18 ms·

> we have 15 people hired and working on the project Honest question: What are these people actually doing? I haven't seen new features since a long time, but

by ktpsns 6y ago

> we have 15 people hired and working on the project Honest question: What are these people actually doing? I haven't seen new features since a long time, but Thunderbird seems to have reorganized one year ago (https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/), so they probably plan something big, like a rewrite of the software?

abdullahkhalids 6y ago
The roadmap is here https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap
- EMM_386 6y ago
  I'm happy to see that the Mork file format is finally on its way out ("Kill Mork" [TB78-TB91-TB2022]). 17 years ago, a Mozilla engineer called it "the single most braindamaged file format that I have ever seen in my nineteen year career". https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241438 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241438
  - flobosg 6y ago
    That engineer was Jamie Zawinski, by the way.
- throwaway3neu94 6y ago
  All I really want is a great conversations view like Gmail has. Sadly they only mention it in passing (it's blocked by global indexing).
  - tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    Depending on what you mean there are a couple of extensions which help: Conversations [1] and ThreadVis [2]. Thunderbird is slowly becoming less dated, but I'm not sure Gmail's UI is necessarily what email client designers should be aspiring to. The former lead designer of Gmail (and Inbox) hated it so much that he has put hundreds of hours into maintaining personal modifications. Now that's he's trying to turn it into a business, the marketing site is a bit more original and there's fewer strongly worded criticisms but I'm sure you can read between the lines [3]. [1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/?src=hp-dl-featured https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail... [2] https://addons.thunderbird.net/En-uS/thunderbird/addon/threadvis/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/En-uS/thunderbird/addon/threa... [3] https://simpl.fyi/ https://simpl.fyi/
wott 6y ago
I guess they are busy removing colours, removing reliefs, removing textures.
newscracker 6y ago
There are many things planned, especially moving to "web based technologies" for the client as a longer term initiative. The roadmap also has some work on JMAP support, which I hope picks up on mail servers too. One thing I'd love to see, which probably won't be on the roadmap, is native integration with Exchange and Exchange calendaring. I know there are some extensions for this, but none of those have actually worked well for me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Oh no, this means we're in for another Electron app. I don't have anything against Electron, but... Man does it get tedious.
  - xfer 6y ago
    Thunderbird is already using gecko. You can't do an email client for general public without html rendering.
    - sebmellen 6y ago
      I’m more concerned about the Electron/Chrome browser monopoly (not that Firefox has done itself many favors lately). Maybe they will pull it off with just gecko, that would be neat.
      - KwanEsq 6y ago
        They are just mirroring Firefox's (and thus Gecko's) own deprecation of XUL in favour of (X)HTML. Firefox's top level windows are now (X)HTML with XUL elements, and XUL specific elements and code paths are gradually being replaced with standard HTML elements or custom elements.
    - u801e 6y ago
      Given that the general public has largely moved on to web interfaces or mobile apps for email access, do we really need to render HTML emails in Thunderbird? I have mine set to display messages as plain text.
ajosh 6y ago
I've noticed that many of the linux repos are not up to date. If you're using those, you probably need to install it directly from the website to get the latest version and see the updates. The major features that have come out lately that I've noticed are first-party calendar integration and first-party GPG support. There was a calendar integration but I always found it to be a bit funny and hard to get working all of the way. I never had problems with Enigmail, however. Both features work much more solidly as an included part of Thunderbird. There are other, smaller features that have come in like having e-mail addresses in the To/CC/BCC lines be places into ovals to show them as a distinct, drag-able element. The Thunderbird codebase is old and is full of a ton of features, transforming it in a way that is true to its past and moves towards a better future is going to take time but it is coming along. Sure, some of the major features were available as plug-ins but they're much more solid now that they're built-in.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  I thought I had installed the flatpak for Thunderbird some time ago, but apparently I was wrong; I'm still pulling the RPMs down from Fedora repos. Those seem pretty close to upstream, however. I got an update for it just last week.
- lrem 6y ago
  First-party GPG support would be so nice to have some decades ago. By now seems everyone admitted defeat. Companies standardized on email as notification system for "you got a message in the actually secure medium". Humans standardized on using some inherently safe (but usually not open) communicator. Who is there still wanting secure email?
  - ajosh 6y ago
    This question (and the one above right now) are good points. GPG isn't really a killer feature right now. I likewise haven't needed secure e-mail in a while. I just happened to notice it when it migrated stuff over. I stopped using my Yubikey with gpg a while back. All of that said - I'm replying to this message and not the other because there is one use for secure e-mail that may make a difference: DeltaChat. Deltachat uses autocrypt which includes your public key in headers. With autocrypt in place, Thunderbird can still read DeltaChat messages. I'm not sure if DeltaChat will ever take off in large numbers but it seems like a decent option for secure chat/IM.
the8472 6y ago
Since thunderbird tracks the firefox codebase and firefox moved to webextensions that broke a lot of thunderbird extensions too. They mitigated the fallout. E.g. the virtual identities extension now is a first party feature.
arendtio 6y ago
Well, at first I thought the same. But honestly I don't really care if features are being added as long as they don't break too much. A few years, ago I switched to Thunderbird from Kmail because the KDE people constantly managed to break Kmail. I still use KDE as a desktop environment and while I think Kmail looks better, Thunderbird just works so much better (e.g. faster, better RSS integration, better search results) that I am quite happy that I switched.
Black101 6y ago
> Honest question: What are these people actually doing? at least they are not doing what gmail engineers are doing and changing the interface every few months for no good reason...
Jugurtha 6y ago
This is not a SaaS; this is an application built and distributed to more than 20 million people on their own machines, with different hardware, operating systems, installed software, different filesystems, upgrades, behind firewalls or weird networking, interacting with email providers and their particularities...
tlamponi 6y ago
I'm using the beta version and the changes are actually useful and, relatively, plenty. The one thing I'm currently looking forward the most is multi-process support, planned for Thunderbird 91, IIRC; It should relieve the hangs I sometimes get (having >50 GiB mails locally has its tolls, but oh well LKML, QEMU, ... archives and such are just nice to have around for me).

by ktpsns 6y ago

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

The roadmap is here https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap

EMM_386 6y ago
I'm happy to see that the Mork file format is finally on its way out ("Kill Mork" [TB78-TB91-TB2022]). 17 years ago, a Mozilla engineer called it "the single most braindamaged file format that I have ever seen in my nineteen year career". https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241438 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241438
- flobosg 6y ago
  That engineer was Jamie Zawinski, by the way.
throwaway3neu94 6y ago
All I really want is a great conversations view like Gmail has. Sadly they only mention it in passing (it's blocked by global indexing).
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  Depending on what you mean there are a couple of extensions which help: Conversations [1] and ThreadVis [2]. Thunderbird is slowly becoming less dated, but I'm not sure Gmail's UI is necessarily what email client designers should be aspiring to. The former lead designer of Gmail (and Inbox) hated it so much that he has put hundreds of hours into maintaining personal modifications. Now that's he's trying to turn it into a business, the marketing site is a bit more original and there's fewer strongly worded criticisms but I'm sure you can read between the lines [3]. [1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/?src=hp-dl-featured https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail... [2] https://addons.thunderbird.net/En-uS/thunderbird/addon/threadvis/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/En-uS/thunderbird/addon/threa... [3] https://simpl.fyi/ https://simpl.fyi/

wott 6y ago

I guess they are busy removing colours, removing reliefs, removing textures.

newscracker 6y ago

There are many things planned, especially moving to "web based technologies" for the client as a longer term initiative. The roadmap also has some work on JMAP support, which I hope picks up on mail servers too. One thing I'd love to see, which probably won't be on the roadmap, is native integration with Exchange and Exchange calendaring. I know there are some extensions for this, but none of those have actually worked well for me.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sebmellen 6y ago
Oh no, this means we're in for another Electron app. I don't have anything against Electron, but... Man does it get tedious.
- xfer 6y ago
  Thunderbird is already using gecko. You can't do an email client for general public without html rendering.
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    I’m more concerned about the Electron/Chrome browser monopoly (not that Firefox has done itself many favors lately). Maybe they will pull it off with just gecko, that would be neat.
    - KwanEsq 6y ago
      They are just mirroring Firefox's (and thus Gecko's) own deprecation of XUL in favour of (X)HTML. Firefox's top level windows are now (X)HTML with XUL elements, and XUL specific elements and code paths are gradually being replaced with standard HTML elements or custom elements.
  - u801e 6y ago
    Given that the general public has largely moved on to web interfaces or mobile apps for email access, do we really need to render HTML emails in Thunderbird? I have mine set to display messages as plain text.

ajosh 6y ago

I've noticed that many of the linux repos are not up to date. If you're using those, you probably need to install it directly from the website to get the latest version and see the updates. The major features that have come out lately that I've noticed are first-party calendar integration and first-party GPG support. There was a calendar integration but I always found it to be a bit funny and hard to get working all of the way. I never had problems with Enigmail, however. Both features work much more solidly as an included part of Thunderbird. There are other, smaller features that have come in like having e-mail addresses in the To/CC/BCC lines be places into ovals to show them as a distinct, drag-able element. The Thunderbird codebase is old and is full of a ton of features, transforming it in a way that is true to its past and moves towards a better future is going to take time but it is coming along. Sure, some of the major features were available as plug-ins but they're much more solid now that they're built-in.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
I thought I had installed the flatpak for Thunderbird some time ago, but apparently I was wrong; I'm still pulling the RPMs down from Fedora repos. Those seem pretty close to upstream, however. I got an update for it just last week.
lrem 6y ago
First-party GPG support would be so nice to have some decades ago. By now seems everyone admitted defeat. Companies standardized on email as notification system for "you got a message in the actually secure medium". Humans standardized on using some inherently safe (but usually not open) communicator. Who is there still wanting secure email?
- ajosh 6y ago
  This question (and the one above right now) are good points. GPG isn't really a killer feature right now. I likewise haven't needed secure e-mail in a while. I just happened to notice it when it migrated stuff over. I stopped using my Yubikey with gpg a while back. All of that said - I'm replying to this message and not the other because there is one use for secure e-mail that may make a difference: DeltaChat. Deltachat uses autocrypt which includes your public key in headers. With autocrypt in place, Thunderbird can still read DeltaChat messages. I'm not sure if DeltaChat will ever take off in large numbers but it seems like a decent option for secure chat/IM.

the8472 6y ago

Since thunderbird tracks the firefox codebase and firefox moved to webextensions that broke a lot of thunderbird extensions too. They mitigated the fallout. E.g. the virtual identities extension now is a first party feature.

arendtio 6y ago

Well, at first I thought the same. But honestly I don't really care if features are being added as long as they don't break too much. A few years, ago I switched to Thunderbird from Kmail because the KDE people constantly managed to break Kmail. I still use KDE as a desktop environment and while I think Kmail looks better, Thunderbird just works so much better (e.g. faster, better RSS integration, better search results) that I am quite happy that I switched.

Black101 6y ago

> Honest question: What are these people actually doing? at least they are not doing what gmail engineers are doing and changing the interface every few months for no good reason...

Jugurtha 6y ago

This is not a SaaS; this is an application built and distributed to more than 20 million people on their own machines, with different hardware, operating systems, installed software, different filesystems, upgrades, behind firewalls or weird networking, interacting with email providers and their particularities...

tlamponi 6y ago

I'm using the beta version and the changes are actually useful and, relatively, plenty. The one thing I'm currently looking forward the most is multi-process support, planned for Thunderbird 91, IIRC; It should relieve the hangs I sometimes get (having >50 GiB mails locally has its tolls, but oh well LKML, QEMU, ... archives and such are just nice to have around for me).