6 ms·

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

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.
    - brnt 6y ago
      I wish it weren't so, but more than half of mails I receive are HTML only. I think it's passed station.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        As a technical user, how often is the HTML content actually useful to the content of the message? For some anecdata, I'm a heavy user of Mutt, and I get my HTML mails piped through w3m --dump for display.. I might have to invoke a web browser on the content once every few months?
oezi 6y ago
If they could finally make Faceted Search configurable to show a list of results and make that list matching your normal view settings (e.g. not threaded) that would be awesome. It is really a drag that it is always 5 clicks to get a view where the search results are comprehensible.
gh-throw 6y ago
A move to anything similar to Electron is gonna be the same to me as the project dying. In either case, I'll no longer use it. That's a shame. [EDIT] "but it's already XUL!" right but XUL-based GUI programs can run great on machines without enough memory to use Slack or VSCode without hitting swap, even if those were the only programs open. My source for this: I've been using XUL apps since the days when machines with 128MB of system memory were pretty damn high-end. They were kinda heavy back then, but basically fine. They're straight-up lightweight by today's standards.
- pitaj 6y ago
  Thunderbird already needs HTML and CSS for rendering emails, and needs JS for XUL anyways, right? So Thunderbird already needs HTML, CSS, and JS engines at any given time. Where will the memory bloat come from by moving to using HTML, CSS, and JS for the UI?
  - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    It's the culture of Electron and NodeJS/NPM and their programming style. Switching to Electron wouldn't require adopting those, but the practices associated with the "modern JS" crowd are almost certain to end up infecting the way that Thunderbird is developed just like it has infected essentially everything about the way anyone does JS these days.
- mplanchard 6y ago
  “Web-based technologies” doesn’t necessarily mean something like electron. Firefox used the same language and has largely completed their migration away from XUL. You can see details in the roadmap here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORqed8SW_7fPnPdjfz42RoGfWH5Gn4RMKKFPaPrGpZo https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORqed8SW_7fPnPdjfz42RoGf...
  - gh-throw 6y ago
    I definitely don't consider Firefox's resource use (battery, CPU, memory) something to aim for. Pre 2.0 Firefox? Hell yes, it was part of what got everyone on it in the first place. After 2.0, when it started to bloat rapidly for unclear reasons? Not so much.
merb 6y ago
why evenn care about JMAP. better support EWS/ActiveSync. JMAP is still in such an early stage and no matter if proprietary or not, there is still no protocol out there that does the same things than EWS/ActiveSync.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  That seems like a lot of duplicated effort when Davmail exists. I'd much prefer to see them supporting a decent new protocol than throwing resources at chasing legacy use cases like EWS that's not going to be used by a significant portion of their target market anyways. I don't mean this to be dismissive, I mean that EWS is a massive moving target that will require a significant allocation of resources that would, IMO, be better spent on other things.
  - merb 6y ago
    davmail is a huge waste of resources and in 2022 it won't work as well as it did on a server.

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.
  - brnt 6y ago
    I wish it weren't so, but more than half of mails I receive are HTML only. I think it's passed station.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      As a technical user, how often is the HTML content actually useful to the content of the message? For some anecdata, I'm a heavy user of Mutt, and I get my HTML mails piped through w3m --dump for display.. I might have to invoke a web browser on the content once every few months?

oezi 6y ago

If they could finally make Faceted Search configurable to show a list of results and make that list matching your normal view settings (e.g. not threaded) that would be awesome. It is really a drag that it is always 5 clicks to get a view where the search results are comprehensible.

gh-throw 6y ago

A move to anything similar to Electron is gonna be the same to me as the project dying. In either case, I'll no longer use it. That's a shame. [EDIT] "but it's already XUL!" right but XUL-based GUI programs can run great on machines without enough memory to use Slack or VSCode without hitting swap, even if those were the only programs open. My source for this: I've been using XUL apps since the days when machines with 128MB of system memory were pretty damn high-end. They were kinda heavy back then, but basically fine. They're straight-up lightweight by today's standards.

pitaj 6y ago
Thunderbird already needs HTML and CSS for rendering emails, and needs JS for XUL anyways, right? So Thunderbird already needs HTML, CSS, and JS engines at any given time. Where will the memory bloat come from by moving to using HTML, CSS, and JS for the UI?
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  It's the culture of Electron and NodeJS/NPM and their programming style. Switching to Electron wouldn't require adopting those, but the practices associated with the "modern JS" crowd are almost certain to end up infecting the way that Thunderbird is developed just like it has infected essentially everything about the way anyone does JS these days.
mplanchard 6y ago
“Web-based technologies” doesn’t necessarily mean something like electron. Firefox used the same language and has largely completed their migration away from XUL. You can see details in the roadmap here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORqed8SW_7fPnPdjfz42RoGfWH5Gn4RMKKFPaPrGpZo https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORqed8SW_7fPnPdjfz42RoGf...
- gh-throw 6y ago
  I definitely don't consider Firefox's resource use (battery, CPU, memory) something to aim for. Pre 2.0 Firefox? Hell yes, it was part of what got everyone on it in the first place. After 2.0, when it started to bloat rapidly for unclear reasons? Not so much.

merb 6y ago

why evenn care about JMAP. better support EWS/ActiveSync. JMAP is still in such an early stage and no matter if proprietary or not, there is still no protocol out there that does the same things than EWS/ActiveSync.

Karunamon 6y ago
That seems like a lot of duplicated effort when Davmail exists. I'd much prefer to see them supporting a decent new protocol than throwing resources at chasing legacy use cases like EWS that's not going to be used by a significant portion of their target market anyways. I don't mean this to be dismissive, I mean that EWS is a massive moving target that will require a significant allocation of resources that would, IMO, be better spent on other things.
- merb 6y ago
  davmail is a huge waste of resources and in 2022 it won't work as well as it did on a server.