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Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#111

Post by sph »

jraph wrote: post #97
aidenn0 wrote: post #94

I hope that someday I will understand why people like Thunderbird. It is unequivocally the worst e-mail client I have ever used, excepting some early, extremely buggy versions of alpine. I tried it again recently as it is only one of only 3 e-mail clients I found that could do exchange oauth2[1]. It's possible that its interface isn't as objectively terrible as it seems, but it is gratuitously different; if you are g…

I don't know. I've been using it since 2005. Its UI is stable and efficient. Gets the job done and does not get in the way. And it's free software. You are not actually saying what you don't like about Thunderbird so it's hard to oppose anything to your comment. Why Thunderbird should change its UI if it works okay? Gratuitously different from what by the way? And to me, the UIs of Evolution and KMail don't seem that…

People do not appreciate good UIs enough. I think many software engineers might be UI-blind, actually.

Thunderbird is ugly, atrocious on 4K screens, does not group messages by conversation like mail client have in the past 20 years, and insists on listing emails in side-by-side columns instead of using a more compact and space-effective layout like many mail clients in the past 20 years. It's got a menubar, 3 level of toolbars and a burger menu; unnecessary tabs, cramped spacing, and two search fields. It offers XMPP chat and in-browser junk filtering when the former is pretty much dead, and the second is not needed anymore since GMail and its modern competition.

Someone mentioned LibreOffice elsewhere in the comment, and both projects seems stuck in the 2005 UI, UX and feature wise. I actively avoid using them even if I have to resort to using subpar web applications.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#112

Post by dizhn »

cookiengineer wrote: post #71
pmontra wrote: post #66

As a Thunderbird and K-9 user this is 51% good news and 49% possibly bad new. Good news because it should increase the chances that the two products will live a longer life. Possibly bad news because I'm one of the crowd that went back to K-9 5.600 because the new version destroyed the UI that was the primary reason why we picked K-9 over other apps. 100% self selection bias here. There was maybe an ongoing effort to…

Note that Mozilla has nothing to do with Thunderbird anymore. They abandoned Thunderbird and it's a totally separate community project these days.

It's still part of mozilla the company and has a special advantage in that they can actually receive donations directly, unlike the browser project.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#113

Post by NoGravitas »

3np wrote: post #77
ryanleesipes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird Product Manager here. We have no intention to replace the backend or most of the components. It will not be a different app. It's still run by the K-9 project maintainer. The difference? We didn't want to see K-9 die because of a lack of funding, and our visions were aligned - so it made sense to work together. That's it. Thunderbird is community run (unlike Firefox, our community representatives approve…

Hi Ryan, nice seeing you here. If you don't mind, would love to hear your thoughts: I’m missing a story about mobile Linux. Has this been discussed; is this something on the roadmap? There are already excellent e-mail options for iOS. Right now there is almost nothing outside of the cli that’s usable on mobile Linux. Thunderbird would have a chance of being the main choice while helping adoption of mobile Linux in th…

Have you tried Geary on mobile Linux? I haven't (no pinephone or similar), so I'm sincerely asking. It works well in a very narrow window on desktop Linux, so that seems hopeful? I wonder if it's excessively memory hungry or syncs mail inefficiently, though.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#114

Post by dizhn »

ryanleesipes wrote: post #70
xg15 wrote: post #38

I'm continually creeped out by all the PR sugarcoating on what essentially are simple notices of acquisition. So all this is in effect saying is that K9 got acquired by Mozilla and will be integrated into the suite of Mozilla products. The justification given in the post is just non-information, because you could say this for almost any pair of software products if you define the terms fuzzily enough: > The Thunderbi…

Thunderbird Product Manager here. We have no intention to replace the backend or most of the components. It will not be a different app. It's still run by the K-9 project maintainer. The difference? We didn't want to see K-9 die because of a lack of funding, and our visions were aligned - so it made sense to work together. That's it. Thunderbird is community run (unlike Firefox, our community representatives approve…

This is great. I am glad K9 will live on. I didn't think it wouldn't anyway because frankly K9 is established software and Thunderbird doesn't seem to have anything in that space. It wouldn't make sense to kill it and redo it. This is not Microsoft after all, which would take the product and cripple it so much that it has one third the features and the Microsoft name.

However this particular deal sounds a lot like white labeling, don't you think ? :)

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#115

Post by dizhn »

Macha wrote: post #93
xg15 wrote: post #38

I'm continually creeped out by all the PR sugarcoating on what essentially are simple notices of acquisition. So all this is in effect saying is that K9 got acquired by Mozilla and will be integrated into the suite of Mozilla products. The justification given in the post is just non-information, because you could say this for almost any pair of software products if you define the terms fuzzily enough: > The Thunderbi…

From Mozilla's previous attempts to jettison Thunderbird, and the period where the community kept it maintained while Mozilla allocated no resources, the relationship between Thunderbird and Mozilla these days is more akin to that between something like GNU or ASF and their projects than a company and its direct project. While yes Mozilla could theoretically enforce its trademarks and appoint its own team to start ma…

Microsoft Swiftkey Keyboard is another good example. (The product got worse though)

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#116

Post by NoGravitas »

emodendroket wrote: post #3

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but I worry about a loss of focus when Thunderbird is one of the few in a dying category on the desktop, which is much less true on mobile.

In the Free Software space on mobile, though, there are not so many usable mail apps. Basically just K-9 Mail and FairEmail, as far as I know.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#117

Post by NoGravitas »

ekianjo wrote: post #8
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two work in tandem, though. I use Firefox on mobile because I use Firefox on desktop. That and it being the only Android browser that runs uBlock Origin, of course. I currently use Thunderbird on desktop, but use a combination of Gmail and Outlook on Android. If Thunderbird picks up K-9 mail and turns it into a first-class mobile client, I'll probably use Thunderbird instead of the Outlook app. People like consis…

Quoted post unavailable.

Most of the recommended extensions on Firefox Mobile are also the most widely used and most needed (in particular uBlock Origin). But if you really need more extensions, you can jump through a bunch of hoops in Firefox Nightly to get any extension you want. Some of them even work pretty well (I use Privacy Redirect, Stylus, and Bypass Paywalls Clean in addition to some of the recommended ones).

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#118

Post by rvz »

So adding two disasters together makes it magnificent news? Oh dear.

I don't think Thunderbird is that relevant today since that it's essentially abandoned and still no Android or iOS app for decades. I'd say that ship has already sailed and it would be a long way to go to support iOS.

It has gotten this bad that they needed something like K-9 to have Android support, and you would have thought that even with Google's money they would have already funded an effort like this on their own. Well now lots of Mozilla fans are going to realize that their 'donations' don't actually go to Firefox, or Thunderbird, etc but are really wasted on other schemes.

An opportunity thrown away for years and now they come back again with this announcement decades later and coming very late to the party after Thunderbird getting deprioritised.

A giant mess.

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#119

Post by sky-kedge0749 »

0des wrote: post #81
ryanleesipes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird Product Manager here. We have no intention to replace the backend or most of the components. It will not be a different app. It's still run by the K-9 project maintainer. The difference? We didn't want to see K-9 die because of a lack of funding, and our visions were aligned - so it made sense to work together. That's it. Thunderbird is community run (unlike Firefox, our community representatives approve…

> It will not be a different app. It's still run by the K-9 project maintainer. The difference? We didn't want to see K-9 die because of a lack of funding, and our visions were aligned Nothing in this world is purely altruistic. If it didn't make business sense, this wouldn't be happening. Please surprise me and stay true to your word on this. > The way you present it sounds devious. But we're just truly trying to wo…

What business sense do you have in mind? Thunderbird is funded by donations and governed by volunteers. Even if this were some kind of money grab, who's grabbing what money?

Re: Our plans for Thunderbird on Android

#120

Post by NoGravitas »

longrod wrote: post #82
prophesi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this proves Firefox is dying. A better indicator would be Chrome's past decade of 90%+ browser market share. It's also worth noting that a good amount of the features not implemented in Firefox are either Chrome-specific experiments, or features purposefully unimplemented for privacy purposes. If anything, it shows the damage of a browser-tech monopoly which Edge and Brave aren't helping with.

I don't think features such as Web USB, Web Bluetooth are privacy invasive. Chrome's huge market share is the very reason Firefox isn't trying very hard here. They are playing catch up. Take Manifest v3 for example; Chrome introduced it quite a while ago and made it mandatory for new extensions in 2022. Firefox just started catching up. This is bad for Firefox because developers will eventually (and some still do) wi…

> I don't think features such as Web USB, Web Bluetooth are privacy invasive.

Mozilla, Apple, and Brave all disagree (as do I).

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