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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

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.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    Firefox 2 was released 14 years ago. It's perhaps time to upgrade your computer or to stick with old software.
    - u801e 6y ago
      I'm still unsure why certain websites result in browser processes using up substantial resources in terms of CPU time or system memory. I typically will search for "Web Content" processes in top and kill the ones that are taking more than a certain percent of resident memory or using more than 20% CPU time just to keep the computer usable. That's not a problem I recall encountering in the days of Firefox 2.0.
      - speedgoose 6y ago
        Firefox 2 had other issues. You don't remember that a website could freeze the whole browser and that it didn't have any thread or process separation between tabs?
        u801e 6y ago
        I do remember the days where there was no thread or process separation, but, at least for the set of websites I would frequent back in those days, it rarely happened. And, even then, it didn't render the computer unusable due to constant swapping due to insufficient memory.
        speedgoose 6y ago
        I think you should really consider to upgrade your hardware if a website can make your computer unusable. I agree it shouldn't be the case but that's how it is.
yellowapple 6y ago
> 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. Right, but even XUL has grown quite a bit since those days - not to mention that it's pretty much dead at this point. Still, something other than "yet another desktop app built around some descendant of KHTML" would be nice. There are basically four ways this could go: 1. Thunderbird spearheads a Gecko-based alternative to Electron (following Firefox in deprecating XUL) 2. Thunderbird throws in with the various XUL-preserving Firefox forks to maintain XUL as a Gecko-based alternative to Electron (since the Firefox folks don't seem to have any interest in doing so) 3. Thunderbird switches to some native-widgeted toolkit like Qt or GTK 4. Thunderbird switches to Electron These are in order of my preference. Option 1 also thankfully seems to be Thunderbird's current direction, though it'd be nice if it could spearhead the necessary documentation and niceties for other applications to use Gecko in desktop apps.
- brnt 6y ago
  Actually, the Thunderbird team throwing its weight behind Kmail/Contact, a client plagued by UX papercuts and a less than stable foundation (akonadi), but otherwise pleasant to use and portable sounds like an awesome idea!
- alexhutcheson 6y ago
  5. A rewrite in Flutter
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    That'd just be a subset (or perhaps an emulation) of 3, no?
    - ohgodplsno 6y ago
      Flutter is native as much as drawing on a canvas is native. While you could argue that Win32 technically ends up drawing on a canvas at the end, they still expose native widgets. Flutter just straight up draws on said canvas.
u801e 6y ago
While that's true, I've noticed that my installation of Thunderbird has recently started allocating anywhere from 30 to 40% of resident memory (%mem column in top), and it takes a very long time to switch tasks to or from Thunderbird. It's an older laptop with 6 GB of RAM, but I don't recall encountering issues like this on much older machines with just megabytes of system memory.
- ochrist 6y ago
  I have used Thunderbird for many years now, but it's starting to give me some problems, so I'm thinking about finding something else. E.g. it always shows the last folder opened as the windows title when switching between tasks, and filters are not always working as they should. Are there any good alternatives?
  - u801e 6y ago
    There are a number out there that I've heard of but never tried. Years ago, I used to use Seamonkey (which was a continuation of the Mozilla application suite and was the predecessor of Firefox and Thunderbird). I might try it again just to use the mail client :).
badsectoracula 6y ago
Eh, your roses might be a bit glassy :-P. I used Mozilla (the original) on my Pentium MMX with 128MB of RAM and i remember it being so slow i could literally watch the widgets draw themselves one after another whenever i opened a dialog window.
- gh-throw 6y ago
  Oh yeah, Mozilla was heavier than IE, which was heavier than Phoenix/Firebird/pre-2.0-Firefox. Plus FF had a popup blocker built in, which was huge in a way that's hard to appreciate these days. Very quick to start, pages (at least seemed to) load faster, no more popups which were like 99% of ad-annoyances on the web in those days, and tabbed browsing, all free and open-source with no ads in the browser itself (see: Opera). That's what sold it, originally.

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.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Firefox 2 was released 14 years ago. It's perhaps time to upgrade your computer or to stick with old software.
  - u801e 6y ago
    I'm still unsure why certain websites result in browser processes using up substantial resources in terms of CPU time or system memory. I typically will search for "Web Content" processes in top and kill the ones that are taking more than a certain percent of resident memory or using more than 20% CPU time just to keep the computer usable. That's not a problem I recall encountering in the days of Firefox 2.0.
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      Firefox 2 had other issues. You don't remember that a website could freeze the whole browser and that it didn't have any thread or process separation between tabs?
      - u801e 6y ago
        I do remember the days where there was no thread or process separation, but, at least for the set of websites I would frequent back in those days, it rarely happened. And, even then, it didn't render the computer unusable due to constant swapping due to insufficient memory.
        speedgoose 6y ago
        I think you should really consider to upgrade your hardware if a website can make your computer unusable. I agree it shouldn't be the case but that's how it is.

yellowapple 6y ago

> 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. Right, but even XUL has grown quite a bit since those days - not to mention that it's pretty much dead at this point. Still, something other than "yet another desktop app built around some descendant of KHTML" would be nice. There are basically four ways this could go: 1. Thunderbird spearheads a Gecko-based alternative to Electron (following Firefox in deprecating XUL) 2. Thunderbird throws in with the various XUL-preserving Firefox forks to maintain XUL as a Gecko-based alternative to Electron (since the Firefox folks don't seem to have any interest in doing so) 3. Thunderbird switches to some native-widgeted toolkit like Qt or GTK 4. Thunderbird switches to Electron These are in order of my preference. Option 1 also thankfully seems to be Thunderbird's current direction, though it'd be nice if it could spearhead the necessary documentation and niceties for other applications to use Gecko in desktop apps.

brnt 6y ago
Actually, the Thunderbird team throwing its weight behind Kmail/Contact, a client plagued by UX papercuts and a less than stable foundation (akonadi), but otherwise pleasant to use and portable sounds like an awesome idea!
alexhutcheson 6y ago
5. A rewrite in Flutter
- yellowapple 6y ago
  That'd just be a subset (or perhaps an emulation) of 3, no?
  - ohgodplsno 6y ago
    Flutter is native as much as drawing on a canvas is native. While you could argue that Win32 technically ends up drawing on a canvas at the end, they still expose native widgets. Flutter just straight up draws on said canvas.

u801e 6y ago

While that's true, I've noticed that my installation of Thunderbird has recently started allocating anywhere from 30 to 40% of resident memory (%mem column in top), and it takes a very long time to switch tasks to or from Thunderbird. It's an older laptop with 6 GB of RAM, but I don't recall encountering issues like this on much older machines with just megabytes of system memory.

ochrist 6y ago
I have used Thunderbird for many years now, but it's starting to give me some problems, so I'm thinking about finding something else. E.g. it always shows the last folder opened as the windows title when switching between tasks, and filters are not always working as they should. Are there any good alternatives?
- u801e 6y ago
  There are a number out there that I've heard of but never tried. Years ago, I used to use Seamonkey (which was a continuation of the Mozilla application suite and was the predecessor of Firefox and Thunderbird). I might try it again just to use the mail client :).

badsectoracula 6y ago

Eh, your roses might be a bit glassy :-P. I used Mozilla (the original) on my Pentium MMX with 128MB of RAM and i remember it being so slow i could literally watch the widgets draw themselves one after another whenever i opened a dialog window.

gh-throw 6y ago
Oh yeah, Mozilla was heavier than IE, which was heavier than Phoenix/Firebird/pre-2.0-Firefox. Plus FF had a popup blocker built in, which was huge in a way that's hard to appreciate these days. Very quick to start, pages (at least seemed to) load faster, no more popups which were like 99% of ad-annoyances on the web in those days, and tabbed browsing, all free and open-source with no ads in the browser itself (see: Opera). That's what sold it, originally.