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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

#51

Post by Ao7bei3s »

bengotow wrote: post #25
wink wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "open source" label still comically misleading? [0] I tried it out, didn't read the fine print, filed an issue, never looked at it again. Because "It keeps user data local and private." is kind of one of the main benefits. [0]: https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/860

Ahh thanks I need to update that! Originally Nylas Mail was OSS, but tied to the Nylas Cloud APIs (which did the actual mail processing.) The cloud strategy was too expensive, and in version 2.0 the entire mail-sync system was moved into the client and open sourced. ( https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/tree/master/packages/cli... ). It's now much more like Thunderbird. There's a bit of cloud processing for snoozing…

Is there a way to configure it so it makes zero requests to your servers?

If not (yet), would it at least be technically feasible, and would supporting this be an option for you?

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

#52

Post by zokier »

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...

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

#53

Post by trishume »

jancsika wrote: post #44

> We must pay attention to also keep technical qualities that many of our users rely on. An obvious one is that the new implementation must be able to quickly scroll through a list of up to 100000 messages. Does any cross-platform GUI toolkit have a widget that can handle this with sane defaults?

Qt, as long as you back the view with a model with O(1) lookup, can handle up to INT_MAX rows perfectly fast. I expect other cross-platform GUI toolkits work similarly. Most native table/list views work on an assumption of uniform row height and thus handle huge lists with no trouble.

The problem browser based apps run into is rendering the entire list into the DOM and thus the browser has to lay out the whole thing in order to compute scroll bars and scroll positions.

You can work around this using requestAnimationFrame, large empty padding divs, and inspecting the scroll position to create DOM elements for only things that you compute are visible. At my last job I implemented a web based table that could do 60fps scrolling on 100,000 items that were all dynamically updating using js_of_ocaml and https://github.com/janestreet/incr_dom.

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

#54

Post by grinich »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #51
bengotow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh thanks I need to update that! Originally Nylas Mail was OSS, but tied to the Nylas Cloud APIs (which did the actual mail processing.) The cloud strategy was too expensive, and in version 2.0 the entire mail-sync system was moved into the client and open sourced. ( https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/tree/master/packages/cli... ). It's now much more like Thunderbird. There's a bit of cloud processing for snoozing…

Is there a way to configure it so it makes zero requests to your servers? If not (yet), would it at least be technically feasible, and would supporting this be an option for you?

Definitely feasible but it's not our product focus right now. Most of the features that help differentiate Nylas Mail require some cloud component. (snoozing, send later, reminders, open tracking, etc.)

We totally encourage folks to fork the project and take it in whatever direction they want. If you want to chat with other devs in the community, you should join our Slack room: http://slack-invite.nylas.com/

(I work at Nylas)

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

#55

Post by seorphates »

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.

On my OSX box (mbp) the context menus and popups are horridly misplaced and popup in random locations on the screen. For the popups the pointer is also often completely misaligned with the menu items requiring item selection to be clicked dozens of pixels away. I've also long given up throwing TB to a different display - text, UI sizing and menus explode and it becomes unusable on any other monitor.

Having said that it's still the best email client software I can find - UI issues aside.

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

#57

Post by gibbitz »

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.

I think the point is that to keep the project relevant the underling aging Gecko underpinnings may be going away. This would cause the maintainers to have to take on maintaining their dependencies as well as the core project. I can totally understand this as a motivating factor here, however, I use Thunderbird as a local offline mail client. Though I see these are out-of-fashion these days, it doesn't make the need for this kind of software go away. I only hope a web-stack version of thunderbird still stores settings and content locally and hopefully outside of the browser (not going to say electron here, but similar).

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

#58

Post by fps »

bengotow wrote: post #25
wink wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "open source" label still comically misleading? [0] I tried it out, didn't read the fine print, filed an issue, never looked at it again. Because "It keeps user data local and private." is kind of one of the main benefits. [0]: https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/860

Ahh thanks I need to update that! Originally Nylas Mail was OSS, but tied to the Nylas Cloud APIs (which did the actual mail processing.) The cloud strategy was too expensive, and in version 2.0 the entire mail-sync system was moved into the client and open sourced. ( https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/tree/master/packages/cli... ). It's now much more like Thunderbird. There's a bit of cloud processing for snoozing…

I remember the last time I looked at Nylas, it was a fancy gmail frontend. Now it appears to require a "Nylas ID" which is not something I need. I don't want my mail being synced to someone else's computer. Where's the "host your own sync system" package?

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

#59

Post by ac29 »

bengotow wrote: post #12

Hmm, I thought Mozilla had pulled financial support from Thunderbird? This would be an exciting new chapter for the product, but the article doesn't address whether it makes financial sense for Mozilla to invest this much in Thunderbird's future. For most of the last three years I've worked on Nylas Mail ( https://github.com/Nylas/Nylas-mail ), and it hit 2.0 yesterday with Mac/Win/Linux support. It's entirely open s…

Congrats on your work on Nylas -- 2.0 is shaping up great and is already my primary email client on Linux.

Question: Will the revenue from the Pro product really support development and maintenance of the free product? The free product is perfect for my needs, none of the Pro features are that useful for me (and its too expensive - email accounts from Google or Fastmail are $5/month, Nylas Pro is $12/month on top of that just for the client). The free product, as is today, is easily worth $20-30, IMO.

Additional Comment: https://www.nylas.com/pricing needs to be updated. A lot of the Pro features are now available in the Free 2.0 version.

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

#60

Post by nkkollaw »

They've already neglected Thunderbird for years, and now they want to start from scratch? Doesn't sound like a good idea. Sounds more like another project they will shut down after a while.

I used to use both Thunderbird and Firefox a few years ago as my main mail client and browser. Since then, Mozilla started spreading between too many projects, chasing the failed phone thing, and both Firefox and even worse Thunderbird are nowhere near where their competitors are.

I now use Google Chrome and Google Inbox (via Electron app Wavebox, formerly WMail), and they actually look from this century. I downloaded Thunderbird a few months ago out of nostalgia, and everything looks the same as 5 years ago. Pretty sad.

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