7 ms·

A Bright Future The Thunderbird Council is optimistic about the future. With the organizational question settled, we can focus on the technical challenges ahea

by frik 9y ago

A Bright Future The Thunderbird Council is optimistic about the future. With the organizational question settled, we can focus on the technical challenges ahead. Thunderbird will remain a Gecko-based application at least in the midterm, but many of the technologies Thunderbird relies upon in that platform will one day no longer be supported. The long term plan is to migrate our code to web technologies Mozilla dumps XUL tech from gecko left and right, removed proper "classic" mod support from Firefox... how is this a bright future. Thunderbird as a big XUL app is stuck with an soon to be not supported old gecko. And how is the plan to slowly rewrite it viable? Replication of the dated UI with HTML5 will be an even bigger clusterfxxk. We need a proper open source offline client. And it should have a modern UI with at least conversation view like Gmail. Wasn't there a HTML5 based email client in FirefoxOS. Start with that code and set up a new Mozilla foundation funded offline email client, and keep security support for Thunderbird until the new email app is ready.

tangue 9y ago
The HTML5/JS option is probably the only way out for Thunderbird but it won't seduce current backers. So it's a bit hard for them to say "Thunderbird has been abandoned on an motorway service station".
- zlynx 9y ago
  Well it won't seduce me. Who wants an email client that uses 600 MB RAM just to open and that eats 100% CPU to animate your email folders?
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    To be clear, Thunderbird is currently implemented in XUL and JS. Moving to HTML and JS is not going to significantly change its performance characteristics, mostly. There are some details that will need to be done right, like needing to create a good HTML replacement for <xul:tree>, of course.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  There comes a time where good sense means you have to kiss these old projects goodbye. It makes sense for Thunderbird to try to move to a platform that users actually want to use. Thunderbird is in the state it's in because very few people still value a "fat" mail client.
ChefDenominator 9y ago
IDK, I like that Thunderbird sorts without conversation. It is the primary feature I look for in a MUA. The only feature I find annoying is the search feature, which seems to be a universally accepted weakness of Thunderbird.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Yeah, the search is really terrible.
  - ChefDenominator 9y ago
    I'm thinking when Windows 7 expires in 2020 and I have to migrate to Linux because Microsoft hates having paying customers such as myself, I'll probably move to either Mint or Ubuntu and install a local Sphinx Search server specifically so I can search Thunderbird emails.
    - vog 9y ago
      Why waiting so long? Move now and give yourself a smoother transition.
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  I'm confused by its two search bars. It doesn't make sense to have two.
  - ChefDenominator 9y ago
    IIRC, the one for the highlighted directory uses regex (I'm really horrible with regex, so I don't use it).
  - doughj3 9y ago
    One is a global search, the other is a simple filter for the currently opened mail folder. I use both for their respective use cases all the time.
emodendroket 9y ago
Thunderbird supports conversations but they're off by default. But really I prefer the way it works now.
- lorenzhs 9y ago
  There's also https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-con... for those that have become used to seeing the content of all emails in a conversation.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    Doesn't work well. I personally like GMail-style conversations, but I couldn't use that plugin.
    - lorenzhs 9y ago
      Yes it's a bit of a crutch. I prefer it to Thunderbolt's default view, though.
jabl 9y ago
> how is the plan to slowly rewrite it viable? Last time this topic came up on HN, someone linked to a thread on tb-planning where the post-XUL future was discussed. IIRC the "slow rewrite" was considered unworkable, and the proposed plan was to restart from scratch using "web technologies" while continuing doing basically security updates for the classic XUL TB until the replacement is ready. As an aside, what "web technologies" exactly meant wasn't discussed. Is it electron? Or something mozilla-based like the servo + browser.html experiment? Or running a separate server process and connect to it using a normal browser (like e.g. mailpile does)?
- acemarke 9y ago
  I would assume along the lines of using writing the core logic in Javascript, using NPM packages to help implement things, and using UI libraries like React, rather than building everything in C++/XPCOM/XUL.
zeveb 9y ago
> And it should have a modern UI with at least conversation view like Gmail. Gnus nnimap provides a threaded, conversation view. It's almost definitely not what you'd consider a 'modern UI,' but I like it quite a bit.
u801e 9y ago
> And it should have a modern UI with at least conversation view like Gmail. I never really found the conversation view of email very useful (especially if there are more then two people participating in the conversation). It's hard to tell who replied to whom and you can't really get context if there are responses to multiple parts of the message they're replying to. I do have a strong preference for the threaded view that Thunderbird has now.

by frik 9y ago

tangue 9y ago

The HTML5/JS option is probably the only way out for Thunderbird but it won't seduce current backers. So it's a bit hard for them to say "Thunderbird has been abandoned on an motorway service station".

zlynx 9y ago
Well it won't seduce me. Who wants an email client that uses 600 MB RAM just to open and that eats 100% CPU to animate your email folders?
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  To be clear, Thunderbird is currently implemented in XUL and JS. Moving to HTML and JS is not going to significantly change its performance characteristics, mostly. There are some details that will need to be done right, like needing to create a good HTML replacement for <xul:tree>, of course.
cookiecaper 9y ago
There comes a time where good sense means you have to kiss these old projects goodbye. It makes sense for Thunderbird to try to move to a platform that users actually want to use. Thunderbird is in the state it's in because very few people still value a "fat" mail client.

ChefDenominator 9y ago

IDK, I like that Thunderbird sorts without conversation. It is the primary feature I look for in a MUA. The only feature I find annoying is the search feature, which seems to be a universally accepted weakness of Thunderbird.

emodendroket 9y ago
Yeah, the search is really terrible.
- ChefDenominator 9y ago
  I'm thinking when Windows 7 expires in 2020 and I have to migrate to Linux because Microsoft hates having paying customers such as myself, I'll probably move to either Mint or Ubuntu and install a local Sphinx Search server specifically so I can search Thunderbird emails.
  - vog 9y ago
    Why waiting so long? Move now and give yourself a smoother transition.
unethical_ban 9y ago
I'm confused by its two search bars. It doesn't make sense to have two.
- ChefDenominator 9y ago
  IIRC, the one for the highlighted directory uses regex (I'm really horrible with regex, so I don't use it).
- doughj3 9y ago
  One is a global search, the other is a simple filter for the currently opened mail folder. I use both for their respective use cases all the time.

emodendroket 9y ago

Thunderbird supports conversations but they're off by default. But really I prefer the way it works now.

lorenzhs 9y ago
There's also https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-con... for those that have become used to seeing the content of all emails in a conversation.
- bad_user 9y ago
  Doesn't work well. I personally like GMail-style conversations, but I couldn't use that plugin.
  - lorenzhs 9y ago
    Yes it's a bit of a crutch. I prefer it to Thunderbolt's default view, though.

jabl 9y ago

> how is the plan to slowly rewrite it viable? Last time this topic came up on HN, someone linked to a thread on tb-planning where the post-XUL future was discussed. IIRC the "slow rewrite" was considered unworkable, and the proposed plan was to restart from scratch using "web technologies" while continuing doing basically security updates for the classic XUL TB until the replacement is ready. As an aside, what "web technologies" exactly meant wasn't discussed. Is it electron? Or something mozilla-based like the servo + browser.html experiment? Or running a separate server process and connect to it using a normal browser (like e.g. mailpile does)?

acemarke 9y ago
I would assume along the lines of using writing the core logic in Javascript, using NPM packages to help implement things, and using UI libraries like React, rather than building everything in C++/XPCOM/XUL.

zeveb 9y ago

> And it should have a modern UI with at least conversation view like Gmail. Gnus nnimap provides a threaded, conversation view. It's almost definitely not what you'd consider a 'modern UI,' but I like it quite a bit.

u801e 9y ago

> And it should have a modern UI with at least conversation view like Gmail. I never really found the conversation view of email very useful (especially if there are more then two people participating in the conversation). It's hard to tell who replied to whom and you can't really get context if there are responses to multiple parts of the message they're replying to. I do have a strong preference for the threaded view that Thunderbird has now.