Why not rewrite it in Graphene, which is the Servo's foundation for browser.html?
Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
131–140 of 243 posts
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#132Does anyone actually have any problems with Thunderbird? I feel like it is "done" software. It works, perfectly, for all my needs. It's fast. It has great UI. It lets me read and write email.
Very hitchy and slow with large folders, particularly in search. I find the search usability very poor. Some dumb defaults like the quick filter searching on Sender for a folder that's a Sent folder, instead of Recipient. Gigantic memory leaks for me under Linux. (If I leave it open for a few days it'll go > 10 gigs of RAM, that bug's been unresolved for me for over a decade.) Buggy network probing when setting up a new account aimed at an IMAP/SMTP server. Doesn't autofit images to the window size when I'm pasting them into a new email, so with big pictures it's a big hassle to scroll around and manipulate the document. And those are just off the top of my head.
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an incredible product as-is, but I feel like they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with moving forward and forecasting beyond the immediate future. I don't see why a new implementation couldn't maintain the current UI/native feel outside of poor decision making. I could see it as a net positive, with cleaner easier to maintain code base built on more recent tech that is more accommodating to younger dev…
> If they could pull off what Atom.io/Github did for the old ingrained IDE world in a mail client, that would be incredible, IMO. You mean give hipster programmers an editor where one can literally see the delay between typing and something appearing on the screen?
Is that your experience? Dang. That must suck. I don't need you to tell me your age, I can deduce it by your general attitude towards 'hipsters.'
Who hurt you? Who replaced you?
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#134They've already neglected Thunderbird for years, and now they want to start from scratch? Doesn't sound like a good idea. Sounds more like another project they will shut down after a while. I used to use both Thunderbird and Firefox a few years ago as my main mail client and browser. Since then, Mozilla started spreading between too many projects, chasing the failed phone thing, and both Firefox and even worse Thunde…
I think Thunderbird is fine how it is. I think a lot of the projects Mozilla takes on are stupid (Rust being a giant exception, I love Rust).
You know what I want? NWJS/Electron but using Firefox/Spidermonkey. I want to package desktop apps with Firefox. They almost had this with xulrunner but killed it for some reason. And I want them to build crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/) for mobile, but with Firefox. The only real reason is that I don't trust Google or anything they touch, and I've never actually been able to build Chromium/NWJS from source (such a complicated build), which worries me.
Call me paranoid, but the monoculture around Chromium creeps me out and I'd really like a viable alternative from Mozilla. Seems like they jumped ship from the packaged HTML5 desktop/mobile app paradigm right when it started getting popular.
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Firefox that far from Chrome? I thought it was ahead in some ways.
Maybe with web standards (maybe, I'm not sure), but not the rest. Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through. Downloading files has the same problem, it's relegated in a small button, while it's one of the main features. The whole interface is one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, considering how simple a browse…
> Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient.
Anything to back that up? I'm pretty happy with Firefox syncing.
I tried to switch to Chrome but it used a lot more memory than Firefox (and it was in days when Firefox was know for using much memory, Chrome somehow was able to get ahead on that also).
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compose is C-n, and the "Write" button in the default toolbar. Not sure what priority/promo is, but Thunderbird certainly can sort by any field by default. It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features, and you're not going to get that with a non-Google client. Note that some customizations, like Firefox, require accessing about:config. Also, as with Firefox, most Thunderbird users wi…
I don't have time right now to explain myself better, it's the minimalism and some features like snoozing emails, quickly marking them as done/low-priority and similar things, which is definitely not something that is connected to Google technology. > It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features I actually don't like Gmail that much. > you're not going to get that with a non-Google c…
> Google Inbox used be called Sparrow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client)), which was a regular app that Google acquired. I used it since the beginning. It was a new paradigm back in 2011, which is now the standard in modern clients.
Could you name a few apps that have the Inbox/Sparrow features like snoozing an email until some time in the future?
I would love to have that, I looked for Thunderbird plugin for that but failed to find one.
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#137Interesting that mithril.js gets a mention. I really like it.
Was that mentioned in one of the replies? I don't see any specific libraries mentioned in the linked message, or the other replies I searched through. edit : Scratch that, it was in this reply: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/00... . "I'd suggest using TypeScript, Mithril.js, Tachyons, and Node.js for the base technologies -- probably with Mocha/Chai for testing. Later we can make a more sta…
FWIW that reply appears to be someone who's serious about this proposal: https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have time right now to explain myself better, it's the minimalism and some features like snoozing emails, quickly marking them as done/low-priority and similar things, which is definitely not something that is connected to Google technology. > It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features I actually don't like Gmail that much. > you're not going to get that with a non-Google c…
> Google Inbox used be called Sparrow ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client) ), which was a regular app that Google acquired. I used it since the beginning. It was a new paradigm back in 2011, which is now the standard in modern clients. Could you name a few apps that have the Inbox/Sparrow features like snoozing an email until some time in the future? I would love to have that, I looked for Thunderbi…
Lots of them, on what OS are you? Apple Mail has it.
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have time right now to explain myself better, it's the minimalism and some features like snoozing emails, quickly marking them as done/low-priority and similar things, which is definitely not something that is connected to Google technology. > It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features I actually don't like Gmail that much. > you're not going to get that with a non-Google c…
There's a toolbar with 100 buttons of the same size: "Write, Chat, Reply, Reply all, Archive, Address book, Get email, Tag, Quick filter". My main Thunderbird toolbar has get mail, write new message and quick filtering. It took me perhaps 10 seconds back when I first installed it on this computer to hide a couple of other buttons like chat that I don't use myself. The second toolbar when I have a message open has jus…
> My main Thunderbird toolbar has get mail, write new message and quick filtering. It took me perhaps 10 seconds back when I first installed it on this computer to hide a couple of other buttons like chat that I don't use myself.
That's not how it works. The authors have to take the time to study the situation, talk about it, make hard decisions and cut out features that are useless or barely useful, and have the balls to ship a product with just the right features instead of all the features in an attempt to please everyone. Not the user.
It shouldn't be the user who has to waste time and energy trying to figure out how to clean up the UI. That's exactly why people like myself are abandoning software like Thunderbird and moving to simpler, more thought-out stuff.
I don't know how much Mozilla cares about people using their product, but that I doubt that's how you get people to use your product.
Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies
#140> We must pay attention to also keep technical qualities that many of our users rely on. An obvious one is that the new implementation must be able to quickly scroll through a list of up to 100000 messages. Does any cross-platform GUI toolkit have a widget that can handle this with sane defaults?
Does any human have a brain which can skim read 100,000 email subjects?
10/second for 2.5 hours, no pause, no breaks.
You read those emails? You acted on them? You remember what's in them? Archived data is a hoarding disorder, a garbage heap.