7 ms·

The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. If Thunderbird builds can happen without in

The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. If Thunderbird builds can happen without incurring the expense of building Gecko (and there's no reason that shouldn't be the ultimate goal), then community contributions in the form of code changes would likely increase several times over.

tomc1985 9y ago
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! XUL is really cool. Still one of my favorite GUI kits. It is like electron (but actually native!) and had a good reason to be slow (spidermonkey wasn't super fast) :( XPCOM kinda sucked but it is still better than MS COM
- adjagu 9y ago
  I miss the old easter eggs Firefox had. https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.x...
  - sp332 9y ago
    about:mozilla still works.
    - DrPhish 9y ago
      about:about shows that about:robots still works, at least
      - adjagu 9y ago
        Thank you. I hadn't seen the about:robots page before.
    - cpeterso 9y ago
      and about:robots
      - adjagu 9y ago
        Thank you for this. At least we can hope that Mozilla's version of SkyNet should at least be human friendly.
    - adjagu 9y ago
      Thank you for this. I had forgotten about the about: pages.
- sp332 9y ago
  It's not that XUL was bad, exactly. But priorities have changed to security, battery life, and multi-threaded performance. The weight of XUL cruft that has built up over time was holding the project back.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    Do you think using XML external entities declared in DTD files for localization was a good idea? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tutorial/Localization https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tu...
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  How was XPCOM better than MS COM? Feature set? Nope. Tooling? Nope. Language support? Nope. Ecosystem? Nope. OLE components? Nope. Distributed COM? Nope. Doesn't trigger knee-jerk anti-Microsoft reactionaries even though it's a shallow clone of Microsoft technology? Check. Did you know that "decomification" was a word? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194385 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194385
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    XPCOM was better mainly because it was Mozilla docs instead of Microsoft. I was doing MS COM in a previous job and I swear MSDN is written in sanskrit
taf2 9y ago
I have fond memories of XPCOM and XUL... Back in 04 we had a desktop application mostly a collection of C++ bindings to the Firebird database and for silly reasons I started the GUI with Gtk+ but as we continued to struggle with porting to Win32 (like we sell this to people in Win32 not Linux) and I started to find a need to embed web content (cause like we should have written the whole thing as a web app - native apps are silly). I recall hacking the event loop to get Gtk+ and gecko to play nice in Win32. Anyways, XPCOM allowing me to write IDL files and expose my C++ work as JavaScript was at the time amazing and allowed me to quickly rewrite most of the UI in XUL and keep all the SQL work we'd done such that if I recall correctly we were able to port the application some 500k lines of code over to XUL. This was right before XulRunner... I still to this day feel good things about IDL/XPCOM and XUL for converting to see the light with JavaScript and HTML. XUL is just like a basically less well supported version of HTML and so is that MS markup language and event Gtk+'s Glade is just an XML editor for a UI... I beleive even OSX via xcode has an underlying XML format to describe the UI... and IMO HTML is light years ahead for UI.
- tzahola 9y ago
  > and IMO HTML is light years ahead for UI LOL. Last time I checked you still couldn't make an image fill the available space while keeping its aspect ratio :D
  - Cyberdog 9y ago
    img { width: 100%; height: auto; }
    - bzbarsky 9y ago
      That won't work right; it can overflow vertically. Consider the case of a 10x10 image in a container of width 500px and height 100px... Ideally you would want it to end up 100x100, but it will end up 500x500 with that CSS.
      - mikewhy 9y ago
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
Sweeeeeeet. Maybe they'll be competitive with Mail.app. if they could match the speed and design of new Firefox, and support loading a bigger set of past emails than Mail.app can without performance issues, i'd love to use Thunderbird.
dlandis 9y ago
> The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. Well it is only a six month contract for a single developer.
- carussell 9y ago
  Sure, but the big thing is the "serious" part. We're basically talking about the patch paradox[1]. At any point in time, someone could have stepped up and made it known they were willing to do the necessary work to move off XUL. But without a similar commitment from upstream to accept a future involving a mail client built on web standard tech, it would be a wasted effort. Heck, Nylas even built their own such email client, relicensed it to a compatible license (GPL -> MIT), reached out to say, "please use this" and ask how they could help, and still nothing happened. 1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2017/08/06/contributors-dilemma.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2017/08/06/contributors-dilemma...
  - nirv 9y ago
    There're many decent web-based proprietary mail solutions, and I was really excited once Nylas Mail showed up, even though it's Electron-based. And then instantly disappointed by its license. Later, I was considering switching to Nylas Mail when they re-licensed their open-source client, but turned out by "please use this" they still require you to opt-in with Nylas Identity tied to Nylas Cloud[1] They could only help replace free (from mail vendors) Thunderbird, playing by the rules of the Thunderbird. [1] https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/3484 https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/3484
    - carussell 9y ago
      > but turned out by "please use this" they still require you to opt-in with Nylas Identity tied to Nylas Cloud We're talking about Thunderbird development. When I wrote that they changed to a compatible license and reached out to say "please use this", that's not referring to their attempt to get users. That's a reference to their attempt to donate their code and energy towards improving Thunderbird. > They could only help replace free (from mail vendors) Thunderbird, playing by the rules of the Thunderbird. Huh?

tomc1985 9y ago

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! XUL is really cool. Still one of my favorite GUI kits. It is like electron (but actually native!) and had a good reason to be slow (spidermonkey wasn't super fast) :( XPCOM kinda sucked but it is still better than MS COM

adjagu 9y ago
I miss the old easter eggs Firefox had. https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.x...
- sp332 9y ago
  about:mozilla still works.
  - DrPhish 9y ago
    about:about shows that about:robots still works, at least
    - adjagu 9y ago
      Thank you. I hadn't seen the about:robots page before.
  - cpeterso 9y ago
    and about:robots
    - adjagu 9y ago
      Thank you for this. At least we can hope that Mozilla's version of SkyNet should at least be human friendly.
  - adjagu 9y ago
    Thank you for this. I had forgotten about the about: pages.
sp332 9y ago
It's not that XUL was bad, exactly. But priorities have changed to security, battery life, and multi-threaded performance. The weight of XUL cruft that has built up over time was holding the project back.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  Do you think using XML external entities declared in DTD files for localization was a good idea? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tutorial/Localization https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tu...
DonHopkins 9y ago
How was XPCOM better than MS COM? Feature set? Nope. Tooling? Nope. Language support? Nope. Ecosystem? Nope. OLE components? Nope. Distributed COM? Nope. Doesn't trigger knee-jerk anti-Microsoft reactionaries even though it's a shallow clone of Microsoft technology? Check. Did you know that "decomification" was a word? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194385 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194385
- tomc1985 9y ago
  XPCOM was better mainly because it was Mozilla docs instead of Microsoft. I was doing MS COM in a previous job and I swear MSDN is written in sanskrit

taf2 9y ago

I have fond memories of XPCOM and XUL... Back in 04 we had a desktop application mostly a collection of C++ bindings to the Firebird database and for silly reasons I started the GUI with Gtk+ but as we continued to struggle with porting to Win32 (like we sell this to people in Win32 not Linux) and I started to find a need to embed web content (cause like we should have written the whole thing as a web app - native apps are silly). I recall hacking the event loop to get Gtk+ and gecko to play nice in Win32. Anyways, XPCOM allowing me to write IDL files and expose my C++ work as JavaScript was at the time amazing and allowed me to quickly rewrite most of the UI in XUL and keep all the SQL work we'd done such that if I recall correctly we were able to port the application some 500k lines of code over to XUL. This was right before XulRunner... I still to this day feel good things about IDL/XPCOM and XUL for converting to see the light with JavaScript and HTML. XUL is just like a basically less well supported version of HTML and so is that MS markup language and event Gtk+'s Glade is just an XML editor for a UI... I beleive even OSX via xcode has an underlying XML format to describe the UI... and IMO HTML is light years ahead for UI.

tzahola 9y ago
> and IMO HTML is light years ahead for UI LOL. Last time I checked you still couldn't make an image fill the available space while keeping its aspect ratio :D
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  img { width: 100%; height: auto; }
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    That won't work right; it can overflow vertically. Consider the case of a 10x10 image in a container of width 500px and height 100px... Ideally you would want it to end up 100x100, but it will end up 500x500 with that CSS.
    - mikewhy 9y ago

kylehotchkiss 9y ago

Sweeeeeeet. Maybe they'll be competitive with Mail.app. if they could match the speed and design of new Firefox, and support loading a bigger set of past emails than Mail.app can without performance issues, i'd love to use Thunderbird.

dlandis 9y ago

> The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. Well it is only a six month contract for a single developer.

carussell 9y ago
Sure, but the big thing is the "serious" part. We're basically talking about the patch paradox[1]. At any point in time, someone could have stepped up and made it known they were willing to do the necessary work to move off XUL. But without a similar commitment from upstream to accept a future involving a mail client built on web standard tech, it would be a wasted effort. Heck, Nylas even built their own such email client, relicensed it to a compatible license (GPL -> MIT), reached out to say, "please use this" and ask how they could help, and still nothing happened. 1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2017/08/06/contributors-dilemma.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2017/08/06/contributors-dilemma...
- nirv 9y ago
  There're many decent web-based proprietary mail solutions, and I was really excited once Nylas Mail showed up, even though it's Electron-based. And then instantly disappointed by its license. Later, I was considering switching to Nylas Mail when they re-licensed their open-source client, but turned out by "please use this" they still require you to opt-in with Nylas Identity tied to Nylas Cloud[1] They could only help replace free (from mail vendors) Thunderbird, playing by the rules of the Thunderbird. [1] https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/3484 https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail/issues/3484
  - carussell 9y ago
    > but turned out by "please use this" they still require you to opt-in with Nylas Identity tied to Nylas Cloud We're talking about Thunderbird development. When I wrote that they changed to a compatible license and reached out to say "please use this", that's not referring to their attempt to get users. That's a reference to their attempt to donate their code and energy towards improving Thunderbird. > They could only help replace free (from mail vendors) Thunderbird, playing by the rules of the Thunderbird. Huh?