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

237 points by rxlim 9y ago

detaro 9y ago
title should be the one of the submitted e-mail: "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies", especially since "is in the works" doesn't seem to be the case yet. (Lots of discussion, continuing into April, but unless I missed it no actual decision made and work begun yet.) The thread is worth a read, interesting arguments regarding rewrite/refactor/approaches to transition.
- rxlim 9y ago
  According to Cambridge Dictionary "in the works" has the following meaning: in the process of being planned or done Thunderbird replacement is currently being planned, so I think it's correct.
  - tumblen 9y ago
    I think it's that "in the works" seems to imply an agreement/commitment, but this appears to be a proposal.
    - rxlim 9y ago
      This is a post[0] from one of the project leaders: However, I think we all agree we want the Thunderbird replacement to be a desktop client (plus other platforms like mobile), and based on web technologies, most importantly written in JavaScript. But the title has now been changed and that is fine with me. [0]https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/005394.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/00...
pjmlp 9y ago
If it becomes yet another Electron package it is time to look elsewhere.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- geodel 9y ago
  Perhaps the idea to implement it as web technology is to leverage NPM so that millions of plugins can be made available to an email client.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Now you have 100,000 problems.
billpg 9y ago
So it'll be a self-hosted webmail service with a custom web server that runs locally?
- Silhouette 9y ago
  That doesn't seem to be what they're aiming for here. The goal is supposed to be a new UI that looks and functions very similar to today's. That's too bad, in a way. One thing I'd really like that Thunderbird doesn't offer today is to separate the mail receive/store/send functionality from the reading/writing UI, so I could run the former on my own server and access it from any device on my network. Obviously there are some relevant standards here and you could set something like this up with enough technical knowledge using other tools that already exist. However, that reduces the potential market by a few orders of magnitude to those who are sufficiently expert with those tools, and then probably by a few orders more for those who have the time to actually do it.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > That's too bad, in a way. One thing I'd really like that Thunderbird doesn't offer today is to separate the mail receive/store/send functionality from the reading/writing UI, so I could run the former on my own server and access it from any device on my network. Uh, that's exactly what an email server does. Thunderbird is just the client used to access it from any device.
    - Silhouette 9y ago
      Assuming by "email server" you mean an SMTP server, that's not quite what I'm talking about. What I'm looking for is more akin to a mail store, an IMAP server, and functionality for sending and receiving via actual SMTP server(s). That's a separate set of responsibilities to reading or composing messages, which would just need something like an IMAP-compatible client. And all of those are separate responsibilities to a full SMTP server with all the administrative overheads that comes with. You could do the back office part of what I'm talking about with tools like Dovecot and fetchmail today, running on a Linux server with a standard Maildir backing store, and then you could run Thunderbird purely for its IMAP client capabilities as a front-end, but setting it all up and maintaining it is a horrendous hassle and it's far too technically demanding for most users anyway. However, separating the receive/store/send responsibilities from the read/write responsibilities would mean you could have a single store on any server with relatively straightforward set-up to actually send and receive mail, which you could then access from any device on your network (or over a VPN or the Internet if it's running on a remotely accessible box), without the risks and overheads of both running your own SMTP server and trying to get mail from it actually accepted anywhere else these days. Now that everyone's got PCs, laptops, tablets, phones, and who knows what else, I think this is probably the single most limiting problem with traditional offline email clients compared to all the hosted webmail services, but it shouldn't be necessary to incur all the downsides of those hosted webmail services just to access your mail from different devices.
deckiedan 9y ago
Interesting that mithril.js gets a mention. I really like it.
- acemarke 9y ago
  Was that mentioned in one of the replies? I don't see any specific libraries mentioned in the linked message, or the other replies I searched through. edit: Scratch that, it was in this reply: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/005328.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/00... . "I'd suggest using TypeScript, Mithril.js, Tachyons, and Node.js for the base technologies -- probably with Mocha/Chai for testing. Later we can make a more stand-alone desktop version with Electron or such. We could use socket.io to push notifications for changes in real or virtual folders and then use Mithril.js (a vdom library) to quickly rerender changed data the client UI requests (or is pushed)." Worth noting that reply looks more like a wishlist of stuff than a meaningful viable proposal.
  - brlewis 9y ago
    FWIW that reply appears to be someone who's serious about this proposal: https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2 https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2
pmontra 9y ago
The only point I could argue with is the choice of JavaScript, all the others seem inevitable. As a Thunderbird user I'm happy to know that I might be using it for another 20 years. Even JavaScript is not that bad. I not familiar with Electron: do those apps run from a directory with the source code or are a binary file? Running from source code would make it easy to hack with the code, which is good.
- hashhar 9y ago
  Thunderbird already uses a lot of JS. The only difference I think is that Thunderbird works on the XUL instead of the HTML DOM.
- bengotow 9y ago
  Yep! Electron essentially just launches a web app from a directory on disk in an included copy of Chromium, with NodeJS's JavaScript bindings as well as the usual ones. The web app has an index.html, CSS, all the standard stuff. It's usually packaged into a .asar file so things can be loaded faster, but it's great for hackability.
mixedCase 9y ago
I wonder, if they want to use JS, why not QtQuick? I'm a heavy Thunderbird user but I would move to pretty much anything else if it were to switch to Electron.
- irq-1 9y ago
  I think the reason QtQuick hasn't taken over this space, is that you still need to deal with C++ and cross-compiling. If QT had an option that made it clear you could develop and distribute in JavaScript only, that would be a hit.
  - rhodysurf 9y ago
    You can write QML apps in like every popular language, there are well supported bindings everywhere. I dont get the C++ hate though. C++11 and up is a totally new language and much more productive than its reputation gives it.
cakeface 9y ago
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.
- janci 9y ago
  The filter is slow in regular-size mailbox and almost unusable on my bloated gmail. I don't mind getting results progressively as the messages are scanned, but it runs on the UI thread and UI is horribly slow while the filter is working. The search is just broken. It gives messages that don't have anything of search string in them and misses the right ones.
  - ricardonunez 9y ago
    I agree on the search, but are you referring to the filter search box? or gmail filters? the filter search box is the main reason I didn't switch to any of all the other alternatives like mailbird. It helps me to avoid using the TB search.
- Certhas 9y ago
  Working with big folders tends to be a bit error prone to me. I would like to synchronize my filters/settings across different devices. On MacOs it randomly hangs for tens of seconds and eats batteries for some people (me included). So yeah, it's mostly done, but better virtual folder support, and a streamlined UI would both be hugely appreciated by me. But, because it's mostly done, I also will just happily keep using it as it is now for the next three years, waiting for the rewrite.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    Is a rewrite necessary to improve on those aspects over modifying the existing codebase?
    - Certhas 9y ago
      Maybe not, but from the sound of it, a rewrite is necessary just to keep the lights on and to keep Thunderbird compiling in the long run.
5ilv3r 9y ago
Mozilla just doesn't get the message.... We don't want your features, fixes, refreshes, rebranding, or re-imagining. We want a browser that is fast, stable, secure, minimal, and that DOES NOT FIGHT US. Let me load my old SSL certs (a warning is fine). Let me keep my preferences (why does https:// https:// disappear from my address bar every update, and my search bar keep switching back to case sensitive). Stop making your problems worse and get your $#!% together! I'm a sysadmin, dangit, I need this tool to work!
- bengotow 9y ago
  Well, the web is evolving. If you're a sysadmin and you test everything in an ancient version of Firefox that doesn't display SSL errors, you're not getting an accurate picture of what the product's users will see. The latest browsers might entirely block people from visiting your site, display a huge warning, etc. and you wouldn't know. Maybe being a sysadmin requires getting the fixes, refreshes, rebranding as they come down the pipe? I'm also not a fan of the recent changes, just take a more defeatist attitude I guess!
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    No no no you missed what I am saying. I use horrible hardware appliances with built in md5 ssl certs for remote administration. I am not a web developer. I need to be able to access them to secure them and to work on hardware problems. This isn't even on the internet, this is on a local lan serving a small business. We're not going to buy new hardware because my browser updated, so I'm stuck having to boot up a mint 7 livecd vm to run firefox 4 every now and then. It's horrible.
    - bengotow 9y ago
      Ahh I see! Sorry, I totally misread your message. Wow, that's a rough situation... If things get really bad, I think you could use a HTTPS proxy like Charles (https://www.charlesproxy.com/ https://www.charlesproxy.com/) to decrypt the traffic and re-encrypt it with a newer SSL cert before viewing it in Firefox. I'm not sure about Firefox, but you can run Chrome from the command line with `--allow-running-insecure-content --ignore-certificate-errors` and it'll load anything and everything. Maybe there's a similar mode for Firefox that will disable everything.
Sytten 9y ago
I like the idea of using web technologies for desktop application. The only major problem right now is that each application uses at least 1.5-2g of RAM each since it basically launches a full web browser under it (and chromium loves ram). We will need enormous amount of RAM soon if all applications starts to go that way...
- ungzd 9y ago
  Thunderbird has browser engine to display html emails anyway. And probably most of Thunderbird's code is already in javascript, but using XUL instead of HTML DOM.
bengotow 9y ago
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 https://github.com/Nylas/Nylas-mail), and it hit 2.0 yesterday with Mac/Win/Linux support. It's entirely open source (GPL), written in JavaScript, syncs mail locally, etc. It essentially -is- what the author of the post is looking to build, except it doesn't look like Thunderbird. Nylas put at least $2M+ worth of engineering time into it, and I imagine ThunderbirdJS would take at least a similar commitment of time and effort. Heck, maybe they could just skin Nylas Mail and call it Thunderbird ;-)
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  That look really good. Great job.
- richardboegli 9y ago
  > Heck, maybe they could just skin Nylas Mail and call it Thunderbird ;-) Skin it or Fork and Skin ;)
- scriptproof 9y ago
  I suppose they want to use their own UI and maybe link to some services or tools from Mozilla. But they should contact you to unite their effort with your: development time reduced from 3 years to 3 months (that is an approximation)...
- wink 9y ago
  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 https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/860
  - bengotow 9y ago
    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/client-sync 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 / send later, etc., but it no longer syncs all your email through the cloud.
sidlls 9y ago
"JavaScript is the best choice." (Citation Needed). This proposal identifies serious legitimate concerns with Thunderbird development going forward, but the proposed solution looks more like a hammer seeking a nail than a thoughtful approach to addressing the concerns.
- bengotow 9y ago
  Well, the author seems thoughtful, but I'm sure he's seeking replies on the mailing list. You could propose something else!
- phkahler 9y ago
  Yeah, I cringed at the JS thing. Why not do it in Rust and start with some of the Servo code as a base? That would give the developers an intermediate application to work with that doesn't require the full capability of a web browser.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    The whole tirade read like a thinly veiled "building an Electron-based MUA is just easier by now", which is a thing I've been contemplating toying with because, to paraphrase another well-known MUA, all those desktop email clients† flat out suck and the best ones are barely above the tolerable threshold. > Why not do it in Rust and start with some of the Servo code as a base? Thought about it, but I think Servo might just not be that ready yet given the expected timeframe. Could be of a great synergy and a nice real-life testbed for Servo though. † I've extensively used a lot on various OSes, from Claws to Gmail (web) to mutt to Mail.app to Eudora to Fastmail (web) to Outlook to AirMail. For none of them could I ever say "nailed it" and while some do have their pluses they're all broken one way or another which brings the whole package down.
    - juliangoldsmith 9y ago
      You say that desktop email clients all suck. Is there a web-based client that, in your opinion, doesn't?
Kenji 9y ago
I wish I could freeze the program Thunderbird in time to keep it precisely how it is right now for the next couple of decades. I literally want not change. I know, I know. It's a pipe dream, the surrounding environment changes, breaking the program as the OS and libraries evolve. But this constant resolving of perfectly solved problems annoys me.
- pmontra 9y ago
  It's maintenance. Sometimes it has to be somewhat radical. I hope for two things. 1) Drag attachments to folders finally works on Linux. 2) Message filters keep working exactly as they are now or it's going to be a huge pain to migrate them. And a showstopper with no filters.
- fao_ 9y ago
  git clone <thunderbird-url> <build from source and sudo make install> ^ there you go. A stable thunderbird branch that will work mostly forever. Every time an API changes just shove it in another iteration of a virtual machine :P
  - Kenji 9y ago
    Thank you, I know all of that. I like native though. So, both VM and HTML5+JS are things I try to avoid for convenience messaging tools I use many times every day.
js_is_cancer 9y ago
web technologies == cancerous technologies, web technologies + thunderbird => thunderbird will be cancer in soon too.
js_is_cancer 9y ago
web technologies == cancerous technologies, web technologies + thunderbird => thunderbird will be cancer in soon too.
jancsika 9y ago
> 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?
- trishume 9y ago
  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 https://github.com/janestreet/incr_dom.
  - acemarke 9y ago
    There's also toolkits like React-Virtualized: https://github.com/bvaughn/react-virtualized https://github.com/bvaughn/react-virtualized .
- frik 9y ago
  > quickly scroll through a list of up to 100000 messages. You can do this with JS and HTML. There are some popular small JS libs that do just that. It works like this: it creates a div with a very big "height" value to get the scrollbar look like there is a long list, and JS just loads in the visible area plus a few items above and below, and reloads data as you scroll. It works very good in Chrome and Firefox, and even okay in IE11.
  - jancsika 9y ago
zokier 9y ago
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...
- estebank 9y ago
  I wonder if basing a desktop application on top of Servo would be any more painful than on any of the existing self contained HTML/JS delivery mechanism. It probably would be annoying until Servo reaches parity not to be able to use the web technologies to their fullest extent, but at least you have one (admittedly moving) target.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    People have done this, not just for desktop applications but also for Android apps, using Servo to display a web UI on mobile. And there's some work in progress to put a WebView-compatible API on top of Servo, making it trivial to substitute it in an arbitrary application.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Ono-Sendai 9y ago
Sounds like a terrible idea, please no. I for one probably will stop using thunderbird if it gets rewritten in JS.
- tmzt 9y ago
  What is it written in now? If I remember correctly it's mostly JS with a few native extensions in the chrome.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    The backend is mostly in pure C++ (~500KLOC or so). The frontend is in JS (~200KLOC or so).
  - Ono-Sendai 9y ago
    Looks like a combination of JS and C++, see for example https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/db/mork/src https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/db/mork/src
nkkollaw 9y ago
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.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  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.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    It's deeper than the theme. It's the paradigm, the absence of automatic sorting of emails (priority/promo, etc.), failure of prioritizing common actions in the UI (everything is the same, the spam folder and the inbox folder are given the same importance, "compose" is not prominent, etc.). I could go on forever. IMO, it's kind of how good software was made 10 years ago, but now we're used to much better.
    - thesmallestcat 9y ago
      Compose is C-n, and the "Write" button in the default toolbar. Not sure what priority/promo is, but Thunderbird certainly can sort by any field by default. It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features, and you're not going to get that with a non-Google client. Note that some customizations, like Firefox, require accessing about:config. Also, as with Firefox, most Thunderbird users will benefit from perusing extensions. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some extensions that offer the more Gmail-centric experience you want.
thesmallestcat 9y ago
Note that this is from the end of March, and the thread continues at https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/thread.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/th...
mazerackham 9y ago
If it's scoped for 3 years, does that mean it'll take 9? =P
norea-armozel 9y ago
I'm just gonna say I oppose this proposal because I'm really tired of seeing developers shy away from utilizing or learning C/C++ only to admit much later in a project's life cycle that those languages and their associated libraries are the best for the job. I'm all ears on utilizing JS for front end to even a desktop application but if the entire thing gets written to be ran on Servo or whatever browser engine they choose then I oppose it categorically. JS might be fine for some things but as a general programming language on a substandard runtime is just asking for trouble. Learn to write in C/C++ for native applications or go home.
- Kinnard 9y ago
  Why do you oppose things being run on something like Servo categorically?
  - norea-armozel 9y ago
    Because there's existing libraries which solve many of the same problems which they inevitably run into and then re-implement them in JS. The "not invented here" mentality has to stop. Unless there's a significant reason to not utilize a library then it shouldn't be avoided. There's no good reason to replicate that functionality.
    - Silhouette 9y ago
      The "not invented here" mentality has to stop. This is true, but the track record of bugs and poor security inherent in using relatively low-level languages like C and C++ for everyday Internet-connected applications also has to stop.
      - norea-armozel 9y ago
        That doesn't really help you when the platform you run on be it a browser or a virtual machine is written in C/C++ which by implication can be exposed to the same security flaws if/when they utilize unsafe design patterns or idioms. So, all you've done is pass the buck onto Servo/Gecko/Safari. The reality is that you can't make an argument that's ironclad in favor of forcing JS to become the new C. Let JS do it's wonders for the web and let C/C++ and other languages that have great native application tools do their wonders for the desktop?
orionblastar 9y ago
I like the gpg integration using enigmail in Thunderbird. So I can send encrypted messages to my friends and people I write code with.
- libertytrek 9y ago
  You'll be happy to learn that the P=P folks are most likely going to be handling full end to end encryption integration for Thunderbird, for the current version, and the new one (if it happens): https://pep-project.org/ https://pep-project.org/
johnny7 9y ago
Whatever you do, make it render emails in a sane way. I still prefer mutt text-only rendering of emails (content) than any email rendering software, but if you're going to render and digest html, actually do it. The total time involved in and barbarity with which web atrocities have been committed to make emails render correctly in Outlook or even Gmail cannot be understated.
MaxLeiter 9y ago
> We need 2 persons for the framework, 3 for backend modules, 4 for frontend UI, and 1 for theming. Doesn't 4 people dedicated to front-end UI seem excessive/unnecessary? At least, at the beginning? I would dedicate almost all work to the framework and backend modules; UI with web technologies is far from complicated compared to everything else the client would require.
nguillaumin 9y ago
That is awesome! I actually toyed with the same idea a couple of months ago and started a prototype, but in the end it was too much work for a single developer (having to implement IMAP/POP backends, etc. in addition to the UI). Using web technologies for desktop apps is not ideal, but at the same time it's probably the easiest way these days to build cross-platform apps because of the lack of a good cross-platform UI toolkit. A big benefit I see is that it will make it very hackable as a lot of developers are familiar with web technologies. That should be a good way to get a lot of contributors to implement features and innovate (See for example the community / contributions around Visual Studio Code).
gravypod 9y ago
I skimmed through this and saw no management of PGP, encryption, key storage, or key exhange. Is that not going to be one of the main focuses of this? I wish that PGP/encrypted mail would be a main feature post Snowden.
- fattire 9y ago
  The one thing i'd like to see is some kind of integration of the Signal protocol-- preferably in a way that supports federation as (1) having OpenWhisper Systems as a single point of failure for all email is not a good idea and (2) having to tie one's email to a phone number is sheer insanity. It's bad enough with messaging.
petepete 9y ago
The mockups look very promising. I was never a TB user because it never looked the part in Gnome, but it's something I've kept an eye on and recommended to other people. https://dribbble.com/shots/2917534-Thunderbird-Redesign https://dribbble.com/shots/2917534-Thunderbird-Redesign
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
warpech 9y ago
Why not rewrite it in Graphene, which is the Servo's foundation for browser.html? https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml
buovjaga 9y ago
A couple of days ago I reached out to users to give a morale booster to the devs as they try to figure this rewrite business out: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_love_for_thunderbird_by_testing_bugs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_lov...
zmix 9y ago
I'd rather see projects like Cyberfox, Thunderbird, Palemoon and Evolus Pencil (which, sadly, has been rewritten by now) taking up xulrunner, fork it and continue developing it. I have yet to find a better system for rapid application development. XUL is wonderful, extentable, everybody know CSS and Javascript these days, XML is very well suited for such tasks. It's one of the best technologies for power-users I ever came around! All that was ever needed would habe been a Mozilla, that creates an XUL IDE, rather than taking up on a lot of stupid projects (Persona Light Themes, Hello Chat, FirefoxOS, removing XPFE (how coding with XUL is actually called) and whatever (the only real good thing to mention would be Ubiquity, but they killed that off as well), oh, and let's not start talking about Firefoxy mugs, t-shirts, community barbecues, community videos... But hey, that's what happened. Now, if some people would just fork xulrunner and mirrror the addons.mozilla.org stuff... As for Thunderbird, I am also pretty satisfied as it is. It may be nice, if one could set certain To: email-addresses per folder (mailing-list folders would greatly benefit from that, along with subscribe/unsubscribe configured per such folder), alternate views onto mails and have, maybe, a modernized foldering-system.
- flukus 9y ago
  > I have yet to find a better system for rapid application development. XUL is wonderful, extentable, everybody know CSS and Javascript these days, XML is very well suited for such tasks. It's one of the best technologies for power-users I ever came around! It also looks awful and ignores desktop themeing. Or is that just firefox?
dammitcoetzee 9y ago
I really like my hosted email because it's not on my computer. I love offline software, but it all sucks for security. Dropbox, Evernote, Outlook, etc. They all just dump my data in a folder anyone with physical access to my very stealable laptop can get at. Email is especially terrifying because there's just so much personal info in there. I have evernote and dropbox sitting in a bitlocker, so that's okay-ish, but the email thing is just too much.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  You have heard of this awesome new thing called "Complete System encription"?
newsat13 9y ago
The sieve plugin is still broken :-( What's the alternative when using Thunderbird?
petecox 9y ago
Mozilla already has a mail client written in Javascript and HTML 5 - the one shipping in Firefox OS. And it worked decently. Start by tidying it up for Android and then port it to desktop. One code base - for mobile, tablet and desktop.
ausjke 9y ago
I am a bit extreme here as I think Mozilla shall reduce efforts on firefox and make thunderbird a great product instead, one reason is that chrome is too powerful to beat already, and thunderbird could become the universal email client for all, not much contender there yet. after using slack for a while i feel we can use one slack-channel for each email contact, a bit like google wave probably, and thunderbird can merge email+slack experience into one.
- edko 9y ago
  If Mozilla manages to build a product based on Servo that kicks Electron's ass (safer, faster, cheaper to distribute, etc.), then I am not sure that Chrome cannot be beat (or be seriously challenged). This Electron competitor would become very popular, and it could become the "entry drug" into Rust development (you would be able to do everything in HTML/CSS/JS but you would also have the option to code some parts in Rust, for more power), which would also grow the number of Servo contributors. With a large enough community, Servo-based Firefox could fight for a place at being the best browser (safest, fastest, full-featured).
xupybd 9y ago
"JavaScript, if used diligently and with good design, is a very efficient language. Both in execution time, but more importantly for developers. Personally, I wrote apps in many languages, including C++, Java and JavaScript. Of those, JavaScript is by far the most productive - I am personally 4-10 times as productive as with C++." Not trying to start a this language is better flame war, but is this true? I still find JS to be a strange and incomplete feeling language, but I've not really done much outside of front end work with it. Is it really that productive? Also I've disliked every interaction with NPM. You end up with a huge chain of decencies for even simple applications. Is this something that's workable with production software?
- wise0wl 9y ago
  I work for a company that uses mostly Node.js for their production microservices. It works very well. Joyent wrote their entire private / public cloud in Node.js. https://github.com/joyent/ https://github.com/joyent/ It is definitely production workable. It's "LTS" cycle is insane, but it's workable.
- beagle3 9y ago
  I suspect it is true that among Java, C++ and JavaScript, disciplined well designed JavaScript is easier for developers, and reasonably efficient in execution (given e.g. v8). Especially compared to C++, the memory safety and speed of the compile->run->debug cycle tend to give JavaScript an edge for more programmers (x4 to x10 is of course subjective). But that doesn't mean JavaScript is a good language. e.g., you have to be extremely careful to not get bitten by the floating point-only math. It was the source of catastrophic bugs for many Twitter clients (in the sense that they stopped working) -- I would hate to find such a bug ate my local mail store. Not sure what I'd recommend, though - JavaScript is technically bad, but socially excellent for such a project. Python is not fast enough for it (PyPy not withstanding), D/Rust/Nim/Ocaml/Scala are not mainstream enough.
Gonzih 9y ago
Please no. Im very happy with current state of Thunderbird.
bugmen0t 9y ago
The backstory here is that Thunderbird devs would like to be faster but have a hard time working against the Gecko changes that breaks their build. Sure Thunderbird kind-of works, as in it's "done", but people find Security bugs in the Firefox base and it's not sure how they apply to Thunderbird to Thunderbird has to take the update and then they have to deal with the breakage and the incompatibility. You can't just stop and be on Firefox 45 forever. That's just asking for trouble.
b4xt3em4n 9y ago
After many years waiting, maybe we will have a compose new email on a tab.
- libertytrek 9y ago
  God no, unless there is a way to disable it. I hate tabs in Thunderbird.
silky 9y ago
> JavaScript Nylas all over again... Why complicate and bloat things as if it's the obvious sensible choice? The time to finally learn how to configure mutt is that much close...
zzz2002 9y ago
Before we start thinking about working on Thunderbird or its replacement there is a fundamental question that needs answering. Is there a future for email? Email is/was a function of the personal computer era. But as PC sales decline and smart phone sales grow do people still use email to the same extent? Is its place in field of personal communications being replaced by SMS, etc. In the business arena I am seeing some companies where internal email is not allowed. The reasoning is that email has become a way of procrastinating (send and forget). On the customer facing side of things email is being replaced by web based customer service apps that use AI (or similar) to answer the customers query ASAP, and if that is not possible get the info and pass on to a human if and only if needed (people cost money). So back to the question is email and by extension Thunderbird obsolescent. Would effort in redeveloping TB be futile as it would wind up give us wonderful app just as email disappears.

237 points by rxlim 9y ago

title should be the one of the submitted e-mail: "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies", especially since "is in the works" doesn't seem to be the case yet. (Lots of discussion, continuing into April, but unless I missed it no actual decision made and work begun yet.) The thread is worth a read, interesting arguments regarding rewrite/refactor/approaches to transition.

rxlim 9y ago
According to Cambridge Dictionary "in the works" has the following meaning: in the process of being planned or done Thunderbird replacement is currently being planned, so I think it's correct.
- tumblen 9y ago
  I think it's that "in the works" seems to imply an agreement/commitment, but this appears to be a proposal.
  - rxlim 9y ago
    This is a post[0] from one of the project leaders: However, I think we all agree we want the Thunderbird replacement to be a desktop client (plus other platforms like mobile), and based on web technologies, most importantly written in JavaScript. But the title has now been changed and that is fine with me. [0]https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/005394.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/00...

pjmlp 9y ago

If it becomes yet another Electron package it is time to look elsewhere.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
geodel 9y ago
Perhaps the idea to implement it as web technology is to leverage NPM so that millions of plugins can be made available to an email client.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Now you have 100,000 problems.

billpg 9y ago

So it'll be a self-hosted webmail service with a custom web server that runs locally?

Silhouette 9y ago
That doesn't seem to be what they're aiming for here. The goal is supposed to be a new UI that looks and functions very similar to today's. That's too bad, in a way. One thing I'd really like that Thunderbird doesn't offer today is to separate the mail receive/store/send functionality from the reading/writing UI, so I could run the former on my own server and access it from any device on my network. Obviously there are some relevant standards here and you could set something like this up with enough technical knowledge using other tools that already exist. However, that reduces the potential market by a few orders of magnitude to those who are sufficiently expert with those tools, and then probably by a few orders more for those who have the time to actually do it.
- flukus 9y ago
  > That's too bad, in a way. One thing I'd really like that Thunderbird doesn't offer today is to separate the mail receive/store/send functionality from the reading/writing UI, so I could run the former on my own server and access it from any device on my network. Uh, that's exactly what an email server does. Thunderbird is just the client used to access it from any device.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Assuming by "email server" you mean an SMTP server, that's not quite what I'm talking about. What I'm looking for is more akin to a mail store, an IMAP server, and functionality for sending and receiving via actual SMTP server(s). That's a separate set of responsibilities to reading or composing messages, which would just need something like an IMAP-compatible client. And all of those are separate responsibilities to a full SMTP server with all the administrative overheads that comes with. You could do the back office part of what I'm talking about with tools like Dovecot and fetchmail today, running on a Linux server with a standard Maildir backing store, and then you could run Thunderbird purely for its IMAP client capabilities as a front-end, but setting it all up and maintaining it is a horrendous hassle and it's far too technically demanding for most users anyway. However, separating the receive/store/send responsibilities from the read/write responsibilities would mean you could have a single store on any server with relatively straightforward set-up to actually send and receive mail, which you could then access from any device on your network (or over a VPN or the Internet if it's running on a remotely accessible box), without the risks and overheads of both running your own SMTP server and trying to get mail from it actually accepted anywhere else these days. Now that everyone's got PCs, laptops, tablets, phones, and who knows what else, I think this is probably the single most limiting problem with traditional offline email clients compared to all the hosted webmail services, but it shouldn't be necessary to incur all the downsides of those hosted webmail services just to access your mail from different devices.

deckiedan 9y ago

Interesting that mithril.js gets a mention. I really like it.

acemarke 9y ago
Was that mentioned in one of the replies? I don't see any specific libraries mentioned in the linked message, or the other replies I searched through. edit: Scratch that, it was in this reply: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/005328.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-March/00... . "I'd suggest using TypeScript, Mithril.js, Tachyons, and Node.js for the base technologies -- probably with Mocha/Chai for testing. Later we can make a more stand-alone desktop version with Electron or such. We could use socket.io to push notifications for changes in real or virtual folders and then use Mithril.js (a vdom library) to quickly rerender changed data the client UI requests (or is pushed)." Worth noting that reply looks more like a wishlist of stuff than a meaningful viable proposal.
- brlewis 9y ago
  FWIW that reply appears to be someone who's serious about this proposal: https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2 https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2

pmontra 9y ago

The only point I could argue with is the choice of JavaScript, all the others seem inevitable. As a Thunderbird user I'm happy to know that I might be using it for another 20 years. Even JavaScript is not that bad. I not familiar with Electron: do those apps run from a directory with the source code or are a binary file? Running from source code would make it easy to hack with the code, which is good.

hashhar 9y ago
Thunderbird already uses a lot of JS. The only difference I think is that Thunderbird works on the XUL instead of the HTML DOM.
bengotow 9y ago
Yep! Electron essentially just launches a web app from a directory on disk in an included copy of Chromium, with NodeJS's JavaScript bindings as well as the usual ones. The web app has an index.html, CSS, all the standard stuff. It's usually packaged into a .asar file so things can be loaded faster, but it's great for hackability.

mixedCase 9y ago

I wonder, if they want to use JS, why not QtQuick? I'm a heavy Thunderbird user but I would move to pretty much anything else if it were to switch to Electron.

irq-1 9y ago
I think the reason QtQuick hasn't taken over this space, is that you still need to deal with C++ and cross-compiling. If QT had an option that made it clear you could develop and distribute in JavaScript only, that would be a hit.
- rhodysurf 9y ago
  You can write QML apps in like every popular language, there are well supported bindings everywhere. I dont get the C++ hate though. C++11 and up is a totally new language and much more productive than its reputation gives it.

cakeface 9y ago

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.

janci 9y ago
The filter is slow in regular-size mailbox and almost unusable on my bloated gmail. I don't mind getting results progressively as the messages are scanned, but it runs on the UI thread and UI is horribly slow while the filter is working. The search is just broken. It gives messages that don't have anything of search string in them and misses the right ones.
- ricardonunez 9y ago
  I agree on the search, but are you referring to the filter search box? or gmail filters? the filter search box is the main reason I didn't switch to any of all the other alternatives like mailbird. It helps me to avoid using the TB search.
Certhas 9y ago
Working with big folders tends to be a bit error prone to me. I would like to synchronize my filters/settings across different devices. On MacOs it randomly hangs for tens of seconds and eats batteries for some people (me included). So yeah, it's mostly done, but better virtual folder support, and a streamlined UI would both be hugely appreciated by me. But, because it's mostly done, I also will just happily keep using it as it is now for the next three years, waiting for the rewrite.
- randomdata 9y ago
  Is a rewrite necessary to improve on those aspects over modifying the existing codebase?
  - Certhas 9y ago
    Maybe not, but from the sound of it, a rewrite is necessary just to keep the lights on and to keep Thunderbird compiling in the long run.

5ilv3r 9y ago

Mozilla just doesn't get the message.... We don't want your features, fixes, refreshes, rebranding, or re-imagining. We want a browser that is fast, stable, secure, minimal, and that DOES NOT FIGHT US. Let me load my old SSL certs (a warning is fine). Let me keep my preferences (why does https:// https:// disappear from my address bar every update, and my search bar keep switching back to case sensitive). Stop making your problems worse and get your $#!% together! I'm a sysadmin, dangit, I need this tool to work!

bengotow 9y ago
Well, the web is evolving. If you're a sysadmin and you test everything in an ancient version of Firefox that doesn't display SSL errors, you're not getting an accurate picture of what the product's users will see. The latest browsers might entirely block people from visiting your site, display a huge warning, etc. and you wouldn't know. Maybe being a sysadmin requires getting the fixes, refreshes, rebranding as they come down the pipe? I'm also not a fan of the recent changes, just take a more defeatist attitude I guess!
- 5ilv3r 9y ago
  No no no you missed what I am saying. I use horrible hardware appliances with built in md5 ssl certs for remote administration. I am not a web developer. I need to be able to access them to secure them and to work on hardware problems. This isn't even on the internet, this is on a local lan serving a small business. We're not going to buy new hardware because my browser updated, so I'm stuck having to boot up a mint 7 livecd vm to run firefox 4 every now and then. It's horrible.
  - bengotow 9y ago
    Ahh I see! Sorry, I totally misread your message. Wow, that's a rough situation... If things get really bad, I think you could use a HTTPS proxy like Charles (https://www.charlesproxy.com/ https://www.charlesproxy.com/) to decrypt the traffic and re-encrypt it with a newer SSL cert before viewing it in Firefox. I'm not sure about Firefox, but you can run Chrome from the command line with `--allow-running-insecure-content --ignore-certificate-errors` and it'll load anything and everything. Maybe there's a similar mode for Firefox that will disable everything.

Sytten 9y ago

I like the idea of using web technologies for desktop application. The only major problem right now is that each application uses at least 1.5-2g of RAM each since it basically launches a full web browser under it (and chromium loves ram). We will need enormous amount of RAM soon if all applications starts to go that way...

ungzd 9y ago
Thunderbird has browser engine to display html emails anyway. And probably most of Thunderbird's code is already in javascript, but using XUL instead of HTML DOM.

bengotow 9y ago

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 https://github.com/Nylas/Nylas-mail), and it hit 2.0 yesterday with Mac/Win/Linux support. It's entirely open source (GPL), written in JavaScript, syncs mail locally, etc. It essentially -is- what the author of the post is looking to build, except it doesn't look like Thunderbird. Nylas put at least $2M+ worth of engineering time into it, and I imagine ThunderbirdJS would take at least a similar commitment of time and effort. Heck, maybe they could just skin Nylas Mail and call it Thunderbird ;-)

nkkollaw 9y ago
That look really good. Great job.
richardboegli 9y ago
> Heck, maybe they could just skin Nylas Mail and call it Thunderbird ;-) Skin it or Fork and Skin ;)
scriptproof 9y ago
I suppose they want to use their own UI and maybe link to some services or tools from Mozilla. But they should contact you to unite their effort with your: development time reduced from 3 years to 3 months (that is an approximation)...
wink 9y ago
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 https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/860
- bengotow 9y ago
  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/client-sync 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 / send later, etc., but it no longer syncs all your email through the cloud.

sidlls 9y ago

"JavaScript is the best choice." (Citation Needed). This proposal identifies serious legitimate concerns with Thunderbird development going forward, but the proposed solution looks more like a hammer seeking a nail than a thoughtful approach to addressing the concerns.

bengotow 9y ago
Well, the author seems thoughtful, but I'm sure he's seeking replies on the mailing list. You could propose something else!
phkahler 9y ago
Yeah, I cringed at the JS thing. Why not do it in Rust and start with some of the Servo code as a base? That would give the developers an intermediate application to work with that doesn't require the full capability of a web browser.
- lloeki 9y ago
  The whole tirade read like a thinly veiled "building an Electron-based MUA is just easier by now", which is a thing I've been contemplating toying with because, to paraphrase another well-known MUA, all those desktop email clients† flat out suck and the best ones are barely above the tolerable threshold. > Why not do it in Rust and start with some of the Servo code as a base? Thought about it, but I think Servo might just not be that ready yet given the expected timeframe. Could be of a great synergy and a nice real-life testbed for Servo though. † I've extensively used a lot on various OSes, from Claws to Gmail (web) to mutt to Mail.app to Eudora to Fastmail (web) to Outlook to AirMail. For none of them could I ever say "nailed it" and while some do have their pluses they're all broken one way or another which brings the whole package down.
  - juliangoldsmith 9y ago
    You say that desktop email clients all suck. Is there a web-based client that, in your opinion, doesn't?

Kenji 9y ago

I wish I could freeze the program Thunderbird in time to keep it precisely how it is right now for the next couple of decades. I literally want not change. I know, I know. It's a pipe dream, the surrounding environment changes, breaking the program as the OS and libraries evolve. But this constant resolving of perfectly solved problems annoys me.

pmontra 9y ago
It's maintenance. Sometimes it has to be somewhat radical. I hope for two things. 1) Drag attachments to folders finally works on Linux. 2) Message filters keep working exactly as they are now or it's going to be a huge pain to migrate them. And a showstopper with no filters.
fao_ 9y ago
git clone <thunderbird-url> <build from source and sudo make install> ^ there you go. A stable thunderbird branch that will work mostly forever. Every time an API changes just shove it in another iteration of a virtual machine :P
- Kenji 9y ago
  Thank you, I know all of that. I like native though. So, both VM and HTML5+JS are things I try to avoid for convenience messaging tools I use many times every day.

js_is_cancer 9y ago

web technologies == cancerous technologies, web technologies + thunderbird => thunderbird will be cancer in soon too.

js_is_cancer 9y ago

web technologies == cancerous technologies, web technologies + thunderbird => thunderbird will be cancer in soon too.

jancsika 9y ago

> 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?

trishume 9y ago
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 https://github.com/janestreet/incr_dom.
- acemarke 9y ago
  There's also toolkits like React-Virtualized: https://github.com/bvaughn/react-virtualized https://github.com/bvaughn/react-virtualized .
frik 9y ago
> quickly scroll through a list of up to 100000 messages. You can do this with JS and HTML. There are some popular small JS libs that do just that. It works like this: it creates a div with a very big "height" value to get the scrollbar look like there is a long list, and JS just loads in the visible area plus a few items above and below, and reloads data as you scroll. It works very good in Chrome and Firefox, and even okay in IE11.
- jancsika 9y ago

zokier 9y ago

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...

estebank 9y ago
I wonder if basing a desktop application on top of Servo would be any more painful than on any of the existing self contained HTML/JS delivery mechanism. It probably would be annoying until Servo reaches parity not to be able to use the web technologies to their fullest extent, but at least you have one (admittedly moving) target.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  People have done this, not just for desktop applications but also for Android apps, using Servo to display a web UI on mobile. And there's some work in progress to put a WebView-compatible API on top of Servo, making it trivial to substitute it in an arbitrary application.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Ono-Sendai 9y ago

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

tmzt 9y ago
What is it written in now? If I remember correctly it's mostly JS with a few native extensions in the chrome.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  The backend is mostly in pure C++ (~500KLOC or so). The frontend is in JS (~200KLOC or so).
- Ono-Sendai 9y ago
  Looks like a combination of JS and C++, see for example https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/db/mork/src https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/db/mork/src

nkkollaw 9y ago

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.

thesmallestcat 9y ago
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.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  It's deeper than the theme. It's the paradigm, the absence of automatic sorting of emails (priority/promo, etc.), failure of prioritizing common actions in the UI (everything is the same, the spam folder and the inbox folder are given the same importance, "compose" is not prominent, etc.). I could go on forever. IMO, it's kind of how good software was made 10 years ago, but now we're used to much better.
  - thesmallestcat 9y ago
    Compose is C-n, and the "Write" button in the default toolbar. Not sure what priority/promo is, but Thunderbird certainly can sort by any field by default. It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features, and you're not going to get that with a non-Google client. Note that some customizations, like Firefox, require accessing about:config. Also, as with Firefox, most Thunderbird users will benefit from perusing extensions. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some extensions that offer the more Gmail-centric experience you want.

thesmallestcat 9y ago

Note that this is from the end of March, and the thread continues at https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/thread.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2017-April/th...

mazerackham 9y ago

If it's scoped for 3 years, does that mean it'll take 9? =P

norea-armozel 9y ago

I'm just gonna say I oppose this proposal because I'm really tired of seeing developers shy away from utilizing or learning C/C++ only to admit much later in a project's life cycle that those languages and their associated libraries are the best for the job. I'm all ears on utilizing JS for front end to even a desktop application but if the entire thing gets written to be ran on Servo or whatever browser engine they choose then I oppose it categorically. JS might be fine for some things but as a general programming language on a substandard runtime is just asking for trouble. Learn to write in C/C++ for native applications or go home.

Kinnard 9y ago
Why do you oppose things being run on something like Servo categorically?
- norea-armozel 9y ago
  Because there's existing libraries which solve many of the same problems which they inevitably run into and then re-implement them in JS. The "not invented here" mentality has to stop. Unless there's a significant reason to not utilize a library then it shouldn't be avoided. There's no good reason to replicate that functionality.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    The "not invented here" mentality has to stop. This is true, but the track record of bugs and poor security inherent in using relatively low-level languages like C and C++ for everyday Internet-connected applications also has to stop.
    - norea-armozel 9y ago
      That doesn't really help you when the platform you run on be it a browser or a virtual machine is written in C/C++ which by implication can be exposed to the same security flaws if/when they utilize unsafe design patterns or idioms. So, all you've done is pass the buck onto Servo/Gecko/Safari. The reality is that you can't make an argument that's ironclad in favor of forcing JS to become the new C. Let JS do it's wonders for the web and let C/C++ and other languages that have great native application tools do their wonders for the desktop?

orionblastar 9y ago

I like the gpg integration using enigmail in Thunderbird. So I can send encrypted messages to my friends and people I write code with.

libertytrek 9y ago
You'll be happy to learn that the P=P folks are most likely going to be handling full end to end encryption integration for Thunderbird, for the current version, and the new one (if it happens): https://pep-project.org/ https://pep-project.org/

johnny7 9y ago

Whatever you do, make it render emails in a sane way. I still prefer mutt text-only rendering of emails (content) than any email rendering software, but if you're going to render and digest html, actually do it. The total time involved in and barbarity with which web atrocities have been committed to make emails render correctly in Outlook or even Gmail cannot be understated.

MaxLeiter 9y ago

> We need 2 persons for the framework, 3 for backend modules, 4 for frontend UI, and 1 for theming. Doesn't 4 people dedicated to front-end UI seem excessive/unnecessary? At least, at the beginning? I would dedicate almost all work to the framework and backend modules; UI with web technologies is far from complicated compared to everything else the client would require.

nguillaumin 9y ago

That is awesome! I actually toyed with the same idea a couple of months ago and started a prototype, but in the end it was too much work for a single developer (having to implement IMAP/POP backends, etc. in addition to the UI). Using web technologies for desktop apps is not ideal, but at the same time it's probably the easiest way these days to build cross-platform apps because of the lack of a good cross-platform UI toolkit. A big benefit I see is that it will make it very hackable as a lot of developers are familiar with web technologies. That should be a good way to get a lot of contributors to implement features and innovate (See for example the community / contributions around Visual Studio Code).

gravypod 9y ago

I skimmed through this and saw no management of PGP, encryption, key storage, or key exhange. Is that not going to be one of the main focuses of this? I wish that PGP/encrypted mail would be a main feature post Snowden.

fattire 9y ago
The one thing i'd like to see is some kind of integration of the Signal protocol-- preferably in a way that supports federation as (1) having OpenWhisper Systems as a single point of failure for all email is not a good idea and (2) having to tie one's email to a phone number is sheer insanity. It's bad enough with messaging.

petepete 9y ago

The mockups look very promising. I was never a TB user because it never looked the part in Gnome, but it's something I've kept an eye on and recommended to other people. https://dribbble.com/shots/2917534-Thunderbird-Redesign https://dribbble.com/shots/2917534-Thunderbird-Redesign

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

warpech 9y ago

Why not rewrite it in Graphene, which is the Servo's foundation for browser.html? https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml

buovjaga 9y ago

A couple of days ago I reached out to users to give a morale booster to the devs as they try to figure this rewrite business out: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_love_for_thunderbird_by_testing_bugs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65upot/show_some_lov...

zmix 9y ago

I'd rather see projects like Cyberfox, Thunderbird, Palemoon and Evolus Pencil (which, sadly, has been rewritten by now) taking up xulrunner, fork it and continue developing it. I have yet to find a better system for rapid application development. XUL is wonderful, extentable, everybody know CSS and Javascript these days, XML is very well suited for such tasks. It's one of the best technologies for power-users I ever came around! All that was ever needed would habe been a Mozilla, that creates an XUL IDE, rather than taking up on a lot of stupid projects (Persona Light Themes, Hello Chat, FirefoxOS, removing XPFE (how coding with XUL is actually called) and whatever (the only real good thing to mention would be Ubiquity, but they killed that off as well), oh, and let's not start talking about Firefoxy mugs, t-shirts, community barbecues, community videos... But hey, that's what happened. Now, if some people would just fork xulrunner and mirrror the addons.mozilla.org stuff... As for Thunderbird, I am also pretty satisfied as it is. It may be nice, if one could set certain To: email-addresses per folder (mailing-list folders would greatly benefit from that, along with subscribe/unsubscribe configured per such folder), alternate views onto mails and have, maybe, a modernized foldering-system.

flukus 9y ago
> I have yet to find a better system for rapid application development. XUL is wonderful, extentable, everybody know CSS and Javascript these days, XML is very well suited for such tasks. It's one of the best technologies for power-users I ever came around! It also looks awful and ignores desktop themeing. Or is that just firefox?

dammitcoetzee 9y ago

I really like my hosted email because it's not on my computer. I love offline software, but it all sucks for security. Dropbox, Evernote, Outlook, etc. They all just dump my data in a folder anyone with physical access to my very stealable laptop can get at. Email is especially terrifying because there's just so much personal info in there. I have evernote and dropbox sitting in a bitlocker, so that's okay-ish, but the email thing is just too much.

hutzlibu 9y ago
You have heard of this awesome new thing called "Complete System encription"?

newsat13 9y ago

The sieve plugin is still broken :-( What's the alternative when using Thunderbird?

petecox 9y ago

Mozilla already has a mail client written in Javascript and HTML 5 - the one shipping in Firefox OS. And it worked decently. Start by tidying it up for Android and then port it to desktop. One code base - for mobile, tablet and desktop.

ausjke 9y ago

I am a bit extreme here as I think Mozilla shall reduce efforts on firefox and make thunderbird a great product instead, one reason is that chrome is too powerful to beat already, and thunderbird could become the universal email client for all, not much contender there yet. after using slack for a while i feel we can use one slack-channel for each email contact, a bit like google wave probably, and thunderbird can merge email+slack experience into one.

edko 9y ago
If Mozilla manages to build a product based on Servo that kicks Electron's ass (safer, faster, cheaper to distribute, etc.), then I am not sure that Chrome cannot be beat (or be seriously challenged). This Electron competitor would become very popular, and it could become the "entry drug" into Rust development (you would be able to do everything in HTML/CSS/JS but you would also have the option to code some parts in Rust, for more power), which would also grow the number of Servo contributors. With a large enough community, Servo-based Firefox could fight for a place at being the best browser (safest, fastest, full-featured).

xupybd 9y ago

"JavaScript, if used diligently and with good design, is a very efficient language. Both in execution time, but more importantly for developers. Personally, I wrote apps in many languages, including C++, Java and JavaScript. Of those, JavaScript is by far the most productive - I am personally 4-10 times as productive as with C++." Not trying to start a this language is better flame war, but is this true? I still find JS to be a strange and incomplete feeling language, but I've not really done much outside of front end work with it. Is it really that productive? Also I've disliked every interaction with NPM. You end up with a huge chain of decencies for even simple applications. Is this something that's workable with production software?

wise0wl 9y ago
I work for a company that uses mostly Node.js for their production microservices. It works very well. Joyent wrote their entire private / public cloud in Node.js. https://github.com/joyent/ https://github.com/joyent/ It is definitely production workable. It's "LTS" cycle is insane, but it's workable.
beagle3 9y ago
I suspect it is true that among Java, C++ and JavaScript, disciplined well designed JavaScript is easier for developers, and reasonably efficient in execution (given e.g. v8). Especially compared to C++, the memory safety and speed of the compile->run->debug cycle tend to give JavaScript an edge for more programmers (x4 to x10 is of course subjective). But that doesn't mean JavaScript is a good language. e.g., you have to be extremely careful to not get bitten by the floating point-only math. It was the source of catastrophic bugs for many Twitter clients (in the sense that they stopped working) -- I would hate to find such a bug ate my local mail store. Not sure what I'd recommend, though - JavaScript is technically bad, but socially excellent for such a project. Python is not fast enough for it (PyPy not withstanding), D/Rust/Nim/Ocaml/Scala are not mainstream enough.

Gonzih 9y ago

Please no. Im very happy with current state of Thunderbird.

bugmen0t 9y ago

The backstory here is that Thunderbird devs would like to be faster but have a hard time working against the Gecko changes that breaks their build. Sure Thunderbird kind-of works, as in it's "done", but people find Security bugs in the Firefox base and it's not sure how they apply to Thunderbird to Thunderbird has to take the update and then they have to deal with the breakage and the incompatibility. You can't just stop and be on Firefox 45 forever. That's just asking for trouble.

b4xt3em4n 9y ago

After many years waiting, maybe we will have a compose new email on a tab.

libertytrek 9y ago
God no, unless there is a way to disable it. I hate tabs in Thunderbird.

silky 9y ago

> JavaScript Nylas all over again... Why complicate and bloat things as if it's the obvious sensible choice? The time to finally learn how to configure mutt is that much close...

zzz2002 9y ago

Before we start thinking about working on Thunderbird or its replacement there is a fundamental question that needs answering. Is there a future for email? Email is/was a function of the personal computer era. But as PC sales decline and smart phone sales grow do people still use email to the same extent? Is its place in field of personal communications being replaced by SMS, etc. In the business arena I am seeing some companies where internal email is not allowed. The reasoning is that email has become a way of procrastinating (send and forget). On the customer facing side of things email is being replaced by web based customer service apps that use AI (or similar) to answer the customers query ASAP, and if that is not possible get the info and pass on to a human if and only if needed (people cost money). So back to the question is email and by extension Thunderbird obsolescent. Would effort in redeveloping TB be futile as it would wind up give us wonderful app just as email disappears.