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Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#21

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but I worry about a loss of focus when Thunderbird is one of the few in a dying category on the desktop, which is much less true on mobile.

The two work in tandem, though. I use Firefox on mobile because I use Firefox on desktop. That and it being the only Android browser that runs uBlock Origin, of course. I currently use Thunderbird on desktop, but use a combination of Gmail and Outlook on Android. If Thunderbird picks up K-9 mail and turns it into a first-class mobile client, I'll probably use Thunderbird instead of the Outlook app. People like consis…

Firefox is a dying horse on its last throes before Hades claims it for its own. Mythology aside, I find it truly sad to see the state Firefox is in. A browser is an incredibly complex piece of software and what Mozilla did with Firefox is nothing short of brilliant. Alas, they have been left too far behind [0] I am afraid they'll no longer be relevant in a few years.

Every few months Mozilla tries to overhaul it's UI and succeeds only to try again later. What are they trying to do? What's the real reason behind their slow descent into irrelevance?

Last time I tried Firefox on Android, it was a mess. Crashing every few minutes, unpredictable. I hear its a lot better now which is great! But why did they ditch the old one?

[0] https://caniuse.com/?compare=firefox+101,chrome+102&compareC...

edit: added link to caniuse.com

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#22
Oh I was just going to finally configure K9 on my Android to replace the "native" Fastmail client, which sucks A LOT when you don't have internet connection, so this is great news. I really don't understand why it cannot work without internet connection, I'm no Android developer but locally caching the last month / 500MB of messages can't be that complicated.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#24
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two work in tandem, though. I use Firefox on mobile because I use Firefox on desktop. That and it being the only Android browser that runs uBlock Origin, of course. I currently use Thunderbird on desktop, but use a combination of Gmail and Outlook on Android. If Thunderbird picks up K-9 mail and turns it into a first-class mobile client, I'll probably use Thunderbird instead of the Outlook app. People like consis…

Quoted post unavailable.

Works great! That's three more than Chrome supports.

Plus, I'm at two now. Your post reminded me to check how many add-ons I actually have installed, and I realized that HTTPS Everywhere is no longer needed because Firefox itself rolled out an HTTPS-Only setting.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#25
As an aside, Thunderbird occupies that uncomfortable space of software that is libre, but seems so bloated and complex I don't want to install it, let alone work on it. I'm not sure if that perception is "accurate" (which of course depends on how you define things). But think of OpenOffice/LibreOffice. It's a huge, classically written C++ blob that is hard to check out hard to build and hard to contribute to. Yet, its very existence undermines the motivation to start something new.

Surely there is a space for minimalist office suites and email clients, written starting with a browser as a jumping off point, rather than a compiler? I guess I'm arguing for an Electron-based docs/sheets/email/calendar using modern software best practices, and great components. An email client should be a webview + sql-lite, no? And (for office docs) maybe with a more thoughtful file format, like a simple html subset. Does this exist? And if so where do I get it? (And maybe there are better "jumping off points", like VSCode, which is itself a specialization of Electron).

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#26
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two work in tandem, though. I use Firefox on mobile because I use Firefox on desktop. That and it being the only Android browser that runs uBlock Origin, of course. I currently use Thunderbird on desktop, but use a combination of Gmail and Outlook on Android. If Thunderbird picks up K-9 mail and turns it into a first-class mobile client, I'll probably use Thunderbird instead of the Outlook app. People like consis…

Quoted post unavailable.

I only need 1: NoScript.

I hate what they've done with Mobile Firefox but it's still better than the alternatives.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#27
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two work in tandem, though. I use Firefox on mobile because I use Firefox on desktop. That and it being the only Android browser that runs uBlock Origin, of course. I currently use Thunderbird on desktop, but use a combination of Gmail and Outlook on Android. If Thunderbird picks up K-9 mail and turns it into a first-class mobile client, I'll probably use Thunderbird instead of the Outlook app. People like consis…

Quoted post unavailable.

Even if Firefox for Android had only one extension (uBlock Origin), I'd still use it. Using an ad blocker is the single best thing you can do to improve your user experience on the web.
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