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Thunderbird for Android Now Available

blog.thunderbird.net

31–40 of 94 posts

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#31

Is there a reason why Mozilla haven't used their position and funding to just hoover up all the most successful open source projects to create a more cohesive ecosystem? Surely any addons - like uBlock Origin - which have massive usage should just be baked in to the browser by this point? The likes of Nextcloud and Mattermost would also be great additions in trying to create a true rival to Microsoft and Google's off…

Why would Youtube, which makes money off ads, allow a web browser that blocks ads to access Youtube when they could just refuse to serve their user agent?

User agents are trivially fungible thing in this. That's the nature of the internet and how connections are established. Personal hardware constructs whatever packet that is going out and there's nothing special if that packet comes from a sanctioned or unsanctioned client. There's no way for a provider to distinguish the difference between what created an acceptable packet.

It's difficult for me to envision how that's rigorously enforceable to prevent something outside of the app (like a browser) to access something ultimately consumed by an API without resorting to (expensive and crackable) digital rights management at the hardware level. You can run down whatever train of thought you want, but ultimately since the client is running on machines controlled by the consumer, it can be cracked, reverse engineered, decapped, or whatever. This has been the end state for every attempt the industry has made to control user behavior. DVD CSS, Bluray, Sony's CD rootkit nonsense, every game console, satellite TV cards, analog cable TV, on and on, all broken.

I'm confident google/youtube wishes there weren't applications like FreeTube and yt-dlp. The fact of the matter is it's practically impossible to exclude them but still keep their own ecosystem functioning at an acceptable cost and with consumer buy in.

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#32
post #27
post #20

Is there any way to get push notifications instead of polling? My email provider is Fastmail, maybe there are some kind of IMAP extensions that can do this?

Fastmail thinks JMAP is the future of mobile(?) email API access Also, I am just curious if you're unhappy with their android app? I find it very full featured

Fastmail is a webapp, and it's very obvious. I use it out of laziness, because I don't use email on my phone that much. I wish they'd make a proper mobile client, but I don't think they care, since it's been like this forever.

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#33
post #7

They are keeping both: "Quite a few people seem to love K-9 Mail and have asked us to keep the robot dog around. We believe it should be relatively little effort to build two apps from one code base. The apps would be virtually identical and only differ in app name, app icon, and the color scheme. So our current plan is to keep K-9 Mail around." https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/12/when-will-thunderbird-f...

Isn't that something a single App can do? I have some apps that allow you to change their icon, at least... I guess if you have a CI pipeline it's easy to copy/paste or add a Matrix job, but it seems like an odd choice.

Having two separate apps has additional benefit of acting like insurance against any automated/manual playstore review surprises.

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#34

Is there a reason why Mozilla haven't used their position and funding to just hoover up all the most successful open source projects to create a more cohesive ecosystem? Surely any addons - like uBlock Origin - which have massive usage should just be baked in to the browser by this point? The likes of Nextcloud and Mattermost would also be great additions in trying to create a true rival to Microsoft and Google's off…

> uBlock Origin - which have massive usage

I'm guessing there are legal risk issues with this. While ad blocking flies under the radar as a mom/pop operation with guerilla marketing the offended parties turn a blind eye. Make it a feature of a "corporate" product, and they'll sue.

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#35
post #32
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail thinks JMAP is the future of mobile(?) email API access Also, I am just curious if you're unhappy with their android app? I find it very full featured

Fastmail is a webapp, and it's very obvious. I use it out of laziness, because I don't use email on my phone that much. I wish they'd make a proper mobile client, but I don't think they care, since it's been like this forever.

OT1H, I don't have a horse in the fight about whether you're right or not, but I was curious because if it is a web app they did a damn stellar job

But no, it's a formal android app and I offer two pieces of supporting evidence: the resource browser shows the apk very obviously has a bazillion android resource files https://imgur.com/a/pUbQ8Bp> and it supports native fingerprint auth

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#36
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Youtube, which makes money off ads, allow a web browser that blocks ads to access Youtube when they could just refuse to serve their user agent?

They currently allow Brave which does that. If a major website starting blocking user agents for any reason other than compatibility then all that would do is trigger (finally) the deprecation of user agents strings as browsers would all just pretend to be each other.

It would just be yet another zero-sum meta-war, with web browsers ultimately using randomized user agent strings just as mobiles randomize MAC addresses.

But none of that means that the war somehow can't or won't occur.

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#37
post #28

I do not know how it is financed, but I would rather have them use these funds to fix desktop version first. Content advisory: longish rant ahead. I have 4 email accounts: 2 Gmail, 1 Outlook, and 1 ProtonMail. I also use Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar. The reason I switched to Thunderbird was to manage them all in one uniform UI instead of keeping 6 open tabs. I tried hard to love it, but after about 6 months,…

1) You can see replies/sent messages in Conversation/Threaded view (I do this). Unfortunately I don't recall exactly how I set this up, but this might get you there: https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/tvb02t/show_re...

2) Expression Search NG might solve your search issues: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/expre...

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#38

I believe they will be deleting K-9 from play store after giving its users adequate warming and informing them assuaging them. It's just K-9 right now named Thunderbird. I hope they bring in some important Thunderbird desktop features to mobile as well. The release is underwhelming if not downright disappointing.

Why do you believe that?

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#39
post #30
post #20

Is there any way to get push notifications instead of polling? My email provider is Fastmail, maybe there are some kind of IMAP extensions that can do this?

> Is there any way to get push notifications instead of polling? Push support has been there for a long time now. You can enable it on a per-folder basis, check in Manage folders.

How would a true push (and not poll) method work, if all you have is the local thunderbird client? If I had to guess, the question from the other person is not related to mail poll/push stuff

Usually you rely on a server telling the mobile app that there's something new to poll (or the message is directly sent and displayed).

Re: Thunderbird for Android Now Available

#40
post #35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is a webapp, and it's very obvious. I use it out of laziness, because I don't use email on my phone that much. I wish they'd make a proper mobile client, but I don't think they care, since it's been like this forever.

OT1H, I don't have a horse in the fight about whether you're right or not, but I was curious because if it is a web app they did a damn stellar job But no, it's a formal android app and I offer two pieces of supporting evidence: the resource browser shows the apk very obviously has a bazillion android resource files https://imgur.com/a/pUbQ8Bp > and it supports native fingerprint auth

I dunno if it's native or not, but the Fastmail app doesn't work when you're offline.
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