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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#101

Post by ben509 »

intertextuality wrote: post #74
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.

On the other hand, I find slack and its ilk terrible compared to email. Plenty of people I know use that at work, but email is really nice, and I love the features Thunderbird has.

I'm not expressing a preference, just pointing out what people do. You'd better like the features email has because it has a hell of a lot of inertia at this point. That said, it does have the killer feature of genuine interoperability, which virtually none of the new contenders even try for.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#102

Post by schnable »

I have a couple family members that were heavy Thunderbird users. They recently switched off it because it was chewing up CPU when in the backgound, and the spam filtering doesn't really work. Glad to hear they are getting some more engineers.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#103

Post by teddyh »

Boulth wrote: post #52
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 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.

Have you tried the latest version of Enigmail with P≡P and Autocrypt integration?

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#104

Post by sneakernets »

RealDinosaur wrote: post #39
bertman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I would love to see is a small team in Mozilla create a spin-off Electron app Now this is something you don't read everyday on Hacker News...

With such downvotes, I start to think electron hate is a cult.

I think it's due to a majority of those who have been around the block a few times knowing a trainwreck of a fad when they see one. At the end of the day it's basically taking a web page and throwing it into a container without browser controls. Remember when Windows 95 IE4 enhancements got so much flak and jeers from hackers due to MSHTML? Electron feels even worse than that.

The Web still sucks, and we don't need to shove The Web into native applications. Learn to make an actual program. Heck, QT exists, learn to use it.

I'm not saying you can't use an HTML layout engine for help and info screens, but for the entire program it's pants-on-head stupid. The time spent trying to warp one's web designer skills to make an "app" could have been used to learn how to make an actual application that would've been portable, and take less than a gig of RAM.

I use Teams at work, and it's taking 300+ MB of RAM on startup when it's basically a glorified chat client. Insanity.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#105

Post by aorth »

ForHackernews wrote: post #31
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... )

I've set up a regular monthly donation specifically to support Thunderbird development because having a FLOSS email client I can trust is extremely important to me.

I also donated today after reading their 2019 post. I've relied on Thunderbird for years. Having an independent, open source, and cross-platform email client with no vendor lock-in is important to me.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#106

Post by KozmoNau7 »

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 CardDAV and CalDAV support (there is caldav, but no discoverability of calendars)."

I use the TbSync and Provider for CalDAV and CardDAV add-ons. So far it works perfectly. But yes, I would prefer built-in native support.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#107

Post by Boulth »

teddyh wrote: post #103
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.

Have you tried the latest version of Enigmail with P≡P and Autocrypt integration?

Actually Enigmail couldn't generate user's key (I wanted to do a clean install and see the provisioning process for normal users) and later got stuck on some silly, completely unnecessary step (generating revocation certificate).

As for PeP I don't quite understand how it works and what is it for (and I'm quite proficient with OpenPGP in general). I don't mind Autocrypt, it's good for people on commodity mail providers, but I rather prefer Web Key Directory where possible.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#108

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#109

Post by amaccuish »

devereaux wrote: post #99
Mailtemi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I personally found z-push very buggy. Also you need your own DAV servers for calendar and contacts AFAIK. I found Horde and SOGo much more reliable, I went eventually with SOGo as I thought it was weird using PHP for a long running server. With php stuff (horde and z-push) I had to edit too many timeouts etc.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#110

Post by devereaux »

amaccuish wrote: post #109
devereaux wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I personally found z-push very buggy. Also you need your own DAV servers for calendar and contacts AFAIK. I found Horde and SOGo much more reliable, I went eventually with SOGo as I thought it was weird using PHP for a long running server. With php stuff (horde and z-push) I had to edit too many timeouts etc.

Thanks, I was also considering sogo but I thought z-push would be more reliable as it is older.
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