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I've spent the last two years building a new email client

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Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is maximum, normal is around 130 - 170 mb

I think the point is that it's better to have something using the native widgets of your OS if possible. It carries much less footprint and it integrates with your OS much more nicely in the end. Webapps running in Electron is just becoming too commonplace.

That also means building a separate UI for every supported OS, which isn't usually feasible for a single developer.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#392
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly will you cut the fat in Electron? What’s a hello world like? I’m tempted to make a FastMail Electron app just to demonstrate that Electron/HTML/CSS/JS doesn’t need to mean slow and heavy (it just normally does).

See my update to the comment. Its memory footprint is greater than I expected. I shan’t pursue it any further at present, I was mostly just curious to get an initial feel for it. Taking it (or something like it) to a polished product is something I’d like to do, but I’ve got other, much more important things to do on FastMail and Topicbox, and I don’t think anyone else in the company feels strongly about it, so it’s…

Maybe you can help me understand the outcry over Electron memory usage, especially on HH. I can't remember the last time I ran out of memory on my laptop or desktop unintentionally. Seems to me battery life and jank should be main areas of focus. You can have a 2GB if you cut CPU usage and typing latency.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#393
post #262

I don't think this puts enough emphasis on the fact that it is a local client and not a web service. I see some people here griping about Electron, but the privacy implications of being a local app are way more important than the performance of the framework used.

I agree with you. The discussion has somewhat de-railed off-topic into a discussion about Electron. While that is an interesting discussion, it is pretty off-topic.

Is it off topic though? This is HN after all.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#394
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, any email that’s “pure HTML” or mostly HTML is something I don’t even open, mainly because such emails tend to be of the marketing and tracking kind, where viewing it would send various signals to the sender. If anyone has something important for me to read, they better put it in plain text.

Exactly. HTML email is a privacy hell[0]. However, many email clients can work around this, e.g. in Mutt you can let Lynx do a plaintext dump of the HTML email. Also, the whole issue of JavaScript in HTML emails at least deserves a mention[1]. Since Ivelope is an Electron app, I'd guess it would go ahead and just run everything it receives, right? [0]: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/09/28/i-never-signed-up-f... […

Are there still email clients that run Javascript? I though that idea had been properly murdered a while ago.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that that one email app that got acquired by dropbox before even launching did this and I think people are just copying it.

Yeah, Mailbox app used this prior to it's Dropbox acquisition. Mailbox is now a dead product. RIP.

Why would Dropbox (note: not remotely an email service) acquire Mailbox and then kill it?

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#397
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike tricks like this too, especially because in the end you're still going to get access to it. If a product is good enough, as you said, then I'll tell everyone about it. I think technical or non-business people see this kind of trick and perhaps don't think of the deeper consequences of it - it's not quite a dark pattern, though it feels manipulative.

I'm sorry if it came across as manipulative. One of the reasons for having it like this is also so it can give me a metric on who in the waiting list are most interested in the program. And of course also to offer an incentive to share it.

A different option I'd suggest that will likely provide higher engagement/response rate is putting some kind of a 1-to-5 star or 1-to-10 ranking - something quick for the user to click (or ignore) - simply asking them "How interested or excited are you about this product?"

Re: Incentive to share it - Just build a good to amazing product - which the comments and upvotes you have on HN are already significant proof of - and you'll get higher adoption in the long run with exponential growth, without adding friction of little tricks like this which will be relatively inconsequential in the long run, other than perhaps causing friction with early adopters who will get turned off by them.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#399
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike tricks like this too, especially because in the end you're still going to get access to it. If a product is good enough, as you said, then I'll tell everyone about it. I think technical or non-business people see this kind of trick and perhaps don't think of the deeper consequences of it - it's not quite a dark pattern, though it feels manipulative.

I'm sorry if it came across as manipulative. One of the reasons for having it like this is also so it can give me a metric on who in the waiting list are most interested in the program. And of course also to offer an incentive to share it.

I'm extremely interested.. Me sharing it with other people is a poor way of measuring my enthusiasm.. I'm not going to share it until I've tried it, so that I can vouch for its quality.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#400
post #22

I see you have registered a company. How do you plan to monetize?

Just a guess after reading on LinkedIn what projects he has been working on previosly, he might monetize by in-app purchases to unlock features.

What about default search engine integration? How one makes such deal with Bing or Google?
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