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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

#541

Post by muszc-master »

irinai13 wrote: post #539
kemiller wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's simply a blocker to adoption. What's dropoff rate from people who land on it to people who actually go through with this request?

Well, you don't have to invite anyone to join the waiting list, it is totally optional.

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

#542

Post by RussianCow »

majewsky wrote: post #453
RussianCow wrote: post #391

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

Qt also isn't truly native (it renders its own UI components) and shares many of Electron's drawbacks, so it's only marginally better (and means you have to learn an entirely new platform if you're already familiar with web dev).

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

#543

Post by RussianCow »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #519
RussianCow wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've done it.

I didn't say it's impossible (I've also done it), but for something that's not a full-time job/project, it's a lot of extra work that could be avoided by simply using Electron, especially if you are already familiar with web development but don't have any experience with any of the native platforms.

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

#544

Post by traek »

unt34teuotns wrote: post #537
misterbwong wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not grandparent but I tend to agree that it's NoBigDeal(TM). I'm no electron apologist but I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". It seems like the developer(s) used the platform that they felt was best for this app. If the platform's issues overshadow the product's value, then that's a poor choice and the market will react by not using it. Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larg…

> I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". Because I chose my OS carefully and found that I like the way its native controls work. It has a number of features missing from other OSes and I want to use apps that integrate naturally with it. I have yet to find an electron app (or web app) that is 1/10th as good as a native app at fulfilling that desire. Electron apps feel like generic imitat…

> Also, it comes from Google so I can only assume it's doing some sort of tracking of me and/or my machine resources. No thank you.

Electron was developed by GitHub for their Atom editor, actually.

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

#545

Post by jamesrcole »

nobodyaccount wrote: post #488
lisper wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. In a world where publishing is essentially free, reputation is an extremely valuable commodity. The ask here is not trivial.

Yes, it is trivial. You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing. I tell my friends about new apps, startups, and projects all the time. None of them think I'm staking my reputation when I shitpost about some new thing in Slack.

But you're not giving the nod to it -- you don't even know yet if it's any good or not -- you're only telling them about it because you've got something to gain yourself from doing so.

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

#546

Post by brongondwana »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #427
chrismorgan wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I perceive that you haven’t ever tried programming against IMAP or making a MUA, or not seriously at least. IMAP is a mess if you try to do much beyond the basic “retrieve list of folders, retrieve messages, now just leave it alone”; and most IMAP client libraries are worse than IMAP need be. There are many extensions for many features, poorly supported in various clients and servers, and various things that are slow…

"I perceive that you haven’t ever tried programming against IMAP or making a MUA, or not seriously at least." Unfortunately for you, your perception is wrong. Writing an IMAP client library is my go-to project when I'm learning a new network stack / language. I am very familiar with the way it works and it's various problems, and have been paid to write software that uses it. I am not as familiar with JMAP, but I did…

-- get the second page of top-level folders

["Mailbox/query", { "filter" : { "parentId" : null }, "limit" : 30, "position" : 30 }, "R1"]

It's happened.

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

#547

Post by brongondwana »

sslalready wrote: post #433
brongondwana wrote: post #122

Of course I have to ask if you've looked at JMAP ( http://jmap.io/spec.html ). More because we're getting close to finishing the spec, and feedback from someone who's build a client recently about whether the spec suits their needs would be valuable!

Are there any servers supporting JMAP today?

Cyrus IMAPd master is pretty much up to date.

JMAP-Proxy is sitting slightly behind, that's on me.

Less up-to-date, there's a few, atmail, Apache James (via Linagora), a couple that aren't published.

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

#548

Post by khedoros1 »

api wrote: post #164
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…

Every recent new app I can remember installing in the last year is Electron. Native UI is dead. It's more work and all it really buys you is the privilege of being tied forever to one platform or having to code your UI multiple times. The effort of writing your UI three times to use three different proprietary UIs would be better spent optimizing Electron for less resource use. In the long term web will totally repla…

> Every recent new app I can remember installing in the last year is Electron. Native UI is dead.

In terms of Electron, I have installed: Slack and VS Code (although I later uninstalled VS Code, and will have to put Slack on a machine with more memory than the VM it's in now).

I can usually spare the memory, at least on my non-crap machines, but I haven't really had the need to.

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

#549

Post by Thiez »

Qwertie wrote: post #288
muszc-master wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of Privacy concerns! The thinking is that few people would enter their email and email password on a 3rd-party website, having it as a downloadable software ensures the privacy of users

If it's proprietary it makes no difference at all. The app could be sending my password off to a remote server and I would have no way of knowing.

You can still see to which servers the software connects, ostensibly the only servers would be those for sending and receiving your emails. If you're feeling particularly paranoid you could enforce this behaviour using a firewall. For web based email anything could happen and you would have no way of knowing, even after the fact.

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

#550

Post by tomc1985 »

unt34teuotns wrote: post #537
misterbwong wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not grandparent but I tend to agree that it's NoBigDeal(TM). I'm no electron apologist but I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". It seems like the developer(s) used the platform that they felt was best for this app. If the platform's issues overshadow the product's value, then that's a poor choice and the market will react by not using it. Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larg…

> I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". Because I chose my OS carefully and found that I like the way its native controls work. It has a number of features missing from other OSes and I want to use apps that integrate naturally with it. I have yet to find an electron app (or web app) that is 1/10th as good as a native app at fulfilling that desire. Electron apps feel like generic imitat…

In the US, a Ford XL SUV will get killed by the DOT if it does fit in standard lane sizes, among other considerations. I am sure this is why there comparatively few brands of automobiles here

There is no such governing body for Electron, save for the nebulous "market"; nobody with any authority is forcing them (GitHub et al) to fix their shit or GTFO

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