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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#151

Post by xte »

ahartmetz wrote: post #136
xte wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have an a bit cached but true point, that's is: there was a so big push to web tech that actual local graphics libraries was left in an old era without real updates. That's the case even of Qt and their QML mess. That's the case of GTk mess etc. However have a browser as a framework and environment for anything is even worse than actual X server architectures. So yes, we need to rethink desktops, perhaps looking…

Explain how QML is a mess? I've been using it almost as long as it exists - which is much longer than the life of the average hot JS framework - and didn't notice the mess. It has problems and limitations like everything, but overall it's very productive.

Essentially because require tons of fragile boilerplate code to work and it's mostly designed with web principle in mind, not desktop one.

You essentially can't found a QML GUI that not exhibit tons of error, from commercial one like TeamViewer to Kde/Plasma. It's surely more flexible than classic widgets but it's flexibility is not designed in a manageable way.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#152

Post by aembleton »

shmerl wrote: post #14

I recently discovered this add-on: * https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbsyn... * https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/eas-4... An actual working atcivesync support for calendar and contacts. With Exchange being still very pervasive in corporate environments, it's quite useful.

What calendar do you use? Lightning doesn't work with the latest version of Thunderbird.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#153

Post by sabas_ge »

I actually like Thunderbird since when I discovered MRC Compose extension[0] which provides a UI similar to Outlook in the To, CC and BCC fields. Having to input one by one the email addresses is troublesome in my use case (lots of addresses to manipulate when replying). It's a pity it isn't a default behaviour.

[0] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mrc-c...

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#154

Post by Canada »

teddyh wrote: post #103
Boulth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native PGP is something I'd be very happy to see. Enigmail is needlessly complex with long setup wizards that frequently fail and a lot of legacy code supported for old distros. Services such as ProtonMail show that focusing on modern conventions and picking the right defaults can really bring encryption to normal users.

Have you tried the latest version of Enigmail with P≡P and Autocrypt integration?

Yeah, it makes a real mess. It generates random numbers of key pairs for each user, breaks subject line encryption randomly, and just generally sucks. I hope it gets better, but it’s definitely not something you want to enable at this time, I regret doing it. At this point it’s easier to have one person help 50 people manually generate and exchange keys in an office setting.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#155

Post by Leace »

Canada wrote: post #154
teddyh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the latest version of Enigmail with P≡P and Autocrypt integration?

Yeah, it makes a real mess. It generates random numbers of key pairs for each user, breaks subject line encryption randomly, and just generally sucks. I hope it gets better, but it’s definitely not something you want to enable at this time, I regret doing it. At this point it’s easier to have one person help 50 people manually generate and exchange keys in an office setting.

I agree wholeheartedly! It's interesting that trying to make to process easier actually made it hard for both novices and experts.

Too bad it's enabled by default and plagued by issues: https://pep.foundation/blog/enigmailpep-current-update-1024-...

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#156

Post by ptman »

baroffoos wrote: post #141
ben509 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A total rewrite almost sank Netscape[1] long ago. It's still generally a bad idea. There's an electron based mail client called Mailspring[2], and having used it for a few months, I definitely understand the antipathy towards electron. You might like it. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... [2]: https://getmailspring.com/

Huge rewrites of firefox are saving it today. Seems like the best way is to rewrite in chunks allowing you to use new bits in the existing application.

Incremental rewrites. The netscape rewrite was started from scratch, IIRC.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#157

Post by sciurus »

jcranmer wrote: post #53
sciurus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the languages used in Thunderbird source ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Tree_Rules/comm-central#Thunderbird ): $ cloc build/ ldap/ editor/ mailnews/ mail/ 3938 text files. 3848 unique files. 949 files ignored. github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.80 T=6.01 s (497.6 files/s, 127309.9 lines/s) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------…

You forgot db/mork, which is another ~100K-ish LOC (at least as measured by wc -l).

Oops! I'm not actually familiar with the Thunderbird source's organization, so I just went by what was marked as owned by Thunderbird in that wiki page I linked.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#158

Post by Canada »

Leace wrote: post #155
Canada wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it makes a real mess. It generates random numbers of key pairs for each user, breaks subject line encryption randomly, and just generally sucks. I hope it gets better, but it’s definitely not something you want to enable at this time, I regret doing it. At this point it’s easier to have one person help 50 people manually generate and exchange keys in an office setting.

I agree wholeheartedly! It's interesting that trying to make to process easier actually made it hard for both novices and experts. Too bad it's enabled by default and plagued by issues: https://pep.foundation/blog/enigmailpep-current-update-1024-...

I really, really want it to work. I'm hopeful it will get better. I don't like PGP keyservers, they aren't very reliable, I wish I could remove all the old keys I've lost. And I don't like publishing my email address like that. Plus, the most of my GPG email use is with keys from people I know that we've sent each other directly. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with Enigmail running in the old PEP-free mode.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#159

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

kuon wrote: post #38

I love thunderbird because it's the only email client that does everything I want. I tried CLI clients, they are great and customizable, but CLI is a bit bare for email (images, html, fonts...) Things I'd like to see improved: - Native CardDAV and CalDAV support (there is caldav, but no discoverability of calendars). - Native PGP. - Better search, the UI is horrible and the search string is hard to get right (need fu…

I wish thunderbird supports native reply reminders like in gmail/outlook. I always have to remind myself to follow up with people who haven't replied to my emails. I've been using threaded messages to combat this, but it gets kind of messy when email chains get lengthy.

Also, I wish there were more tutorials online for workflow processes on thunderbird. With more funding by mozilla and dev support, I hope people make higher quality tutorials online, many of them are highly dated.

More robust addons. I've tried dozens but I currently only use 2 now, one for attaching images with website URLs and another for image-previewing multiple attachments.

I haven't really bothered compressing anything because it freezes my PC everytime. I set everything to IMAP, my localstorage on thunderbird is about 100 GB since I send out and receive a lot of large files. It's not a great way of handling things, but it works since my server has a 3 million file limitation. Storage is cheap, but security is nonexistent in this regard.

Automation with autothreading would definitely be a nice feature. I personally don't use any autotagging in any email system, I normally just rewrite subject headers instead / use filters alot / get better at searching.

Fuzzy searching really needs some work. Usually, I will know exactly what email to search for (be it an automated subject header with a unique identifier, or a person I deal with), but I cannot find it on my first try.

Second, from a UX design prospective, I wish thunderbird would have an accordion-like collapsible method for threaded messages, indicated by a "..." in the UX. For instance, I might have a 10+ chain response email, I only need to see the first 2 emails sent, and the last 2 in the chain, not the 6 in the middle (collapse by default). This is mostly for items that need a lot of clarifications.

UX needs improvement for handling multiple emails. As of now , I just forward every email to my main email and filter out appropiately. I don't see a better way of doing things in thunderbird.

Thunderbird doesn't support threaded messages outside main inbox, AFAIK.

Baynesian junk filter could use some improvements as well. Some vendors will mix spam and important mail from the same email address. Thunderbird doesn't do a great job filtering these out, even after training junk filter consistently.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#160

Post by Boulth »

Canada wrote: post #158
Leace wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly! It's interesting that trying to make to process easier actually made it hard for both novices and experts. Too bad it's enabled by default and plagued by issues: https://pep.foundation/blog/enigmailpep-current-update-1024-...

I really, really want it to work. I'm hopeful it will get better. I don't like PGP keyservers, they aren't very reliable, I wish I could remove all the old keys I've lost. And I don't like publishing my email address like that. Plus, the most of my GPG email use is with keys from people I know that we've sent each other directly. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with Enigmail running in the old PEP-free mode.

I'm also running PeP-free mode and I'm satisfied with it. I'm thinking that maybe after initial configuration it just works so the problem is largely setup.

As for keyservers even GnuPG is diminishing their role. Web Key Directory is promoted as a replacement for discovery and updates of keys. Coincidentally Enigmail will automatically fetch recipients keys using WKD when composing an email. For example kernel is using it (https://www.kernel.org/category/signatures.html#using-the-we...) so does ProtonMail.

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