3 ms·

Would be quit thrilled to see decent powerful alternative to thunderbird. Will it actually support any open protocols like IMAP or JMAP? If you say vim-like ho

by riedel 3y ago

Would be quit thrilled to see decent powerful alternative to thunderbird. Will it actually support any open protocols like IMAP or JMAP? If you say vim-like how is the relation to mutt? ( Would really love to see a web app version of mutt actually)

riordan 3y ago
Likewise; this ticks so many boxes for me, but as a hippy-dippy non-gmail user I too have to second the IMAP/JMAP ask. Gmail absolutely hits that sweet spot of API capabilities and where the users are, so I can’t fault the project creators (or most every email client business these days) for building first (or exclusively) for it. That said, seeing Outlook as coming soon on their login page is reassuring that they’re building in a way that won’t tie them to Gmail forever. And while few email providers outside of Fastmail are offering JMAP support, as an API it’s much closer to the degree of functionality expected by anyone building on top of Gmail’s API today. A great new client that gives a big section of the public a better way to “do email” might be what it takes for more services to start offering JMAP. So hats off to y’all and fingers crossed on incorporating open standards.
- ElasticBottle 3y ago
  Hey Riordan, curious to know specifically what you're looking for? But right on about Gmail, it's much easier for us to prototype and test than some of the other clients. Also really appreciate the kind words! Means a lot to us at this early stage. Hopefully you do join the email list or discord so we can keep you posted on our progress!
  - simfree 3y ago
    Supporting standard SMTP and IMAP lets you access the whole universe of mail servers, from Yahoo to Zoho to MXRoute.
ElasticBottle 3y ago
hey Riedel, that's something we plan to look into (after we nail gmail and add outlook) as I personally have a mailbox on IMAP too. Do join our discord or mailing list so that we can keep you posted about it if you're interested! I've also never heard of Mutt sadly :') but couple of you mention it already so it's definitely on my list of things to try today! What is your experiences with Mutt so far? How does it stack up with other more mainstream clients?
- layer8 3y ago
  Mutt is the best TUI power-user choice (besides Emacs I guess). I’ve been using Mutt for over two decades. The one drawback is that there is no straightforward way to reply in HTML format to HTML mails.
ljm 3y ago
Plenty of powerful or unique alternatives were built and became popular over the years, only for them to be snubbed out by big tech acquisitions. Remember Sparrow? (acquired and killed by Google, turned into Inbox then killed again) Remember Mailbox? (acquired and killed by Dropbox) Tech incumbents actively stifling innovation in email. Meanwhile the actual email spec itself hasn't evolved for decades so you still have to write HTML like it's 1999.
- felixfbecker 3y ago
  The reason why you have to write HTML like it's 1999 has nothing to do with "the email spec" not having evolved. The MIME RFCs are perfectly capable of supporting modern HTML and even any alternative representation (that's where MIME types come from!). The reason is exactly the lack of innovation in incumbent email clients — Outlook for Windows still uses the Microsoft Word HTML rendering engine from the nineties and Google Mail's sanitization allowlist is so aggressive that it filters out almost all modern CSS and HTML. And of course, all these clients support only text or HTML. The most modern email client in terms of HTML/CSS support — by miles — is Apple Mail (on both macOS and iOS), which seems to support almost everything that modern Safari supports [1]. But you have to target the lowest common denominator (Outlook/Gmail), as polyfilling or progressive enhancement in emails are near impossible. GMail was once the client that revolutionized email, but then they started chasing after stuff like AMP for email and acquiring+killing other clients instead of just keeping up with standards. Email could be such a nice technology if Google and Microsoft evolved their email clients with the same ambition as they evolved their web browsers. [1] https://www.caniemail.com/scoreboard/ https://www.caniemail.com/scoreboard/
  - liendolucas 3y ago
    The problem if I understand correctly is that email was never intended to support embedded HTML but plain text (just as HTML was never intended to evolve to what it is today, beyond using it for sharing scientific information). I can't recall where I read it but sending a page to be rendered in an email is considered an aberration and one of the reasons to do that is for advertising/spam (and now also scam) purposes.

by riedel 3y ago

riordan 3y ago

Likewise; this ticks so many boxes for me, but as a hippy-dippy non-gmail user I too have to second the IMAP/JMAP ask. Gmail absolutely hits that sweet spot of API capabilities and where the users are, so I can’t fault the project creators (or most every email client business these days) for building first (or exclusively) for it. That said, seeing Outlook as coming soon on their login page is reassuring that they’re building in a way that won’t tie them to Gmail forever. And while few email providers outside of Fastmail are offering JMAP support, as an API it’s much closer to the degree of functionality expected by anyone building on top of Gmail’s API today. A great new client that gives a big section of the public a better way to “do email” might be what it takes for more services to start offering JMAP. So hats off to y’all and fingers crossed on incorporating open standards.

ElasticBottle 3y ago
Hey Riordan, curious to know specifically what you're looking for? But right on about Gmail, it's much easier for us to prototype and test than some of the other clients. Also really appreciate the kind words! Means a lot to us at this early stage. Hopefully you do join the email list or discord so we can keep you posted on our progress!
- simfree 3y ago
  Supporting standard SMTP and IMAP lets you access the whole universe of mail servers, from Yahoo to Zoho to MXRoute.

ElasticBottle 3y ago

hey Riedel, that's something we plan to look into (after we nail gmail and add outlook) as I personally have a mailbox on IMAP too. Do join our discord or mailing list so that we can keep you posted about it if you're interested! I've also never heard of Mutt sadly :') but couple of you mention it already so it's definitely on my list of things to try today! What is your experiences with Mutt so far? How does it stack up with other more mainstream clients?

layer8 3y ago
Mutt is the best TUI power-user choice (besides Emacs I guess). I’ve been using Mutt for over two decades. The one drawback is that there is no straightforward way to reply in HTML format to HTML mails.

ljm 3y ago

Plenty of powerful or unique alternatives were built and became popular over the years, only for them to be snubbed out by big tech acquisitions. Remember Sparrow? (acquired and killed by Google, turned into Inbox then killed again) Remember Mailbox? (acquired and killed by Dropbox) Tech incumbents actively stifling innovation in email. Meanwhile the actual email spec itself hasn't evolved for decades so you still have to write HTML like it's 1999.

felixfbecker 3y ago
The reason why you have to write HTML like it's 1999 has nothing to do with "the email spec" not having evolved. The MIME RFCs are perfectly capable of supporting modern HTML and even any alternative representation (that's where MIME types come from!). The reason is exactly the lack of innovation in incumbent email clients — Outlook for Windows still uses the Microsoft Word HTML rendering engine from the nineties and Google Mail's sanitization allowlist is so aggressive that it filters out almost all modern CSS and HTML. And of course, all these clients support only text or HTML. The most modern email client in terms of HTML/CSS support — by miles — is Apple Mail (on both macOS and iOS), which seems to support almost everything that modern Safari supports [1]. But you have to target the lowest common denominator (Outlook/Gmail), as polyfilling or progressive enhancement in emails are near impossible. GMail was once the client that revolutionized email, but then they started chasing after stuff like AMP for email and acquiring+killing other clients instead of just keeping up with standards. Email could be such a nice technology if Google and Microsoft evolved their email clients with the same ambition as they evolved their web browsers. [1] https://www.caniemail.com/scoreboard/ https://www.caniemail.com/scoreboard/
- liendolucas 3y ago
  The problem if I understand correctly is that email was never intended to support embedded HTML but plain text (just as HTML was never intended to evolve to what it is today, beyond using it for sharing scientific information). I can't recall where I read it but sending a page to be rendered in an email is considered an aberration and one of the reasons to do that is for advertising/spam (and now also scam) purposes.