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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

#51

Post by perlwle »

mhb wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Thunderbird has been my email client ever since I used unix as my day-to-day platform and it's a real pity that Mozilla stops maintenance but on the whole it doesn't need that much maintenance. It just works, I don't think I have a wishlist of features or any bugs that are so bad that they need fixing. Just keep it as it is and I'm perfectly ok with it. If mozilla did the same with FireFox a and would focus on long t…

I don't think I have a wishlist of features or any bugs that are so bad that they need fixing The forwarding/replying in plain vs. formatted text is pretty annoying.

Press shift + reply / forward in thunderbird. Is that what you want?

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

#52

Post by 72deluxe »

chillingeffect wrote: post #46
betteringred wrote: post #17

They want to kill XUL for Firefox so they can be all fancy HTML. So they have to kill Thunderbird, a XUL app. In a few years the all new HTML Firefox will come out. My bet is that it will suck. It will lack a TON of features that the existing Firefox has, but hey, it's all HTML! And you won't be able to stick on the old one, because within a week or two some critical security flaw will be discovered and eventually (l…

> But hey, donate to Mozilla! $5, $15, $25, Ah yes, thank you for the reminder! http://imgur.com/hLZp8SG Now that I actually have a career and money I have no problem giving back. I'm glad I can donate to Ubuntu and Wikipedia nowadays. I am grateful for everything Firefox has given me for well over 10 years... I really don't know what XUL is (intermediate language between HTML and FF UI?), but I guess I do feel sorry…

Why rewrite it in another language? It isn't currently broken.

Things that are not broken do not need rewriting.

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

#53

Post by ZenoArrow »

betteringred wrote: post #50
ZenoArrow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " When you take an app that's been worked on for 15 or so years and then replace it's UI you're going to lose a TON of features. " What makes you think they'll drop XUL as soon as the first release of the HTML-based UI? It's pretty obvious they'd want to support both until the HTML UI was close to feature complete. You're finding problems where there aren't any.

Have you ever met a team that wants to support two things instead of one? :) No one wants to support the old stuff, especially when no one's paying for it. If they make staying with the old too convenient, people won't convert to the crappy new, and their adoption graphs will suck! Can't have cannibalism!

> "Have you ever met a team that wants to support two things instead of one?"

It happens all the time. Do you really need me to point out examples?

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

#54

Post by crististm »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #45
crististm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been brainwashed about the "community" stuff. Mozilla _is_ a corporation. Linux is built by a corporation. Last time I checked, less than 18% of Linux patches were from independent contributors. Everything big enough to be known by Joe average hobbyist is built by a corporation. Let's see the community in action taking the lead when Mozilla drops the ball.

What features are you missing from Thunderbird?

I use TB daily - I did not ask a for a feature that did not find. But for several years it has been neglected. And the "open source community" did not step up to the plate and fix the problem.

I argue that there is no such a community that will save TB after Mozilla drops it.

Edit: Yes, the "search mail" feature that wasn't

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

#55

Post by cpach »

betteringred wrote: post #17

They want to kill XUL for Firefox so they can be all fancy HTML. So they have to kill Thunderbird, a XUL app. In a few years the all new HTML Firefox will come out. My bet is that it will suck. It will lack a TON of features that the existing Firefox has, but hey, it's all HTML! And you won't be able to stick on the old one, because within a week or two some critical security flaw will be discovered and eventually (l…

This reminded me of jwz's old rant, "The CADT Model": https://web.archive.org/web/20151126183335/https://www.jwz.o....

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

#56

Post by 72deluxe »

rogeryu wrote: post #40

I'm using TB since two years, when Apple Mail failed to load after an OSX upgrade. I wanted to move, preparing for moving to Linux later on. I have several family members using TB on Windows. My mother used Eudora for years, I believe seven years after development stopped. It never had a problem. I could copy it to Windows 7, just copying the folder with the program files in it, and it all worked. How big is the risk…

I migrated from Thunderbird on Linux to OSX by simply moving the profile directory and modifying the new configuration file to point to that directory.

Easiest migration I have ever done.

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

#57

Post by simpleigh »

betteringred wrote: post #38
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…

I'm all for writing new apps in HTML, I think Atom and VSCode are awesome, but I'm not for rewriting huge legacy apps to be HTML apps for no good reason. The reasons given, that XUL requires maintenance that Mozilla engineers don't enjoy doing, is a joke considering the amount of effort to maintain XUL is less than 1% of the amount of effort to move Firefox to HTML. No one has listed the ten awesome features that we'…

> The reasons given, that XUL requires maintenance that Mozilla engineers don't enjoy doing, is a joke considering the amount of effort to maintain XUL is less than 1% of the amount of effort to move Firefox to HTML.

Ah, but maintaining XUL means working on old code (which is boring), but moving Firefox to HTML means working on new shiny code (which is exciting).

https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

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

#58

Post by puppetmaster3 »

bad_user wrote: post #5

Thunderbird is still being actively developed by the community. I'm on version 42 beta and it's looking good. This is what open source is about. It doesn't matter if the parent no longer wants to maintain it. As long as there is interest, the product survives.

Remember when Adobe abandoned Flash? Apache: http://flex.apache.org

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

#59

Post by orik »

72deluxe wrote: post #52
chillingeffect wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But hey, donate to Mozilla! $5, $15, $25, Ah yes, thank you for the reminder! http://imgur.com/hLZp8SG Now that I actually have a career and money I have no problem giving back. I'm glad I can donate to Ubuntu and Wikipedia nowadays. I am grateful for everything Firefox has given me for well over 10 years... I really don't know what XUL is (intermediate language between HTML and FF UI?), but I guess I do feel sorry…

Why rewrite it in another language? It isn't currently broken. Things that are not broken do not need rewriting.

Maybe they decided there's too much technical debt and they can't make changes to the browser as fast as they wish they could in the current framework?

Not 'broken' in a traditional sense but still a valid reason to rewrite.

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

#60

Post by voaie »

toyg wrote: post #22
betteringred wrote: post #17

They want to kill XUL for Firefox so they can be all fancy HTML. So they have to kill Thunderbird, a XUL app. In a few years the all new HTML Firefox will come out. My bet is that it will suck. It will lack a TON of features that the existing Firefox has, but hey, it's all HTML! And you won't be able to stick on the old one, because within a week or two some critical security flaw will be discovered and eventually (l…

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 is sad to see Web GUIs taking over the native GUIs. Everyone run their apps in a virtual GUI inside another GUI. That's meta-meta-crazy.
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