the execution compared to a web service. For instance, with outgoing firewall rules you could ensure that this is only talking to your email server.

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

#292

Post by tokenizerrr »

muszc-master wrote: post #285
tokenizerrr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to be able to self host this though and access it through the browser... That'd be awesome.

Why is that preferred for you, may I ask, over running it as a local desktop software?

Running it locally is fine, but a hassle if I need to access my mail on someone else's hardware (or my phone). I think this is one of the main reasons Gmail is so popular.

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

#293

Post by mmargerum »

I always thought it would be nice if the major os vendors provided some way of building these types of local run web app using a shared engine the os provided. Not just a web view, but a way to build the ui using web tech but also exposing the file system and other things. I guess it would be hard to secure but it’s not any worse than running unsigned eclectron apps.

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

#294

Post by darpa_escapee »

callahad wrote: post #256
SyneRyder wrote: post #34

This looks pretty cool, I'm really pleased to see people writing new email clients, and you've clearly worked very hard on this! I have a bunch of questions that I couldn't find out from the website (but are obscure enough that I shouldn't expect to): * Is this a purely native app, or an Electron / Javascript app? Personally I'm only interested in native apps & Electron would be a deal breaker - but I'm weird, most p…

> Electron would be a deal breaker You say that like HTML emails don't exist. If the client has to embed a web view anyway...

My laptop has a limited amount of memory, CPU time and battery life.

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

#295

Post by tincholio »

jahvo wrote: post #236
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…

Telegram is not an Electron app. It's a Qt app written in C++.

At least on Mac you can get the telegram app, or something called Telegram Desktop, which is Electron-based

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

#296

Post by LandR »

SyneRyder wrote: post #34

This looks pretty cool, I'm really pleased to see people writing new email clients, and you've clearly worked very hard on this! I have a bunch of questions that I couldn't find out from the website (but are obscure enough that I shouldn't expect to): * Is this a purely native app, or an Electron / Javascript app? Personally I'm only interested in native apps & Electron would be a deal breaker - but I'm weird, most p…

> Electron would be a deal breaker - but I'm weird

Guess I'm weird too.

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

#297

Post by jahvo »

tincholio wrote: post #295
jahvo wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is not an Electron app. It's a Qt app written in C++.

At least on Mac you can get the telegram app, or something called Telegram Desktop, which is Electron-based

If you mean this, it's written in C++ https://desktop.telegram.org/

If you mean this, it's written in Swift https://macos.telegram.org/

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

#299

Post by scott_s »

mmargerum wrote: post #280
dotancohen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I wonder why people run slack stand-alone. I run it as a pinned tab in my browser and with browser notifications it works great. Very few issues running it this way and performance seems good.

I have Chrome users for browsing, personal email, work email and Slack. I had Slack in a separate Chrome window, in a pinned tab. I noticed that changing to my communications space was slow. By eliminating windows one-by-one, I discovered, the culprit was the Slack pinned tab. I tried the Slack standalone app instead, and that slowness is gone. I can't explain why, but the standalone native app may actually perform better. I think it's worth checking out.

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

#300

Post by Chico75 »

coldtea wrote: post #265
croon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there was a native editor with feature parity with VS Code (including the number of plugins and dedicated MS resources speeding up its development, and free), nobody would be using it. Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? In other terms: Maybe the portable native full featured VS Code is th…

> Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? It could -- though I doubt it. But I was concerned with a more limited question: if there was a good VS Code alternative that's native, would many still prefer an Electron version?

Most people wouldn't care unless there was a performance difference between the two.
Post reply on HN