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Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

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Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#191

Post by vacri »

CJefferson wrote: post #93
cakeface wrote: post #11

Does 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.

The search is unusable -- wedding finds 'weds'. There is no way to do exact searching. I reported this 5 years ago, lots of other people have complained about the stemming, there has been no fix. There is no support for outlook/exchange. Not saying it's trivial, but it's useful in the modern era. IMAP folder support is very flakey, I reported some bugs but nothing got fixed.

Yeah, the search box is just ignored by me - I use the 'quick filter' box instead, because it's possible to understand how the results match the query.

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#192

Post by vacri »

jcranmer wrote: post #71
js8 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used Thunderbird for a long long time, but the feature I was missing the most when I moved to Gmail ages ago was some sort of automatic categorization (machine learning) based on content of the emails. One application would be spam filtering, but I would actually appreciate if it could be applied more broadly to classify other emails. Is something like that now available in Thunderbird?

Spam filtering has been in Thunderbird for a decade now (based on a Bayesian classifier, although it's not quite naïve Bayes). There is a capability to extend the classifier to problems beyond spam/ham classification for extensions.

Interestingly, scam detection (rather than spam filtering) is a simple hardcoded rule, which looks at whether the send headers match up. I've received more than a few genuine emails marked as potential scams because they were sent from a rebranded mail provider.

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#193

Post by brute »

jancsika wrote: post #124
frik wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quickly scroll through a list of up to 100000 messages. You can do this with JS and HTML. There are some popular small JS libs that do just that. It works like this: it creates a div with a very big "height" value to get the scrollbar look like there is a long list, and JS just loads in the visible area plus a few items above and below, and reloads data as you scroll. It works very good in Chrome and Firefox, and e…

Does it still work well if I click-drag the scrollbar very quickly from the top to the middle or bottom of the list? Or if I use a keyboard shortcut to jump immediately to beginning or end?

They actually talk about this a little way deeper into the thread. Here is a prototype they made

http://benbucksch.github.io/trex/fastlist-test.html

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#194

Post by flukus »

Silhouette wrote: post #190
flukus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMAP is that single store. Setting up a server just for that would be just as impossible for most users as settings up a mail server would be.

An IMAP server alone typically doesn't include the equivalents of fetchmail and the like. It just provides a protocol for remotely accessing the mail store. However, I don't see why you think it would be impossible for most users to set up what I'm describing. If they can install Thunderbird and configure it to retrieve mail from their ISP or GMail or whatever, they could install a two-part system and configure the s…

> However, I don't see why you think it would be impossible for most users to set up what I'm describing. If they can install Thunderbird and configure it to retrieve mail from their ISP or GMail or whatever, they could install a two-part system and configure the store part to do the same using exactly the same information.

Then to connect from their mobile they have to open ports on their home networks, get a static IP, know what their IP is to enter it on their phone, worry about a whole host of new security issues.

At that point you may as well run a full mail server.

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#195

Post by vacri »

ams6110 wrote: post #181
hilbert42 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, it would be interesting to know how you use it (with respect, I'd suggest you have very basic email needs). For me Thunderbird is badly broken. This is not the place to list bugs, issues, limitations etc. in any detail but there are very many indeed (so I'll only provide a skeletal outline of them here). Frankly, on occasions, I find Thunderbird is unusable for some jobs and I end up using either an ancient copy…

I guess we all have our opinions but if you are composing long emails with intricate formatting I'd suggest you're doing it wrong. Email messages should be short, and preferably plain text. You have a little more leeway than in a tweet, but more than a paragraph or so and you lose the reader. I see this so often -- people will send me a treatise in email and I simply cannot comprehend that much text on a computer scr…

A paragraph or so these days is best sent in chat. We use email more for reference stuff in our setup (because searching for references in chat is terrible...)

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#196

Post by vacri »

nkkollaw wrote: post #82
copperx wrote: post #66

Earlier 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…

FireFox extensions are more powerful than Chrome's, but FF is killing that off this November...

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#197

Post by flukus »

vacri wrote: post #195
ams6110 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we all have our opinions but if you are composing long emails with intricate formatting I'd suggest you're doing it wrong. Email messages should be short, and preferably plain text. You have a little more leeway than in a tweet, but more than a paragraph or so and you lose the reader. I see this so often -- people will send me a treatise in email and I simply cannot comprehend that much text on a computer scr…

A paragraph or so these days is best sent in chat. We use email more for reference stuff in our setup (because searching for references in chat is terrible...)

Chat is for when there is someone on the other side listening, it's like a conversation but in text. Email is for when there is more asymmetry, the other person may or may not be there and an immediate response is not expected (shouldn't be anyway).

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#198

Post by [deleted] »

zokier wrote: post #52

It would be neat if TB would be rebased on top of Servo (and Rust) as a flagship application for using Servo as an GUI foundation, the same way as TB previously was for Gecko/XUL. Sadly I doubt TB has the resources to make that happen, but still, it would be neat...

[deleted]

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#199

Post by ausjke »

I am a bit extreme here as I think Mozilla shall reduce efforts on firefox and make thunderbird a great product instead, one reason is that chrome is too powerful to beat already, and thunderbird could become the universal email client for all, not much contender there yet.

after using slack for a while i feel we can use one slack-channel for each email contact, a bit like google wave probably, and thunderbird can merge email+slack experience into one.

Re: Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

#200

Post by [deleted] »

norea-armozel wrote: post #108
Silhouette wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "not invented here" mentality has to stop. This is true, but the track record of bugs and poor security inherent in using relatively low-level languages like C and C++ for everyday Internet-connected applications also has to stop.

That doesn't really help you when the platform you run on be it a browser or a virtual machine is written in C/C++ which by implication can be exposed to the same security flaws if/when they utilize unsafe design patterns or idioms. So, all you've done is pass the buck onto Servo/Gecko/Safari. The reality is that you can't make an argument that's ironclad in favor of forcing JS to become the new C. Let JS do it's won…

[deleted]
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