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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

#61

Post by petre »

seorphates wrote: post #55
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 looks sort of retro 90s on the iMac but I grew frustrated with the Mail.app in Yosemite and switched to TB, which works flawlessly. The Mail.app in Snow Lion was very reliable.

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

#62

Post by thesmallestcat »

nkkollaw wrote: post #60

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 Thunde…

Thunderbird, like Firefox, can be themed, and many are available. Well, until they finish killing XUL... what an awful decision. Point being that it's a mail client for power users, and generally requires a little customization.

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

#63

Post by tmzt »

Ono-Sendai wrote: post #56

Sounds like a terrible idea, please no. I for one probably will stop using thunderbird if it gets rewritten in JS.

What is it written in now? If I remember correctly it's mostly JS with a few native extensions in the chrome.

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

#64

Post by acemarke »

trishume wrote: post #53
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…

There's also toolkits like React-Virtualized: https://github.com/bvaughn/react-virtualized .

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

#66

Post by copperx »

nkkollaw wrote: post #60

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 Thunde…

Is Firefox that far from Chrome? I thought it was ahead in some ways.

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

#67

Post by problems »

grinich wrote: post #54
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> (snoozing, send later, reminders, open tracking, etc.)

None of that has any appeal to me, I'd much rather a mail system which doesn't require using someone else's server.

Maybe this isn't a priority for other people, but just putting it out there. This is what's making me not use Nylas today.

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

#68

Post by Ono-Sendai »

tmzt wrote: post #63
Ono-Sendai wrote: post #56

Sounds like a terrible idea, please no. I for one probably will stop using thunderbird if it gets rewritten in JS.

What is it written in now? If I remember correctly it's mostly JS with a few native extensions in the chrome.

Looks like a combination of JS and C++, see for example https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/db/mork/src

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

#70

Post by firebird84 »

mook wrote: post #42
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.

Calendaring is excellent for a one-person effort (mostly one person, anyway), but still has issues around the edges (e.g.CalDAV doesn't work as nicely as macOS Calendar.app). It probably doesn't help that the server I have to use it with is half broken too; overall the experience isn't as good as Outlook + Exchange. But that's not only because of Lightning. Overall the main problem is probably that not enough people…

I agree about Outlook + Exchange. Plugins exist for thunderbird to integrate but they just don't have the same quality of experience. Simply using outlook is less frustrating for me.
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