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Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#41

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

javajosh wrote: post #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, it…

> Yet, its very existence undermines the motivation to start something new.

Does it? There was just an article about claws mail on HN. Or on the office side, gnumeric and abiword seem decent enough.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#42

Post by mid-kid »

ig-88ms wrote: post #17

Let's hope K9-Mail gets a more attractive UI. It always felt more clunky than it needed to be.

Its classic android 4 gmail-esque-but-refreshed look is the main reason I use it. It works really well for me, and I kind of miss the primary screen for accounts it used to have, now being delegated to a popout on the sidebar.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#43

Post by warabe »

CivBase wrote: post #13

I'm curious how Mozilla feels "Thunderbird on Android" aligns with their mission statement. Thunderbird was practically the de facto alternative to Outlook back when desktop clients were the standard for email. But there have been plenty of quality email clients on Android for a long time. Does buying a popular competitor and re-branding it as Thunderbird really help to "ensure the Internet is a global public resourc…

There are a lot of "closed source" email clients on Android. I tried to find free, open source email clients, but found only k9 and FairEmail.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#44

Post by itintheory »

sureglymop wrote: post #4

FairEmail seems a lot more feature filled and better than K9. I think it even tops Desktop Thunderbird.

I thought they were gone after the developer had a fit: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/05/19/fairemail-developer-calls-... but I guess the issue is resolved and they've recanted?

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#45

Post by ssl232 »

javajosh wrote: post #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, it…

I don't personally find Thunderbird to be bloated, especially compared to e.g. KMail (which even a few years ago was still buggy and unstable for me). "Complex" might be reasonable but I expect a lot of that comes from email protocols themselves being convoluted and weird. In fact, I think email's own complexities are what destroy most peoples' motivation to make a shinier, more modern tool.

I will say I do have a massive, single gripe about Thunderbird, and while it's a trivial thing it's also - and in part because it would be so easy to fix - massively infuriating: the default keybindings for archiving, deleting, marking read emails etc. are, astonishingly, single characters. I've lost count how many times I didn't correctly highlight the filter textbox and started to type a search query, which instead had the effect of randomly archiving, deleting and marking read the top N emails in my inbox before I notice. This is literally why we have control characters, so I find it incredible that this is not only the default behaviour but unchangeable without a plugin [1]. I still find the tool very useful in every other way but I can't believe something so obviously wrong has not yet been fixed after what must be at least 20 years of this software tool being available.

[1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/tbkey...

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#46

Post by javajosh »

will0 wrote: post #34
javajosh wrote: post #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, it…

Arguing for electron on hn? Brave. (I like electron fwiw, it's enabled me to have a desktop experience with applications that would've otherwise never come to linux)

>Arguing for electron on hn? Brave.

Thank you for recognizing this. I admit I had a moment of doubt before pressing "submit". :)

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#47

Post by xg15 »

javajosh wrote: post #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, it…

> 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?

As a user, I'd prefer a minimalist office suite that still doesn't have the browser as a starting point.

I think a browser is actually not a good UI for an office programs, because it really awkwardly competes with your own document model: HTML at its core still wants to be a document, except probably not the document you want to have. So you have to reimplement document APIs on top of already existing document APIs.

E.g., tracking and working with selected text is extremely important in office programs, but a browser already has built-in management of text selections: Except, the built-in management doesn't know which part is your chrome and which is your document, making you to either implement your own selection mechanism in addition to the browser's or handle all kinds of really weird special cases.

And so on...

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#48

Post by binarysneaker »

pritambaral wrote: post #11
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Hey, 3 > 0. How many do you enjoy?

Long time Android Firefox user here, mainly because of Ublock. Syncing with my Mozilla account was a plus, I use Firefox on desktop because of its container tabs. Lately I switched to Brave (Android), which is noticeably faster, and supports extensions too.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#49

Post by mid-kid »

javajosh wrote: post #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, it…

> written starting with a browser as a jumping off point

That's thunderbird for ya.

Really the only web-browsery thing a mail client needs is rendering of the email itself (if it's not just plain text, HTML email is an extension!), for which, sure, it's a better idea to use an existing webview. But for the rest of the interface and logic? No.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#50

Post by input_sh »

ekianjo wrote: post #30
pritambaral wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, 3 > 0. How many do you enjoy?

You missed the good old days of firefox on android supporting hundreds of extensions. progress, I guess?

Ah yeah, back when page load lasted 3x as long as Chrome (on a lower end device at least). I've installed the rewrite back when it was called Firefox Preview.
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