4 ms·

The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able

The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..

5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-applications could have been. It's still a "document" in the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more application-focused than document-focused. But instead we keep using a markup language that's designed for documents and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document way. Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses for rendering components on-screen.
codethief 3y ago
> The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant Are we using the same Thunderbird? For me it feels rather sluggish.
- ksec 3y ago
  99% of HN suggest VSCode is very fast, when Sublime exist. It is one reason why the other day we have a submission "Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened" Most people aren't latency sensitive. Or do not care about it enough. The world of computing has then settle of sluggish behaviour being the norm. As most are OK with it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933
  - FractalHQ 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure the apps do a lot more now than they did on windows XT. I wouldn’t build with Electron over something like Tauri+Svelte but I also don’t mind waiting 1 second for hundreds of great extensions and lsps to load once for a 4 hour session.
    - funcDropShadow 3y ago
      > I’m pretty sure the apps do a lot more now than they did on windows XT The question is whether that additional work is of any benefit to the user.
- rstuart4133 3y ago
  Sluggish? It's near instantaneous at everything, except when it's doing network operations. It literally does a keyword stem search on a 4GB mailbox in under a 1/10 of a second. That's the fastest inverted index lookup I've ever seen - all accomplished with just sqlite. I consider it amazing. It makes the old version of Outlook look like a dog. A one legged dog. And the leg is broken. As others have noted, as soon at it has to access the network it slows down. A lot. And it you queue up enough operations, it can get confused - particularly if the network drops out in the middle and it has to re-sync everything. But it is imap, so I forgive it. To get it's native non-networked speed, you do have to ensure every folder is downloaded to local storage. Do that, and it's amazingly quick.
pohuing 3y ago
Provided thunderbird is finished fetching mails. Why that is happening on the ui thread is beyond me, but thunderbird is always frozen for a couple dozens seconds after opening it after a bunch of new mail came in.

5e92cb50239222b 3y ago

What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.

tonyarkles 3y ago
I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-applications could have been. It's still a "document" in the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more application-focused than document-focused. But instead we keep using a markup language that's designed for documents and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document way. Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses for rendering components on-screen.

codethief 3y ago

> The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant Are we using the same Thunderbird? For me it feels rather sluggish.

ksec 3y ago
99% of HN suggest VSCode is very fast, when Sublime exist. It is one reason why the other day we have a submission "Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened" Most people aren't latency sensitive. Or do not care about it enough. The world of computing has then settle of sluggish behaviour being the norm. As most are OK with it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933
- FractalHQ 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure the apps do a lot more now than they did on windows XT. I wouldn’t build with Electron over something like Tauri+Svelte but I also don’t mind waiting 1 second for hundreds of great extensions and lsps to load once for a 4 hour session.
  - funcDropShadow 3y ago
    > I’m pretty sure the apps do a lot more now than they did on windows XT The question is whether that additional work is of any benefit to the user.
rstuart4133 3y ago
Sluggish? It's near instantaneous at everything, except when it's doing network operations. It literally does a keyword stem search on a 4GB mailbox in under a 1/10 of a second. That's the fastest inverted index lookup I've ever seen - all accomplished with just sqlite. I consider it amazing. It makes the old version of Outlook look like a dog. A one legged dog. And the leg is broken. As others have noted, as soon at it has to access the network it slows down. A lot. And it you queue up enough operations, it can get confused - particularly if the network drops out in the middle and it has to re-sync everything. But it is imap, so I forgive it. To get it's native non-networked speed, you do have to ensure every folder is downloaded to local storage. Do that, and it's amazingly quick.

pohuing 3y ago

Provided thunderbird is finished fetching mails. Why that is happening on the ui thread is beyond me, but thunderbird is always frozen for a couple dozens seconds after opening it after a bunch of new mail came in.