7 ms·

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

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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
    - nkkollaw 10y ago
      I don't have time right now to explain myself better, it's the minimalism and some features like snoozing emails, quickly marking them as done/low-priority and similar things, which is definitely not something that is connected to Google technology. > It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features I actually don't like Gmail that much. > you're not going to get that with a non-Google client. Google Inbox used be called Sparrow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client)), which was a regular app that Google acquired. I used it since the beginning. It was a new paradigm back in 2011, which is now the standard in modern clients. Thunderbird needs to rethink their approach. They need less buttons and more focus on important features over other ones you barely use. In Thunderbird, everything is given the same importance in the UI. There's a toolbar with 100 buttons of the same size: "Write, Chat, Reply, Reply all, Archive, Address book, Get email, Tag, Quick filter". Why is "Chat" the same size as "Write", and right next to it like it's the most common feature in an email client? Why is "Address book" even there, given the same importance as "Write"? Who browses his address book randomly? Why can't they just show suggestions when I'm in the compose window and I type the first few letters of the person's name or email? I could go on forever.
      - Silhouette 10y ago
        There's a toolbar with 100 buttons of the same size: "Write, Chat, Reply, Reply all, Archive, Address book, Get email, Tag, Quick filter". My main Thunderbird toolbar has get mail, write new message and quick filtering. It took me perhaps 10 seconds back when I first installed it on this computer to hide a couple of other buttons like chat that I don't use myself. The second toolbar when I have a message open has just 5 buttons (reply, reply all, forward, mark as junk, delete) and I use all of them frequently. I agree with your general point that clean UIs that prioritise more important features tend to be nicer to use, but I think you're dramatically overstating the problem here. Why can't they just show suggestions when I'm in the compose window and I type the first few letters of the person's name or email? That's exactly what it does, and has for as long as I can remember.
        10y ago
copperx 10y ago
Is Firefox that far from Chrome? I thought it was ahead in some ways.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  Maybe with web standards (maybe, I'm not sure), but not the rest. Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through. Downloading files has the same problem, it's relegated in a small button, while it's one of the main features. The whole interface is one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, considering how simple a browser can be in terms of functionality the user must access. I'll also never forget they they thought tabs on top didn't make sense (it's actually still an option you can change). Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser. In terms of how pretty the UI is, Firefox 53—which just got released—looks better, but it took them years to get to where Chrome was back at version 1. Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient. From a technological point of view, it took them years to implement sandboxing, and they're still not done. If a tab misbehaves in Firefox it can take down the whole thing. Chrome had it right away. I briefly tried switching to Firefox again a few months ago. Initially I tried fixing it via changing the interface via XUL, but the problems were too deep. I got very frustrated and went back to Chrome.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    It seems you prefer the more "modern" style of relying on Google's online services and Chrome's frequent updates. That's fine, but it's not an objective standard. For example, some of us consider a UI that doesn't keep moving around every few weeks to be a feature, not a bug. I have absolutely no problem with a practical tool like Thunderbird still using the same layout it had 5 years ago, if that layout works well. Likewise, some of us consider the separate search box of Firefox to be a plus point. I don't want or need everything I type in a URL bar being sent to Google's mothership, and my screen has ample space for both bars. Meanwhile, I'm getting awfully bored of dealing with customer support issues that come down to someone using Google for their mail and not receiving legitimate messages because of whatever Google have broken, deemed spam, or unilaterally declared not to be acceptable this week. I shudder to think how much time and effort are being wasted like this around the world if everyone else's experience is as negative as ours has been lately.
orthecreedence 10y ago
I think Thunderbird is fine how it is. I think a lot of the projects Mozilla takes on are stupid (Rust being a giant exception, I love Rust). You know what I want? NWJS/Electron but using Firefox/Spidermonkey. I want to package desktop apps with Firefox. They almost had this with xulrunner but killed it for some reason. And I want them to build crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/ https://crosswalk-project.org/) for mobile, but with Firefox. The only real reason is that I don't trust Google or anything they touch, and I've never actually been able to build Chromium/NWJS from source (such a complicated build), which worries me. Call me paranoid, but the monoculture around Chromium creeps me out and I'd really like a viable alternative from Mozilla. Seems like they jumped ship from the packaged HTML5 desktop/mobile app paradigm right when it started getting popular.
- jcranmer 10y ago
  There actually was a fork of node.js that used SpiderMonkey. IMHO, one of Mozilla's greatest failures was its decision to more or less give up on embedding (for both SpiderMonkey and Gecko). They effectively killed off embedding in the process of moving to the train model back in 2011, 2012, but back then, the expectation was that they would have their 2 years of "let's kill our broken architecture." Instead, it sort of ended up dragging on how long it would take them to stabilize some APIs for embedding, and they certainly never bothered to try to maintain any documentation (I briefly attempted to maintain some client application that used SpiderMonkey in 2011, and it was a headache trying to find any sort of documentation on how to fix each incremental bustage, since everything that was found on MDN was woefully out of date). First, there was to be some sort of IPC-based embedding mechanism in Gecko. Then that idea was nixed in favor of just XULRunner. Then Mozilla decided it didn't want to maintain XULRunner anymore. For a period of time, they had a XULRunner-like setup called something like webapprt (which was basically a Firefox sans normal Firefox UI), but that too was killed off within a few years.
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron is a thing, though not under active development right now.
buovjaga 10y ago
> They've already neglected Thunderbird for years, and now they want to start from scratch? If by "they" you are referring to Mozilla: they will not be involved in the rewrite.

thesmallestcat 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    I don't have time right now to explain myself better, it's the minimalism and some features like snoozing emails, quickly marking them as done/low-priority and similar things, which is definitely not something that is connected to Google technology. > It sounds like you want a client that is tightly coupled with Gmail's features I actually don't like Gmail that much. > you're not going to get that with a non-Google client. Google Inbox used be called Sparrow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client)), which was a regular app that Google acquired. I used it since the beginning. It was a new paradigm back in 2011, which is now the standard in modern clients. Thunderbird needs to rethink their approach. They need less buttons and more focus on important features over other ones you barely use. In Thunderbird, everything is given the same importance in the UI. There's a toolbar with 100 buttons of the same size: "Write, Chat, Reply, Reply all, Archive, Address book, Get email, Tag, Quick filter". Why is "Chat" the same size as "Write", and right next to it like it's the most common feature in an email client? Why is "Address book" even there, given the same importance as "Write"? Who browses his address book randomly? Why can't they just show suggestions when I'm in the compose window and I type the first few letters of the person's name or email? I could go on forever.
    - Silhouette 10y ago
      There's a toolbar with 100 buttons of the same size: "Write, Chat, Reply, Reply all, Archive, Address book, Get email, Tag, Quick filter". My main Thunderbird toolbar has get mail, write new message and quick filtering. It took me perhaps 10 seconds back when I first installed it on this computer to hide a couple of other buttons like chat that I don't use myself. The second toolbar when I have a message open has just 5 buttons (reply, reply all, forward, mark as junk, delete) and I use all of them frequently. I agree with your general point that clean UIs that prioritise more important features tend to be nicer to use, but I think you're dramatically overstating the problem here. Why can't they just show suggestions when I'm in the compose window and I type the first few letters of the person's name or email? That's exactly what it does, and has for as long as I can remember.
      - 10y ago

copperx 10y ago

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

nkkollaw 10y ago
Maybe with web standards (maybe, I'm not sure), but not the rest. Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through. Downloading files has the same problem, it's relegated in a small button, while it's one of the main features. The whole interface is one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, considering how simple a browser can be in terms of functionality the user must access. I'll also never forget they they thought tabs on top didn't make sense (it's actually still an option you can change). Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser. In terms of how pretty the UI is, Firefox 53—which just got released—looks better, but it took them years to get to where Chrome was back at version 1. Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient. From a technological point of view, it took them years to implement sandboxing, and they're still not done. If a tab misbehaves in Firefox it can take down the whole thing. Chrome had it right away. I briefly tried switching to Firefox again a few months ago. Initially I tried fixing it via changing the interface via XUL, but the problems were too deep. I got very frustrated and went back to Chrome.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  It seems you prefer the more "modern" style of relying on Google's online services and Chrome's frequent updates. That's fine, but it's not an objective standard. For example, some of us consider a UI that doesn't keep moving around every few weeks to be a feature, not a bug. I have absolutely no problem with a practical tool like Thunderbird still using the same layout it had 5 years ago, if that layout works well. Likewise, some of us consider the separate search box of Firefox to be a plus point. I don't want or need everything I type in a URL bar being sent to Google's mothership, and my screen has ample space for both bars. Meanwhile, I'm getting awfully bored of dealing with customer support issues that come down to someone using Google for their mail and not receiving legitimate messages because of whatever Google have broken, deemed spam, or unilaterally declared not to be acceptable this week. I shudder to think how much time and effort are being wasted like this around the world if everyone else's experience is as negative as ours has been lately.

orthecreedence 10y ago

I think Thunderbird is fine how it is. I think a lot of the projects Mozilla takes on are stupid (Rust being a giant exception, I love Rust). You know what I want? NWJS/Electron but using Firefox/Spidermonkey. I want to package desktop apps with Firefox. They almost had this with xulrunner but killed it for some reason. And I want them to build crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/ https://crosswalk-project.org/) for mobile, but with Firefox. The only real reason is that I don't trust Google or anything they touch, and I've never actually been able to build Chromium/NWJS from source (such a complicated build), which worries me. Call me paranoid, but the monoculture around Chromium creeps me out and I'd really like a viable alternative from Mozilla. Seems like they jumped ship from the packaged HTML5 desktop/mobile app paradigm right when it started getting popular.

jcranmer 10y ago
There actually was a fork of node.js that used SpiderMonkey. IMHO, one of Mozilla's greatest failures was its decision to more or less give up on embedding (for both SpiderMonkey and Gecko). They effectively killed off embedding in the process of moving to the train model back in 2011, 2012, but back then, the expectation was that they would have their 2 years of "let's kill our broken architecture." Instead, it sort of ended up dragging on how long it would take them to stabilize some APIs for embedding, and they certainly never bothered to try to maintain any documentation (I briefly attempted to maintain some client application that used SpiderMonkey in 2011, and it was a headache trying to find any sort of documentation on how to fix each incremental bustage, since everything that was found on MDN was woefully out of date). First, there was to be some sort of IPC-based embedding mechanism in Gecko. Then that idea was nixed in favor of just XULRunner. Then Mozilla decided it didn't want to maintain XULRunner anymore. For a period of time, they had a XULRunner-like setup called something like webapprt (which was basically a Firefox sans normal Firefox UI), but that too was killed off within a few years.
bzbarsky 10y ago
https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron is a thing, though not under active development right now.

buovjaga 10y ago

> They've already neglected Thunderbird for years, and now they want to start from scratch? If by "they" you are referring to Mozilla: they will not be involved in the rewrite.