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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#41

Post by jcranmer »

icebraining wrote: post #27
superkuh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Thunderbird because it is an application. If it became a Javascript app I and many others would surely switch to some other application.

It is a JavaScript app :) e.g. https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/file/tip/mail/base/conte...

Most of the actual guts of Thunderbird are in mailnews/, particularly mailnews/base and mailnews/db for the this-is-what-eats-the-CPU things. That code is almost entirely in C++, although there is an effort to try to rewrite stuff in JS (which has gone slowly because, hey, that's 100KLOC of C++ you have to move at once).

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#42

Post by Jonnax »

nzb wrote: post #6

Pfff, when I saw "Thunderbird in 2019 (blog.mozilla.org)" in the list of news I thought they were going to add ads to it like they did with Firefox. :)

Why is this dumb comment on every Mozilla post? It's starting to sound like FUD. Especially when the alternative is a browser engine whose development is dictated by an advertising company.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#43

Post by RealDinosaur »

monksy wrote: post #24
RealDinosaur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem I see is entrenchment... it's an app where nothing can change. They can't go ahead and just do a Chrome 69 with it. What I would love to see is a small team in Mozilla create a spin-off Electron app, and do it well. Electron has a bad rap, but it's mostly due to being misused. Electron can be used well (VS Code for example). Mozilla LightningBird for example. I could get on board with that. Heck, I'd…

Electron apps are usually pretty terrible. They have issues with: 1. Memory usage and cpu usage (you're running a browser to run your application) 2. Platform look and feel (doesn't exist in javascript) 3. Platform and windowing behaviors. I agree with the other commented to you.. if it changed to electronic, I would drop it as well.

Hence the spin-off app. A ground-up, UX focused app which does not have to meet feature parity, would attract users who are already confused by email clients.

This is a different target audience to the people who typically use Thunderbird at this time.

For some people Apple Mail is enough.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#44

Post by sciurus »

zmix wrote: post #32
superkuh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Thunderbird because it is an application. If it became a Javascript app I and many others would surely switch to some other application.

Thunderbird is an XML+CSS+Javascript app. Just like Electron (well, Electron is not XML).

Looking at the languages used in Thunderbird source (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Tree_Rules/comm-central#Thunderbird):

    $ cloc  build/ ldap/ editor/ mailnews/ mail/
        3938 text files.
        3848 unique files.                                          
         949 files ignored.

    github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.80  T=6.01 s (497.6 files/s, 127309.9 lines/s)
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Language                             files          blank        comment           code
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    C++                                    360          36718          26562         207587
    JavaScript                            1098          39149          63692         195828
    CSS                                    278           7371           2664          30455
    C                                       83           5339           8278          29463
    C/C++ Header                           413           7091           8979          24034
    IDL                                    238           3205              0          18852
    XML                                     40           1365            690          16902
    JSON                                    24              7              0           5367
    DTD                                    180            772           1360           5344
    Python                                  24            893           2422           3740
    NAnt script                            118            489              0           2512
    Objective C++                            5            461            163           2231
    HTML                                    62            178             22           1666
    XHTML                                   14            186             98           1096
    INI                                     28             46             12            687
    Windows Module Definition                7             24            156            354
    LESS                                     1             33             52            183
    make                                     4             36             22            133
    TOML                                     1             17              7            110
    Freemarker Template                      6             24              0             98
    WiX source                               1             11             25             71
    Ant                                      1              6              5             49
    Markdown                                 1             10              0             49
    Bourne Shell                             3              8             11             23
    Windows Resource File                    2              6             11             15
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    SUM:                                  2992         103445         115231         546849
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#45

Post by clinth »

belorn wrote: post #33

As a daily user my personal preference almost align with their goals. I look forward very much to the day that I can stop using mail-notification in Gnome. The Thunderbird built-in system has seemingly broken polling feature (not sure if it does anything when running minimized), and has no option to specify folders that you want fast notification when a new mail arrives. I always miss Gnome mail-notification when I a…

Agreed. I love Thunderbird, and gave it a shot last year as my work email client (exchange). Loved almost everything, but ultimately the search and lack of threading sent me back to outlook web access.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#46

Post by jfk13 »

seanalltogether wrote: post #25

Is anyone successfully using Thunderbird with Google calendar? I gave up on it a couple years ago and just use the website, but I'd love to use it again if possible. I honestly can't remember what issues I had, but I do remember near the end I was using it as a view only feature, but for actually stating hangouts or creating new meetings I still had to use the website anyway.

It's working OK for me (via the Provider for Google Calendar add-on), though I haven't tried starting hangouts.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#47

Post by paulie_a »

kuon wrote: post #38

I love thunderbird because it's the only email client that does everything I want. I tried CLI clients, they are great and customizable, but CLI is a bit bare for email (images, html, fonts...) Things I'd like to see improved: - Native CardDAV and CalDAV support (there is caldav, but no discoverability of calendars). - Native PGP. - Better search, the UI is horrible and the search string is hard to get right (need fu…

I always thought the search was excellent when I used it. At one point I had a 100k of emails. But I could find what ever I needed. Meanwhile Outlook failed with a certain local file size limit and caused endless problems. They were apparently okay with that and resisted change to something that actually worked.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#48

Post by tadzik_ »

kuon wrote: post #38

I love thunderbird because it's the only email client that does everything I want. I tried CLI clients, they are great and customizable, but CLI is a bit bare for email (images, html, fonts...) Things I'd like to see improved: - Native CardDAV and CalDAV support (there is caldav, but no discoverability of calendars). - Native PGP. - Better search, the UI is horrible and the search string is hard to get right (need fu…

Speaking of CalDAV, the only thing I care about is the actual support of the calendar. Every time Thunderbird updates the Calendar “addon” loses compatibility and I'm without a calendar for a couple of weeks. Come to think about it, I don't even remeber for how long I've been without the calendar after the last update.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#49

Post by bad_user »

First of all I’m very happy to see a community-driven Thunderbird that’s still alive and kicking. I used Thunderbird before and I can see myself returning to it.

Now I'm on MacOS and I use MailMate, see: https://freron.com/

I wish Thunderbird would be more like it. It's simple, fast, uses Markdown in its editor, has nice keyboard shortcuts, plays well with Gmail's labels, has smart filters and works well with multiple accounts and aliases.

Seeing some of the comments, I’m surprised to see people putting emphasis on Thunderbird’s calendar or missing CardDav support. Well, MailMate provides no such support.

I.e. for calendars I simply use Apple’s Calendar, for contacts I use Apple’s Contacts. I don’t need my email client to handle these.

That Thunderbird can do it, that’s cool, but I think Thunderbird has problems in handling email that should be fixed first. And I’m glad to see them invest in better Gmail support. I don’t even use Gmail as my personal account, but in this day and age it’s a must and the features (like labels) will prove handy for other email providers too.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#50

Post by pbhjpbhj »

graeme wrote: post #28
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, Thunderbird seemingly has plenty of major loss-of-data bugs (I lost all my archives recently; synced up to the server -- that bug seems to be several years old (but rare)). I'd almost guarantee that your tab-scroll-position bug is fixed first. It seems to be the way of things. Thunderbird seems incredibly janky to me (unstable and easy to break, rough around the edges). Maybe my experience is rare ... would love…

You lost everything and it was totally gone? Or did you have a backup and restored?

Well I had a backup of sorts, domestic environment, but did lose data (yes I shouldn't have trusted it).

Still haven't managed to debug so can't use Thunderbird properly yet; changing app is a major upheaval after a decade or more [not quite continuous use, tried Kmail, Opera, and a few others like Sylpheed, Mutt(!), in the interim -- after Pine, proprietary apps TB was my first desktop MUA].

So, I need to audition new MUAs (family friendly), then recover what I can.

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