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The Future of Thunderbird

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#241

Post by powersnail »

Maybe the problem is IMAP/POP3/SMTP, but I feel like email clients in general are just slow. I have time to manually open every separate email account in the browser, and have all of them ready to read, before Thunderbird (or KMail, etc.) finishes loading new emails. And I don't even have a lot of new emails every day, like 5~10, so I'm not quite sure what exactly is taking so long to sync. I can download a 500MB video in the time TB syncs a few KBs of email.

I've largely given up on desktop email clients at this point. It'd be nice to have a single place to manage emails, but the performance is too poor.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#242

Post by autoexec »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #161
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…

Compact the folders. If still slow, vacuum the sqlites. Still slow? Do a FS checkup, may have corruption.

Compacting folders is something I hope that they fix. I tell Thunderbird to download/sync all accounts and immediately it prompts me to compact and if I let it, it will only fail with an error because it's still in the middle of doing what I just asked it to. A little more intelligence in when it prompts for compacting would be nice.

Better yet, they could do a better job handling it automatically so I don't need it to ask me.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#243

Post by ASalazarMX »

mrpotato wrote: post #238
neogodless wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, on my high-end desktop, with 2 Google accounts and a NameCheap private email account (all IMAP), Thunderbird is sitting at 0-0.2% CPU, 2 entries in task manager totaling 190.3 MB. It does have a quirk with IMAP, in that it only checks your main folder until you visit a sub-folder. Then it'll check those, but even then, any time I go in and click a folder, it tends to react by "really checking." But quirk…

I am seeing similar results. That being said, I'm only using thunderbird on Windows, so I can't speak to Mac/Linux perf.

I've used it on Linux since 2005 at least, and my only problems were importing a big Outlook .pst and having trouble with its formatting and attachments. It's open daily on my machine, and while it has become more memory hungry, the CPU usage is minimum.

Maybe it's because I only use POP/SMTP accounts?

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#244

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

college_physics wrote: post #53

I never gave up on thunderbird and hope it will rise again to represent "power, protection, and strength for the user". Thunderbird, in contrast with the sibling "browser" is still a desktop app that asks the user to have some agency and exercise it. Here are my two cents in hashtags and slogans for the future of thunderbird: embrace activitypub/fediverse, expand rss functionality, reinvent bookmarks, think about aud…

> Here are my two cents in hashtags and slogans for the future of thunderbird: embrace activitypub/fediverse, expand rss functionality, reinvent bookmarks, think about audio/podcasts, improve filtering and smart search. Leverage open source ecosystems and tools for next generation content management. In sum, become the local app where people spend quality time to organize their online life and experience the digital ocean.

And i thought i just wanted a fast, snappy, powerful email client. Silly me.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#245

Post by autoexec »

carlosjobim wrote: post #154

For a long time I wished for an e-mail client that shows a side-by-side view of the e-mail your composing and the e-mail you're replying to. I think the majority of people would like such a view, yet nobody offers it. Does anybody know any good solution in macOS?

What's wrong with seeing the email you're replying to quoted in the message itself? It'd be redundant to see the message right next to you and also just below where you're typing.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#246

Post by bawolff »

throw0101a wrote: post #195
tux3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems. Unfortunately, it has some serious performance bugs. It often sits there idle on a brand new laptop eating 50% or 70% of a core. Doing who knows what, without giving any indication or any sort of pause button to the…

> That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems. If they want to grow the user base (or even maintain it against attrition) then relying on just the current folks isn't enough: you have to get new people to use it. (And hopefully support/donate to it.) Getting ne…

> Getting new blood thus may entail getting rid of the Old School interface and going with whatever is 'current'.

This is an easy thing to say. Sometimes it is even true, but i think its overstated.

To survive you need to lean into whatever makes you unique or interesting, and convince new users that you're worth it. Chase whatever is trendy too far, and you simply become the off-brand version of whoever is the market leader. That annoys your base wothout actually growing new users since you aren't going to be better than whoever you are copying.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#247

Post by LAC-Tech »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #146

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 pr…

I laughed a lot.

After I finished one contract I told my team there (all permies) to remember to blame me after I'm gone.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#248

Post by andix »

I really love emClient, but it’s proprietary, there are no plugins and no Linux version (only windows/mac). There is a free version though, that doesn’t come with a lot of restrictions.

Re: The Future of Thunderbird

#249

Post by mauvehaus »

kevincox wrote: post #149
mauvehaus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure if it's strictly Thunderbird's fault, or if it's because people sometimes reply to a random message with a bunch of people one it, change the subject, and things go downhill from there.

The fact that I'm dealing with this in three different interfaces (Thunderbird, Gmail, Fastmail) is probably not helping my sanity.

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