If the whole thing is such a big, crumbling Lego tower, and it's going to take three years just to fix the problems it has now, this doesn't seem like a compelling argument to keep using it. Surely at some point it must be easier to abandon it and start over - obviously that won't just solve all problems, but there must be a line where the cost of maintaining the current thing outweighs the cost of a rewrite.
The Future of Thunderbird
311–320 of 473 posts
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#312Goodbye, Thunderbird. What options are still available that don't follow this "modern" path. Simply give me the old-fashioned interface and leave me alone.
Look into Interlink from Binary Outcast. It was originally based on Pale Moon in the same way Thunderbird is based on Firefox.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#313For 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.
If you are answering long e-mails you have to keep scrolling up and down!
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#314I'll add one more negative sentiment. > Using a solid base architecture like Firefox is the perfect starting point. No, but why? Why does an email client need a web browser to function, and why is that the "perfect starting point"? The only reason an email client might use a web _view_ for, is for reading HTML emails, and even then that web view should be a far more restricted and barebones version of a traditional b…
Dropping XUL really broke so many extensions. I think everyone dumped FF then and started over with chrome.
Thank goodness for Pale Moon & the UXP.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#315I'm actually happy with this news, looking forward to see the first stable version. The new calendar looks neat, haven't see the inbox yet.
Things that is not clear is how big the difference architecture wise and especially with the UI rebuild they have chance to implement new approach.
I really expect this bring smoother interaction, hopefully the UX remains familiar.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#316Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
'k. take your word for it. Esp in relation to Maildir. I know very little about Windows development. But... just, FWIW, this particular subject has come up a lot on HN over the years with various explanations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783525 and many many others easily searchable on hn.algolia.com My fav comment was by an MS dev: "NTFS code is a purple opium-fueled Victorian horror novel that uses globa…
I definitely understand it gets talked about a lot, endlessly. It's not an unearned reputation. I just think that, especially in light of things like that last comment you like, so much of that reputation at this point is folklore more than benchmarks. People take "Windows is bad at lots of files in a single folder" as faith from some bible of Operating Systems Allegories rather than something they've worked with dir…
Hm. Did you read the comment by the Microsoft dev in the linked thread? He gives the following reasons:
"We've long since gotten all the low-hanging fruit and are left with what is essentially "death by a thousand cuts," with no single component responsible for our (lack of) performance, but with lots of different things contributing"
* Linux has a top-level directory entry cache that means that certain queries (most notably stat calls) can be serviced without calling into the file system at all once an item is in the cache. Windows has no such cache, and leaves much more up to the file systems... [snip]
* Windows's IO stack is extensible, allowing filter drivers to attach to volumes and intercept IO requests before the file system sees them. ... [snip] .. Even a clean install of Windows will have a number of filters present, particularly on the system volume (so if you have a D: drive or partition, I recommend using that instead, since it likely has fewer filters attached). Filters are involved in many IO operations, most notably creating/opening files.
* The NT file system API is designed around handles, not paths. Almost any operation requires opening the file first, which can be expensive. ... [snip]
"Whether we like it or not (and we don't), file operations in Windows are more expensive than in Linux, even more so for those operations that only touch file metadata (such as stat)."
I can say my personal experience under Windows has been that compiling the same project was twice as fast in a linux virtualbox inside windows, than in the host. :)
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#318What I see in this thread is A LOT of people complaining about a free product, but I wonder how many of them have actually donated money to help with the development? I just donated $100 myself because of the current donation campaign, but I'm happy with what I get largely for free.
There's no way I would donate to Thunderbird in its present state. Why should I want to give money to people doing things I don't like? That's like paying money to Google!
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#319Are there any reasonable alternatives (please, no outlook)? I love Thunderbird on principle but it's been years and the whole damn UI still freezes while it's downloading messages.
Interlink from Binary Outcast.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a ton of desktop email clients that have that design: Apple Mail, Windows 10/11 Mail application, Outlook, Mailspring, whatever. Of client that have the UI/UX of Thunderbird... well only Thunderbird remained. I get that if you use the email sporadically with only one account, you are better with a client like you described, but at that point you can as well use a webmail. Otherwise if you work with emails,…
You know what? Nothing needs to be pretty. Why stop at work tools? A home is there to let you cook, sleep and live efficiently. No need to be pretty. A city is there to allow you to go from A to B without any fuzz and to provide the essential services. Pretty cities are annoying. I have several accounts and thousands of mails. But I can't see how an efficient tool can't be pretty and how a pretty tool can't be effici…
> But I can't see how an efficient tool can't be pretty and how a pretty tool can't be efficient.
Usually pretty and efficient doesn't go well together. Pretty tools not only add useless things (such as animation, transparency, etc) that are not functional but consume resources, but also are designed towards looking good without thinking at the usability of the tool, for example a lot of whitespace and padding, big line heights and fonts, remove features that most of the user don't need, etc.
A professional tool doesn't need to be pretty. If you go to a plant control room and look at the computer screens they have an interface that looks Windows 95 usually... but that is fine, since they need to be functional, not pretty, they don't need rounded corners, they use high contrast between colours that are ugly from a design point of view but allow to see things easily.
Most email clients are shit. They show you mails in a conversational way that is just wrong, mail are not chats, but letters. They insist on composing HTML mails, instead of plain text ones (like Thunderbird does). And have a very bad UX in general.
Of many things that can improve Thunderbird (for example a better integration with Exchange/Office365 with not only the mail but also the calendar/contacts, sync settings to a Mozilla account, better search in the emails) they focus on the only thing that make most people use Thunderbird.
> I don't see the point of not wanting improvements
I see it. I'm used to a tool, that I use with satisfaction since years. There is no reason why I have to learn to use a new UI or change the way I work because somebody at Mozilla decided that we need a more fancy looking UI. The reason I choose Thunderbird is because other software, such as Outlook, became shit because they followed the same path of modernization that now is following Mozilla.
If something is not broken and users are satisfied with it, why the hell do you want to change it???
By the way, so far I'm happy with the improvements in Thunderbird that Mozilla had done, because having prettier icons and fonts, having the dark theme, are all UI improvements that are purely cosmetics and doesn't change the UX, same shortcuts that I'm used, same mode of operation, I don't have to learn a new thing. Now they decide that the whole UI must be modernized, I don't get it. I will probably stay with the last Thunderbird that will support the current UI for a long time...