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The Future of Thunderbird

blog.thunderbird.net

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141–150 of 473 posts

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#141

Post by cookiengineer »

neilv wrote: post #139

The highest priority IMHO is security . Given how a targeted email can reach someone wherever they are (and spam can conceal mass exploits), frequent security updates are the wrong mindset. The mindset of one necessary security update should be, OMG, we messed up badly, we need to fix and mitigate, and immediately figure out how never to need another security update, ever again. Web browsers, OTOH, are hopeless for s…

I wish we would have more intelligent email clients, that can be as "dumb" as remembering the email addresses and geolocation routes from their senders.

It literally could be a simple ASN lookup, and you would prevent 99% of targeted phishing emails.

Nobody in the world uses some random domain.trade to send emails as company.com ffs.

Microsoft is kind of not giving a damn about security and I dont understand why they do not invest in Outlook security that much. To me this is straight up offensive how they behave.

How can it be that a VBA exploit from 2003 can still compromise an updated system in 2023?

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#142

Post by capitainenemo »

derefr wrote: post #133
capitainenemo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on Linux, I think the mbox vs maildir is an interoperability thing. I can access folders created by thunderbird, or existing user local ones in any local mail client or remotely through IMAP. It may be they don't want to break those external tools.

So have a checkbox for "also persist mailbox in an interoperable format", that then lets you choose mbox or maildir; where it's going to save the data for its own use in SQLite either way; only save in that "interoperable format" asynchronously in the background, and on quit (just like e.g. a Redis RDB file); and, if enabled, also scan the interoperable backing store for changes made on startup, to apply them to the…

Maildir is fairly performant and Thunderbird does have its own index dbs for performance in mbox and maildir formats already. It's why the compact option exists for mbox since delete only removes the index key until you trigger a compact.

Making the sqlite db the primary would mean that unless there was constant synchronisation I would be missing emails in the other clients.

I feel like just switching to maildir across the board is a pretty good solution performance wise. Although, I do understand that folders with large numbers of files is a problem under Windows (many projects had to rework their design for this). So perhaps a sqlite solution for Windows would be a good idea.. or just a maildir with more nested folders to reduce size, linked to the thunderbird indexing.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#143

Post by mprovost »

mauvehaus wrote: post #60
boplicity wrote: post #50

Unfortunately, at least for me, I've had to mostly switch away from Thunderbird. It has becoming rather frustratingly slow. For example, if I archive an email, it takes 10 to 15 seconds for this to be reflected in the interface. When I have 50 or so emails to deal with, this adds up to a surprising amount of time, and becomes rather frustrating. (I suspect having large volumes of email is part of the issue.) On the m…

Want to recommend one of those other email clients for Mac? The threading/conversation support is my biggest gripe apart from the slowness. I am also guilty of rarely deleting things. EDITED TO ADD: Using gmail and fastmail. 'nother edit: should deal gracefully with emailing files to myself. C.f the threading in fastmail's webmail, which is ... weird?

Superhuman is incredibly fast, and has amazing keyboard support. It's the fastest thing for getting through a busy inbox. It's $$$ though. But also includes a great mobile client.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#144

Post by warkdarrior »

angst_ridden wrote: post #116

I've found that keeping all my old mail--including from old dead accounts--in Thunderbird has been a big part of the performance problems I experienced. Having been using Thunderbird from the very earliest of days (after migrating from SeaMonkey), I had a lot of dreck from old POP accounts and newer IMAP accounts. I've switched to having it do full downloads of messages from IMAP, and run MailBackupX separately to in…

So the solution to Thunderbird's problems is to move your email to a different piece of software?

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#145

Post by toomim »

david_draco wrote: post #135
superkuh wrote: post #29

Uhg. This is the exact opposite of what direction I want from Thunderbird. I want it to remain stable. I want it to remain looking like an email client I run on my native OS. I do not want giant white-space webshit design and an entire rebuild that makes all my extensions and well trained spam detection .dat unusable. Please stop changing things just to change. Thunderbird works.

Unfortunately the web keeps changing. Firefox is trying hard to remain relevant and needs to be flexible with their code-base. So Thunderbird does not live in a stable world.

Strange comment. Thunderbird is for email, not the web.

Are the people who want it to change confused about the difference between smtp and http?

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#146

Post by CodeWriter23 »

The Thunderbird Saga reminds of an old computer industry joke.

The new CEO of a tech company shows up for day one. He meets his recently-fired predecessor as he enters his office. They shake hands and the outgoing guy says "I left three letters for you in the bottom drawer, use them as needed".

First quarter for the new CEO, he hasn't much to put in the win column, having barely familiarized himself with staff and projects. But he has to provide a report to the Directors. Desperate, he pulls the first envelope, which reads "Blame your predecessor".

Next quarter isn't much better. Again desperate to prepare for the Board Meeting, pulls the second letter which reads "Blame the economy".

Third quarter he's just about to get some traction but still doesn't have anything earth shattering to report, he goes for the last letter, which reads "Write three letters".

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#147

Post by mr_machine »

donatzsky wrote: post #124
mr_machine wrote: post #54

I've used Thunderbird exclusively for desktop mail for many years. To my knowledge, it still sucks less than any other free and open option, but that's not much of a bar. Over time, Thunderbird has become slower and less reliable, most notably in the area of search. While the advanced search tools are excellent, the results are lousy. Email that I know exists is often unfindable until I force Thunderbird to re-index…

> The interface is fine and there are far bigger problems -- problems related to actual functionality as opposed to prettiness -- that desperately need work. You may want to read the blog post again. This isn't just about a new UI, it's about overhauling the codebase in general, so that they can improve all aspects.

I get that, but they listed

"Rebuild the interface from scratch..."

as a separate bullet point from codebase issues, and later talked about

"A UI that looks and feels modern is getting initially implemented...aiming at offering a simple and clean interface for “new” users..."

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#148

Post by ulizzle »

I still remember the glory days of Thunderbird, good times.

I'm not holding my hopes up, internet history has proved that 2nd systems rarely make it, but as long as they don't change the badass logo, I wish 'em luck.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#149

Post by kevincox »

mauvehaus wrote: post #60
boplicity wrote: post #50

Unfortunately, at least for me, I've had to mostly switch away from Thunderbird. It has becoming rather frustratingly slow. For example, if I archive an email, it takes 10 to 15 seconds for this to be reflected in the interface. When I have 50 or so emails to deal with, this adds up to a surprising amount of time, and becomes rather frustrating. (I suspect having large volumes of email is part of the issue.) On the m…

Want to recommend one of those other email clients for Mac? The threading/conversation support is my biggest gripe apart from the slowness. I am also guilty of rarely deleting things. EDITED TO ADD: Using gmail and fastmail. 'nother edit: should deal gracefully with emailing files to myself. C.f the threading in fastmail's webmail, which is ... weird?

> The threading/conversation support is my biggest gripe apart from the slowness.

I'm curious what gripes you have here. Compared to GMail linear threading based on subject I find the correct threading based on headers fantastic.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#150

Post by behringer »

narag wrote: post #112
boplicity wrote: post #50

Unfortunately, at least for me, I've had to mostly switch away from Thunderbird. It has becoming rather frustratingly slow. For example, if I archive an email, it takes 10 to 15 seconds for this to be reflected in the interface. When I have 50 or so emails to deal with, this adds up to a surprising amount of time, and becomes rather frustrating. (I suspect having large volumes of email is part of the issue.) On the m…

I don't know how your archive is, mine is a few tens of thousands of messages, many of them with attachments, it works OK, fast and no problems at all. After these news, I'm searching for an alternative right away. I won't touch a "rewriting from scratch" piece of software with a ten feet pole. Very disappointing. Suggestions very welcome.

I would just wait for the inevitable fork.
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