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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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61–70 of 168 posts

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#61

Post by sydney6 »

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…

"-Native PGP" - Take a look at this talk and be careful what you wish for: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9463-attacking_end-to-end_email_...

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#62

Post by Boulth »

jcranmer wrote: post #54
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…

> - Improved storage engine, thunderbird is often freezing to compress folders. Have you tried migrating to using maildir instead of mbox?

Not the OP but help pages seem to suggest Maildir support in TB is not necessarily production quality:

> Maildir is disabled by default because there are still many bugs. It is not 100% ready for users.

Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#63

Post by ben509 »

RealDinosaur wrote: post #19
StevePerkins wrote: post #5

The last I heard from Thunderbird in 2018, the story was Mozilla making preparations to divest themselves from the project and spin it off to "the community" (a.k.a. Apache graveyard). This post makes it sound like the Thunderbird team has been growing within Mozilla during 2018, and is targeting another 75% headcount increase in 2019. I mean, that's awesome, as someone who wants there to be a viable desktop email cl…

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…

A total rewrite almost sank Netscape[1] long ago. It's still generally a bad idea.

There's an electron based mail client called Mailspring[2], and having used it for a few months, I definitely understand the antipathy towards electron. You might like it.

[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... [2]: https://getmailspring.com/

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#64

Post by classichasclass »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #29

Thunderbird still has a critical bug open that literally deletes your email. I have been bitten by it once and lost hundreds of email permanently. Not fun. I am subscribed to the ticket and every month or so someone posts an outraged "me too". https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156#c141: "This bug has lasted this long because there is no reproducible test case, so thus no way for an engineer to diagnose the problem and test a patch."

I sympathize, but I'm not sure what you expect the team to do. The bug seems highly intermittent even when it does occur and there doesn't seem to be anything in common between the systems that are affected.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#65

Post by Boulth »

mapgrep wrote: post #58
Boulth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native PGP is something I'd be very happy to see. Enigmail is needlessly complex with long setup wizards that frequently fail and a lot of legacy code supported for old distros. Services such as ProtonMail show that focusing on modern conventions and picking the right defaults can really bring encryption to normal users.

Full-text indexing for PGP mail would be nice too once it's native (Mailpile and CanaryMail helped pave the way on this I believe).

Agreed. I used Mailpile for a while, a lot of interesting ideas there.

As for PGP Thunderbird could use one nice idea that the browser extension Mailvelope uses: have bundled OpenPGP implementation in JavaScript (OpenPGP.js) for most users (guarantees easy setup) and a bridge to call GnuPG for experts.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#66

Post by com2kid »

I just switched away from Thunderbird after I found out about a long standing bug where the search index may not be updated sometimes, resulting in some emails not being discoverable with search.

Not able to find emails in my email client is a 100% deal breaker.

Back to Outlook I go. It's search isn't perfect, but at least emails show up eventually.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#67

Post by ben509 »

RealDinosaur wrote: post #43
monksy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TBH, anyone I interact with who is tech savvy doesn't use email, so I really don't need those features.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#68

Post by ben509 »

classichasclass wrote: post #64
fouronnes3 wrote: post #29

Thunderbird still has a critical bug open that literally deletes your email. I have been bitten by it once and lost hundreds of email permanently. Not fun. I am subscribed to the ticket and every month or so someone posts an outraged "me too". https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156#c141 : "This bug has lasted this long because there is no reproducible test case, so thus no way for an engineer to diagnose the problem and test a patch." I sympathize, but I'm not sure what you expect the team to do. The bug seems highly intermittent even when it does occur and there doesn't seem to be anything in common between the systems that are affected.

Normal troubleshooting for intermittent issues is to add logging and diagnostics around possible areas it's happening and have users send in traces when it bites them again.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#69

Post by classichasclass »

ben509 wrote: post #68
classichasclass wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156#c141 : "This bug has lasted this long because there is no reproducible test case, so thus no way for an engineer to diagnose the problem and test a patch." I sympathize, but I'm not sure what you expect the team to do. The bug seems highly intermittent even when it does occur and there doesn't seem to be anything in common between the systems that are affected.

Normal troubleshooting for intermittent issues is to add logging and diagnostics around possible areas it's happening and have users send in traces when it bites them again.

Sure, if you have some idea what the set of "possible areas" are. If you read the comments, it's possible there are several multiple overlapping bugs. And I don't see a whole lot of traces from those afflicted.

I agree such bugs are at best obnoxious and at worst cataclysmic. But having been on the receiving end of such nebulous intermittent reports myself, I'm not going to simply conclude the team is incompetent or uninterested.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#70

Post by xte »

IMO the real revolution might be a decision to integrate notmuch so to move from a '90s-like UI/workflow to a modern era one so powerful that can easily outshine webmails.

Also, with a proper maildir cloning support (mbsync like for instance) it may give to the casual users the opportunity to have locally their messages.

Otherwise anything Mozilla can do can at maximum keep a zombie alive simply because of lack of less ugly widespread and generic alternatives.

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