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Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

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Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#281

Post by ZenoArrow »

creshal wrote: post #250
ZenoArrow wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "There are already cross-platform toolkits that can deliver everything a browser engine can, faster and safely." Nothing with the reach of web technologies. The closest I can think of is Qt, but there are issues with deploying Qt apps on some platforms.

So our choices are • Native applications that give users excellent UX and performance • Web apps that are equally quirky and slow on every system ?

As with all design decisions, it's a trade off. The main benefit of web apps is found in their cross-platform nature. If this is desirable then you may choose to sacrifice a little performance to get that.

To give an analogy, it's like programming languages. It's possible to write very fast code with assembly languages, yet their portability to other architectures is practically non-existent. Part of the reason higher level languages like C/C++ are used is because they are much more portable.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#282

Post by pcwalton »

emidln wrote: post #116
espadrine wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XUL was a weight on developing for Firefox. It worked like HTML, but was nonstandard. At first, it meant they could quickly implement things like flexbox ( / ) and gridlayout ( ) long before they were a thing in CSS. But as HTML and CSS slowly got more features than XUL, XUL development slowed down, up to the point where writing the Firefox UI in XUL became a pain because of poor tooling and sneaky bugs. More and mor…

> It worked like HTML, but was nonstandard. Being nonstandard is completely irrelevant here. Firefox's UI doesn't need to be rendered by Internet Explorer or Google Chrome.

> Being nonstandard is completely irrelevant here.

No, it's not irrelevant. Standards are also about documentation (it's easier to document standardized things) and familiarity (people are more familiar with standardized things).

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#283

Post by gsnedders »

gherkin0 wrote: post #229
toyg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened before, with the transition from Mozilla Suite to Firefox. And let's be honest: XUL was just lipstick on the pig that is cross-platform development. HTML/CSS/JS are now fast enough to look like a slightly better pig, so here we go. Also, there's a generational shift underway. You and me could find crazy that people would openly choose to use IDEs built on HTML/CSS/JS, but that's what a lot of young folks…

> It happened before, with the transition from Mozilla Suite to Firefox. And it nearly killed them. http://www.pubarticles.com/member/user_img/216/1279777216.jp... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

No, what almost killed them was the transition from Netscape Navigator 4.0 to Mozilla Suite 1.0 — that's where the massive rewrite happened. Looking at that first link, it's it doesn't point out where Firefox development started: mid 2002. By that point Netscape had already almost entirely lost all its marketshare.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#284

Post by gsnedders »

rplnt wrote: post #102
castell wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I welcome a Servo based browser with an HTML UI. An one-page email app running on Servo that is inspired by GMails interface would be great. At the moment I use Thunderbird, Outlook 2010 and GMail. Outlook has good calendar integration and GMail the better tagging, search function and UX. Opera 12 had an inbuilt HTML+JS based email client. Moving to Chrome/Blink with Opera 15 they stopped shipping the inbuilt email c…

Was it really HTML+JS? Because it was fast, many years back (used it just as an RSS reader though). Also, they shipped it as a standalone product[1], but I don't think it ever got updated after that. 1. http://www.opera.com/computer/mail

From memory, it was C++, much like the rest of the Opera UI. It used Quick — Opera's in-house cross-platform UI toolkit, and it died (along with the rest of the old Opera) because Quick was heavily entwined with Presto.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#285

Post by weland »

ultramancool wrote: post #266
Karunamon wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've moved to Mutt/OfflineIMAP on most every machine I own, and it's worked remarkably well. It's a CLI app, yes, but it outshines Thunderbird (and most other GUI clients, for that matter) in a number of ways: - FAST. Mutt lets you process thousands of messages in short order. Mutt is directly responsible for helping me dig out of a 50k deep email hole brought on by years of GMail's approach (archive, never delete) i…

How well does mutt work with multiple accounts though? Last I saw it seemed more cumbersome than Alpine for that.

I stopped using mutt a while ago, but I just used separate config files for every mail account and a bash alias to launch mutt for each one.

Unless you actually need to do things like move entire e-mail threads between accounts, it works well enough.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#286

Post by mildweed »

jcurbo wrote: post #277
ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

Thunderbird user for years here. I now use Postbox, which is (I believe) a commercial fork of Thunderbird. https://www.postbox-inc.com/

Additionally, the Postbox search feature is way better than Thunderbird's.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#287

Post by pcwalton »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #162
creshal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You and me could find crazy that people would openly choose to use IDEs built on HTML/CSS/JS, but that's what a lot of young folks are doing I'm 25 and I feel to old for this industry already.

What bothers me about being older is my first browser was Internet Explorer, then I got to play with MOSAIC's slow arse in school, then used Opera/Mozilla, and so on. Got to see where it came from. And the new stuff, especially Firefox, is coming full circle in how friggin' slow they run to serve the lowest common denominator of web pages. It's annoying. I miss Web 1.0. Add just a bit of dynamic functionality plus br…

> And the new stuff, especially Firefox, is coming full circle in how friggin' slow they run to serve the lowest common denominator of web pages.

It should be easy to find performance numbers showing how Firefox 42 renders old, pre-CSS pages slower than, say, Netscape 4, then.

Netscape 4 didn't have a JIT, didn't use hardware accelerated layers, trapped into kernel mode for GDI calls, didn't use accelerated SIMD for painting, and didn't have HTTP 2. It barely had any optimizations for dynamic restyling, so tons of stuff would get reflowed when it didn't have to. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Browsers have gotten more complex, but the complexity is often in the service of making things faster.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#288

Post by ultramancool »

lmm wrote: post #276
ultramancool wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the support for it on Windows and OS X?

I don't know about support, but my experience is it works fine on Windows.

Well, that's what I meant by support. Sorry for not being more clear.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#289

Post by vdaniuk »

grinich wrote: post #265
vdaniuk wrote: post #76

I've never been completely satisfied with Thunderbird and have tried to switch multiple times, reverting to web clients every time. Now I am using Nylas N1 built on electron(imagine that!) and it looks very promising. Also, arrogance of tech conservatives in every Mozilla or web tech thread on HN is becoming unbearable.

Thanks for the kind works about N1! (I work at Nylas.) Feel free to send us any feedback if you have ideas for how to improve the app. :)

N1 is a game changer for desktop clients and I'd love to contribute. What is the best place to send ideas concerning general product strategy? Tech feedbacks goes to github, obviously.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#290

Post by zobzu »

So people here just give webmails as alternatives...

Theres a reason people use thunderbird. Its the only non webmail, non mobile client that has a gui, works on most platforms and doesnt suck too horribly.

People using it obviously don't care about webmail alternatives...

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