I've spent the last two years building a new email client • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by kookoopuffs » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

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?

Why in this day and age are electron apps this big? What happened to memory management? Is this a faulty aspect of JS or electron itself?

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

#302

Post by ryan-c » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #150

muszc-master wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I really like the initiative of JMAP, however I haven't been able to look into it properly - I can give you a better answer once I've done that, my email is in my profile

One of the things we’re really hoping with JMAP is that, by drastically lowering the barrier of entry (because doing IMAP/POP3/SMTP well is hard ), people will be able to experiment much more, making things like Ivelope, because they can start making UI almost immediately rather than shaving IMAP yaks first. I have a talk planned entitled “building a fair dinkum email client in half an hour with JMAP”—because you gen…

It looks like JMAP is on top of HTTP - does this mean a normal browser could speak it directly? How is new mail notification handled? Polling?

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

#303

Post by muszc-master » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #298

Nice! This has a ton of potential and I really like the way that you've approached things here. Does the calendar sync up to the various calendar providers (Google, Apple, etc) as well?

It will very soon, that's one of the most requested features by my current beta users

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

#304

Post by SyneRyder » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #249

SyneRyder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so long since I've switched that I'm not sure anymore, but Postbox tried to be more Mac-like and had native integration with macOS Contacts instead of separate address books. I think it had some filter rules Thunderbird didn't have, and faster indexed search.

But now, I use the keyboard driven Tagging & Quick Move features [1] a lot. They work a bit like Alfred [2]. To file a message in my Filtered folder, I type "v fil Enter" and by the time I've typed v, an Alfred-like window pops up that autocompletes the full folder names as I type - so by the time I get to 'fil', it's autocompleted to the right one and I can hit enter. Standard keyboard shortcuts too like j to junk, a to archive, etc. I'm sure Thunderbird also has these via extensions, but I like having it in the core product supported by the core developers.

There's a word count warning feature that I use a lot too, because I tend to type a lot. The word count turns red when I go over my suggested self-imposed limit, or you can set a timer for when you've been composing one email for too long.

EDIT: I saw you asked elsewhere about editing the From field, Postbox has a pulldown menu on each message you compose where you can choose from a list of profiles / aliases you create. Each can even have their own SMTP server details & default signatures & are separate from inbox accounts. You can switch signatures on individual messages too.

[1] https://www.postbox-inc.com/features

[2] https://www.alfredapp.com/

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

#305

Post by Lord_Zero » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

kookoopuffs wrote: post #301

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?

Why in this day and age are electron apps this big? What happened to memory management? Is this a faulty aspect of JS or electron itself?

Electron is basically Google Chrome. High memory use has nothing to do with JS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_(software_framework)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

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

#306

Post by EGreg » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #142

Lio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For reference, when settled, Gmail in Firefox uses 200MB or a bit more, while FastMail uses around 10MB. I’m tempted to make a FastMail Electron app just to demonstrate that Electron/HTML/CSS/JS doesn’t need to mean slow and heavy (it just normally does). Later: OK, so on Windows a trivial Electron “just load https://www.fastmail.com/login (and then log in)” app uses ~230MB of RAM. Not what I was hoping for, though i…

How exactly will you cut the fat in Electron? What’s a hello world like?

I’m tempted to make a FastMail Electron app just to demonstrate that Electron/HTML/CSS/JS doesn’t need to mean slow and heavy (it just normally does).

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

#307

Post by on_and_off » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

muszc-master wrote: post #59

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…

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…

> 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

I feel bad but you have already lost me there :/

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

#308

Post by speby » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

This is awesome. And very well done. It is clear that a lot of effort and time went into building and polishing this, especially for a single person. Impressive! I signed up for the list too. Looking fwd to trying it out.

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

#309

Post by muszc-master » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

speby wrote: post #308

This is awesome. And very well done. It is clear that a lot of effort and time went into building and polishing this, especially for a single person. Impressive! I signed up for the list too. Looking fwd to trying it out.

Thank you!

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

#310

Post by lkbm » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

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've gone back and forth between in-browser and stand-alone, but as my number of Slack teams grows, browser tabs get considerably less appealing. (I have five I monitor regularly and four more I don't care much about.)