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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#91

Post by hnbroseph »

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.

> I sympathize, but I'm not sure what you expect the team to do.

i mean, as a user this would suggest that the product is outright not fit for purpose.

i would expect the team to include a clear and obvious warning on the homepage (preferably near the download link) that emails are subject to deletion due to this bug.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#92

Post by xte »

sydney6 wrote: post #61
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_...

While valid and interesting (good to know, and to share) for most people GNUPG-signed+encrypted emails are nice as a privacy protection tools against mass data mining. Even in today's society I't a bit hard to imaging Alphabet, Yandex, Microsoft etc do such kind of attacks...

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#93

Post by andris9 »

jcranmer wrote: post #60

It's good to hear that people are interested in actually getting something set up to track performance metrics, but I won't believe it until I actually see it. One thing I would add to performance metrics is that tests for very large folders (of about 1M) should be added. I was talking with someone last night who was complaining about how long it took to delete 200K messages from his inbox, so it's not a wholly impla…

Issues with large (as in message count) mailboxes is a common thing nowadays. Don't know about client side as I've been working on the server side for past few years (see https://wildduck.email/). Clients with large mailboxes cause a lot of issues both server implementation wise and operation wise. For example some widely used IMAP server software dies if an IMAP client tries to SELECT a maildir folder with >320k messages (every message in the folder yields in some file system calls while SELECTing, it takes some time and then the process that handles the client connection just crashes due to some overflow or whatever). Also there's older versions of Outlook (eg. 2010) that tend to sync state by FETCHing FLAGS of all messages in all folders every X minute and causing huge amounts of traffic and so on.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#94

Post by ben509 »

untog wrote: post #87
ben509 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> anyone I interact with who is tech savvy doesn't use email You live in a strange bubble.

We're not corresponding via email... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Between github, SMS, social media, IRC & slack, video-conferencing, blogs, RSS, etc., email has become the medium of last resort. I still get a lot of email, but it's mostly automated notifications, and I usually have to log in somewhere to actually recieve a document because email is insecure.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#95

Post by xte »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #88
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…

I was once told by a Mozilla policy person in DC that Thunderbird was outdated and people should use webmail. They liked Gmail better and didn't see the point of using an IMAP client. It was a weird conversation. I understood it was just their personal opinion, but finding myself advocating for Thunderbird against someone who works for Mozilla was a little strange. My take away was that Mozilla doesn't really know wh…

Thunderbird was outdated?

Yes, together with nearly any other MUAs except few termina's based ones and Emacs based one. And that's clearly demonstrate how someone decide to push them to the oblivion. Someone that's probably interest in webmails...

> didn't see the point of using an IMAP client

Well, me neither. I use a local client that's operate on my very personal, well backed-up, maildir. My "imap client" (mbsync) is a mere imap sync tools not much different than intra-server sync tools like Dovecot DSync...

On "the better" part... Well, for me is better to have my messages on my iron, to act on them locally so at lightspeed and without the need of a connection and an working remote imap just to search or refile or compose messages. Also I do not know why I may prefer to download my MUA anytime I access my mail (like webmails) when I can have one, lighter and powerful locally...

It's a matter of taste :-)

Someone like freedom, someone like jails. Mozilla most important "business" is a browser so essentially a modern way to the jail (not because of itself, of course). Perhaps they have to choose, perhaps since they move big money they have managers more interested in money and trends than in tech, or even incapable of really understand tech and simply following current trends trying to feel "up to date"...

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#96

Post by xte »

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…

You have an a bit cached but true point, that's is: there was a so big push to web tech that actual local graphics libraries was left in an old era without real updates. That's the case even of Qt and their QML mess. That's the case of GTk mess etc.

However have a browser as a framework and environment for anything is even worse than actual X server architectures.

So yes, we need to rethink desktops, perhaps looking at past solutions like LispM GUIs and Plan9/Rio but certainly not move toward actual trend.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#97

Post by kiriakasis »

llao wrote: post #79
nocman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a separate project. Mozilla is just collecting donations for them: "While Thunderbird is now an independent project separate from Mozilla, Mozilla has agreed to collect donations on our behalf" ( quote above is from https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird?utm_source=tb_b... )

It is weird to see it at blogs.mozilla.org then…

It is not weird, just because it is now independent it does not mean they cannot collaborate or that Mozilla wont help them in restricted but significant ways.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#98

Post by xte »

ben509 wrote: post #67
RealDinosaur wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If someone do not use email hardly can be considered tech savvy. Sorry.

Perhaps he/she work for a company that do not really know IT so force their workers to use limited and limiting platforms, but it that's remain for personal world then no, it's might appear to you a tech savvy person but that's only due to Kant-ian glasses, not reality.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#99

Post by devereaux »

Mailtemi wrote: post #80
amaccuish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Native CardDAV and CalDAV support (there is caldav, but no discoverability of calendars). This would have been great about 5 years ago, and still would be useful, but I think we're going in the direction of unified protocols, like ActiveSync, JMAP, MAPI/EWS etc. IMHO x-DAV should have been there from day one. I'm using SOGo for my family's groupware and although SOGo provide plugins for Thunderbird, I've been missi…

ActiveSync is the best email protocol but as far as I know is very costly. JMAP is comparable to ActiveSync but will see will gain enough adoption when RFC is finished.

Could you share your ActiveSync experience?

I've wanted to use z-push with a PSQL backend for a while, mostly to cut off gmail and repatriate my email archives

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#100

Post by xte »

sciurus wrote: post #44
zmix wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ------…

Mere line count does not tell a truth, simply because you can do more thing with a SLoC in a language than another, also sometime to be on certain platform you need an enormous amount of code only for them that's have no other purpose that boilerplate for a platform.

Too simplistic :-)

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