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A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant". Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger visio
by qznc 9y ago
A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant".
Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger vision. What does Thunderbird want to be? The cross-platform Outlook? Then merge Lightning into core. The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. The backwards-compatible, easy, and secure mailer? Then merge Enigmail into core or make SMIME easy to use or get some Rust code in. The ultra-portable mailer? Then port it to Android and iOS. The super-flexible mailer? Then somehow help plugin devs.
- mi100hael 9y ago> or get some Rust code in lol
- ttul 9y agoNo. Add blockchain somehow.
- Silhouette 9y ago"Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant" Some of us spell that "stable and reliable" and consider it the single most important property of our essential day-to-day software. If it ain't broke...
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIn that case, we would all still be using Pine.
- moonbug22 9y agoSome of us are.
- wbl 9y agoI used to love pine but managing it well with Gmail was terrible as I would have to clean up the inbox and this couldn't be done automatically.
- bigbugbag 9y agoUsing gmail is a terrible choice. At the collective level it's taking part in destroying the internet and privacy.
- qznc 9y agoI'd say the difference between dead and stable is if you encounter bugs all the time. I find Thunderbird stable (only triggers a bug roughly once per month and nothing critical) while the Lightning plugin for calender functionality is dead (fails to sync with Google for months).
- Silhouette 9y agoFWIW, I do use Lightning all the time and only know of a couple of minor UI bugs, and at least one other person in my house uses it to sync with external calendars routinely without serious problems as well, so if there are serious bugs there then they don't seem to be universal. In any case, I'd much rather fixing this sort of thing was the priority for the project than yet another UI theme overhaul because reasons.
- bklaasen 9y agoThe order in which you install add-ons, such as the provider for Google calendar and Exchange calendar support, matters. I've spent too long jiggering with add-ons to get them to play nicely together. Once I have a functioning setup,I copy the profile wholesale from machine to machine. I use Thunderbird every day and have done for years.
- jimktrains2 9y agoI had to stop using Thunderbird because it became ungodly slow and just unusable. I consider that a bug.
- bigbugbag 9y agoI consider that a local problem that only you have. None of the several person using TB daily for more than a decade have encountered this kind of performance issue. What have you tried to find the cause of your performance issue ? Have you tried making a new user profile to test if your local profile got somehow corrupted ?
- 9y ago
- boznz 9y agoStable and reliable is why I use it, please dont f* it up guys.
- bigbugbag 9y agoI second that. I've had to find a non google replacement for firefox, I don't want to go through this again to replace thunderbird.
- zerokernel 9y ago> The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. Thunderbird has had a ML/usenet-like conversations view forever.
- ttoinou 9y agoWhich one ? The one I'm using is not that great
- Tomte 9y agoThat feature is... problematic. I am using TB as my mail client and there are so many things that work. Almost. So many things to configure, but not in the way that I feel would be natural. TB is mostly worse than Outlook, but still much better than most other clients.
- callahad 9y agoThreaded, hierarchical "ML/Usenet-like" views are great, but they're not what people are asking for when they request a "conversation view."
- notatoad 9y agoThunderbird's problem, i think, is that their userbase contains a large portion of people who value thunderbird for it's stagnancy, but at the same time get angry if you suggest that thunderbird might be stagnant. Thunderbird is the email client for people who want email to work exactly like it did ten years ago. that's their value-add, and it really should be their vision.
- kobayashi 9y agoAnd/or prioritize PGP support
- mixmastamyk 9y agoIt needs maintenance and minor improvements. Keep your “redesigns” to a new client.
- auxym 9y agoWhile this describes me pretty well, I have to admit an (optional) conversations view would be pretty useful.
- commoner 9y agoTry the Thunderbird Conversations add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-con... It resembles the old Gmail interface, and it's open source.
- Tomte 9y agoAnd you can't move whole conversations, for example. That's a huge pain point for me. It seems to be a totally different thing than the regular message list, and only some actions work in Conversation mode.
- bigbugbag 9y agoOr don't, as we have seen recently relying on addons to add missing functionalities may not be viable through time. Thunderbird will soon add support for webextensions, who knows what will happen of the legacy extensions further than short term ?
- hackbinary 9y agoLooks like rust is a requirement for the build process: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Simple_Firefox_build/Linux_and_MacOS_build_preparation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...
- jeffdavis 9y agoWhy is that significant?
- hackbinary 9y ago>> ... get some Rust code in. Maybe I misread it, but to me it sounded like Mozilla did not have Rust support in Thunderbird, but it seems that there is some already ...
- hockley 9y agoThis is just a focus group of one, but I really want to see two problems solved in email: 1) Trusted identity assertion: I want to know with confidence (at a glance) that the sender is who I think they are. 2) Secure communication: I want the visual metaphor of email (private correspondence) to match the reality of email. How great would it be if Mozilla lead the way to for email clients to adopt open standards to do easily do these things.