Live data from Hacker News

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

ivelope.com

471–480 of 608 posts

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

#471
post #255
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if there is a common agreement about terminology, but my distinction is - web app: loads from a server and connects to a backend to perform its activities. Business logic is on the server. If at all, very limited offline capabilities - desktop app: is installed on the local machine, doesn't need any connection to a backend to work, works offline. I don't mind at all which technology the dev used to implement…

> - web app: loads from a server and connects to a backend to perform its activities. Business logic is on the server. If at all, very limited offline capabilities You're confusing web apps and client/server apps. Web apps are generally thought of as apps written using web technologies. This means that a web app may not even interact with a back-end server, or a native app may exclusively interact with a back-end ser…

I think this is not correct. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application, Web applications are applications running in a Web browser. The term was introduced to distinguish Web _apps_ from Web _pages_, not to distinguish _Web_ apps from _native_ apps.

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

#472

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…

Consider Electrino ( https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-w... )

From what I can tell, Electrino is a dead project. Looks like someone picked up the idea and is making another called Quark (https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark) though.

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also means building a separate UI for every supported OS, which isn't usually feasible for a single developer.

https://qt.io

Just an fyi, it looks like you need to include the www for the link to load.

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

#474

I put my name on the waitlist, but instantly lost interest and confidence by: “Jump forward 5 steps in the line for every person you invite and get beta access sooner.” Why? If the product is that good I’ll evangelize it. This is a desktop application, so I don’t see a big boost from a network effect. All this does makes me wonder if the product is more about building hype than value

You are not alone in this attitude, so don't take this personally, but I'm going to reply to you because you're the top comment. This is an incredibly destructive point of view. Promotion is essential to any software project, even open source, and in the vast majority of cases, word of mouth is not enough. This is an ethical, up-front, straightforward ask that costs you and anyone you might contact very little and is…

Sure, put my reputation behind something I have never tried. That makes sense.

It's actually dangerous and unethical TO put my name behind this untested product. It's not open source, and I'm being asked to put my seal of trust and approval on their project. That's a hard no.

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

#475
Another browser running on my computer ? Thanks but no.

Also, what kind of software license does it use?

Is it open source?

is it free software?

Is it proprietary?

Once I sign up, how will my email address be used?

Will it be abused?

It did not ask for any permission nor I agreed to any terms. He seems to be from Sweden, doesn't he know about GDPR?

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

#476
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are taking developers' choice in framework a bit too personally.

And I think most users are far too tolerant of bad decisionmaking

They aren't tolerant at all to decisions they think are bad, they are just tolerant to ones that you think are bad.

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

#478
post #471
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - web app: loads from a server and connects to a backend to perform its activities. Business logic is on the server. If at all, very limited offline capabilities You're confusing web apps and client/server apps. Web apps are generally thought of as apps written using web technologies. This means that a web app may not even interact with a back-end server, or a native app may exclusively interact with a back-end ser…

I think this is not correct. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application , Web applications are applications running in a Web browser. The term was introduced to distinguish Web _apps_ from Web _pages_, not to distinguish _Web_ apps from _native_ apps.

> Web applications are applications running in a Web browser

And Electron embeds an instance of Chromium, to provide a webview for the 'application' interface.

How is that not a web app? It's written in HTML, CSS and JS, it runs inside a browser.

Just because the user can't choose the browser doesn't mean shit. Users couldn't choose the browser to run a lot of Microsoft-stack Web Apps in the early 2000's either, because they only worked in MSIE.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that a "web browser" is somewhere in the chain of what is reading an application does not mean that the application itself has anything to do with "the web", so I think calling it a web app is confusing and pointless. In a discussion of 'native apps vs web apps' it absolutely makes a difference that Electron apps are rendered by a browser's web view - they're basically a web page rendered by a local source…

> In a discussion of 'native apps vs web apps' it absolutely makes a difference that Electron apps are rendered by a browser's web view - they're basically a web page rendered by a local source not remote, but without any of the sandboxing that proper browsers employ for security. Those are also reasons not to call them web apps though: web apps run in your browser of choice (ish) with all of the associated security…

> You can do better.

More importantly, so can desktop application developers.

Post reply on HN