Mozilla Downshifting Development of Thunderbird E-Mail Client 378
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla will be announcing next week that they will effectively be taking away resources from Thunderbird's development. Mozilla believes it's better for the developers behind the open-source e-mail client to work on other projects, i.e. Firefox OS. They claim they will not be outright stopping Thunderbird." You can also read the letter at pastebin.
Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah I've been using it for years as well. I've yet to find something not quite as annoying, though I've never really looked for options. Despite what the /. crowd thinks, it is popular with the non-teksavy crowd, at least those who got tired of MS and their OLE replacements.
Re: (Score:3)
There aren't really any non-niche replacement options for ThunderBird or Outlook since Eudora was killed by Qualcomm. I've tried several of the better ones, and they're universally painful to use.
It's actually unfortunate that there's not a binary compiled version of RoundCube, because it has a reasonably usable interface for a web client.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds to me like there's a good FOSS project in the making then.
Re:Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score:5, Insightful)
There aren't really any non-niche replacement options for ThunderBird or Outlook since Eudora was killed by Qualcomm. I've tried several of the better ones, and they're universally painful to use.
How many people use stand-alone desktop email clients any more? (I'm not talking about Outlook, since that is really as much a shared-calendar program as it is an email app.)
I'm generally not a big fan of web apps and "the cloud" as a substitute for native apps, but unless you host your own email server, you're relying on someone else to store your email anyway. Why not use the web interface? Email is simple enough that in my experience there really isn't a lot that a native app can do that a good webmail interface can't.
Re:Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm generally not a big fan of web apps and "the cloud" as a substitute for native apps, but unless you host your own email server, you're relying on someone else to store your email anyway. Why not use the web interface? Email is simple enough that in my experience there really isn't a lot that a native app can do that a good webmail interface can't.
I download my mail and keep a copy on the server. That way -in theory, at least- I can index and search my 3+ GB of mail in real time, across multiple accounts.
That said, I agree with many posters here that Thunderbird is the least worst email client out there now. Its search has gotten worse in the last couple of versions, and it just loses the plot sometimes when trying to connect and sync with multiple IMAP accounts on a flaky Internet connection (which, tragically, is the only kind we have in my country). It's prone to weird behaviour that causes significant CPU load and all too often renders it so unresponsive that only a kill -9 will put me out of its misery.
BUT... Outlook gives me hives and, while Eudora was once a genuinely nice app, it's fallen by the wayside. It's almost enough to make me go back to mutt, if they've resolved their clunky approach to multiple accounts, that is....
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Few people seem to be aware of it, but Opera has a very nice built-in email client, and you don't have to use it as a browser - just reconfigure the UI to hide all tabs, and dock the email folder window by default. It's cross-platform, too.
Re:Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score:4, Interesting)
In my case, I do host my own email, and (without getting deeply into the reasons why) a stand-alone client allows for moving and syncing mail across multiple accounts. Rather than doing a mass forward which screws up the dating and place in a message thread, I just move the original thread to another account in its entirety. I could probably write a script to search and move them remotely, but I don't know enough about the file formats and have no other reason to delve into the issue.
I like the cloud capabilities for syncing and remotely accessing messages, but I also want the ability to have and use a local copy of all those messages.
Re:Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score:5, Informative)
Why not use the web interface? Email is simple enough that in my experience there really isn't a lot that a native app can do that a good webmail interface can't.
There are several things.
#1 I like really advanced complex features like having multiple messages open simultaneously, the average web interface either doesn't support this or does it poorly.
#2 I already have half a dozen browser windows and tabs open if not more. I -like- my email windows have a different title bar, a different icon in the task bar, etc. Having everything open via the web browser makes making sense of my open windows more of a hassle. Plus if i quit the mail program, all the mail windows close. Nice.
#3 Hotkeys - yes some web interfaces have them, but its a mess.
#4 Attachment handling - web clients are getting better but it still sucks, and its far worse if your internet connection is ever less than perfect.
#5 Mass message handling... most web clients let you handle a page of email at a time.
#6 Folders - yeah yeah... gmail has tags and they aren't bad either, but like being able to expand and collapse folders within folders within folders.
On the subject of tags ...here's an interesting problem... migrate all your tagged mail from one gmail account to another one. This is painful as hell. I'm speaking as a Google Apps for Enterprises user here too... the paid version with phone support...
Only way to do is via IMAP,... which treats tags as folders. So if you've got someone with 5GB of email who is really got into tagging, and every message is tagged 3 or 4 different ways, IMAP sees it as 40GB of email. Now fortunately google and imap are smart enough to check message IDs and as each "tag" item is downloaded via imap as a folder, and then pushed into the new account folder where gmail converts it back to a tagged item it doesn't create duplicates of the message which is great. But it does still have to process them all as if they were separate messages.
Two small companies merged and two separate gmail accounts had to be consolidated...it took days. There was NO backend tool to do it "within the cloud", nope... every account had to be downloaded to a local workstation via IMAP and then pushed back up to the other account via imap... and every tagged item had to be evaluated separately for every tag on it...
Google provides a "legacy mail migration tool" to allow new clients to migrate data from your old email system to the new one via IMAP... and this is the same tool you need to use to move mailboxes between two different gmail hosted domains... or to move mail from one mailbox to another one in general (e.g. when an employee quits... although I think there postini stuff comes into play here too... I haven't gotten that deep into it...)
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thunderbird isn't a commercial product. It doesn't have to add arbitrary bullet points every 18 months so they can sell an upgrade. There is eventually a point where it's good enough and adding anything to it would detract. If only more software would do this.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is eventually a point where it's good enough and adding anything to it would detract.
They don't need to add new fluff to improve it, there is plenty there already that desperately needs to be improved. Just a couple of examples that immediately come to mind:
- Message tags have potential to be extremely useful, in their current implementation they don't do much other than color code your message. The dialog for managing the tags themselves was an afterthought, there is no way to re-order without directly editing the config, no way to assign hotkeys, no way to customize font styles other than choosing from a tiny fixed color palette.
- Rich text (html) editing is painful. You are always one keystroke away from changing your entire paragraph to the style of an adjacent paragraph. You can't define custom formats, or even edit the default formats. Even the "use last-picked color" convenience option in the color picker requires the same number of clicks as picking a new color.
- Editing the message source directly is another poorly designed dialog, it shouldn't be a dialog at all.
- The address book and contact management is another embarrassing afterthought, one area where you'd expect an email client to excel.
- Getting a consistent folder view is tedious, the "apply columns to..." tool doesn't work well and ignores saved searches altogether.
- Bugs in the account configuration have persisted for years.
- Some things open in tabs, others open in a new window.
I guess now that they've officially given up, I can start looking for alternatives instead of thinking they will ever fix these things.
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Editing the message source directly is another poorly designed dialog, it shouldn't be a dialog at all
This sounds tremendously useful, but I can't find any way to edit the message source at all. All I see is the "View source" menu item (or Ctrl+U shortcut), which gives me a read-only view of the source. Can you please explain how you get to a source editor?
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Well, that's another reason right there. Had all email clients stuck to pure ASCII, no formatting problems would have ever arised, and millions of man-hours wasted by playing with fonts & colours or fighting with unreadable replies would have been saved.
BTW, I understand very well that you can't go back to pure text only. The general public - once used to eyecandy - does not appreciate the advantage of a flawless information flow vs. pretty looks.
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Tbird will never be an Outlook replacement until they can reverse engineer the Outlook protocols.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)
That's what IMAP is for.
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Run your own IMAP server, and use something (fetchmail/getmail/fdm) to periodically copy mail from their POP server to your IMAP server.
Good timing for us (Score:2)
We've just switched over to Zimbra and all the thick clients are going away soon, so at least this won't be ammunition for the people who want to use Outlook. :P
Other options? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like Thunderbird (hilarious bugs like this one [mozilla.org] are part of the reason why), but it's what most people at work use on Windows. Mac users primarily use OSX mail.app. I also find the searching majorly FUBAR.
So now that Thunderbird is getting fewer resources, are there any other options? What other clients are people using on windows?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm using "Mutt".
Re:Other options? (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit the biggest problem with Open Source -- the dev's just don't understand the importance of UI.
11 years to fix a 5-min patch. Sad, really.
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What other clients are people using on windows?
You can try Eudora if you want wallow in some "used to be great".
Re:Other options? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The chronology here seems odd. Thunderbird certainly was not a torn-down/rebuilt Eudora. Qualcomm owns Eudora, and in '06 they switched it over to the same platform as (the already existing) Thunderbird.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope [mozilla.org]
The project is laid out on Mozilla's wiki, and I believe is considered a community project, but you'll notice all the drivers are Qualcomm people.
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Yea that one where the devs slam "wontfix" on it and it gets perpetually reopened. Since mozilla is going the way of ms/ubuntu/gnome and that bug caters to MS why am I not surprised.
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In Ex-USSR The Bat [ritlabs.com] is quite popular.
My friend used for many years the Foxmail [foxmail.com.cn] (but from the first glance I do not see where the English version is).
There are also of course Opera [opera.com] and Pegasus [pmail.com].
I have personally went through: Netscape Messenger/Tb, The Bat, Pegasus and Opera. But I have used them very very long time ago and can't attest to what they have developed into this days. Of all, I have used Netscape 4.x for the longest time and it was probably the best. Tb screw up many different things on w
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Opera has a very decent integrated email & NNTP client [opera.com]. Some highlights include good support on offline mode, GMail-style labels, and very fast search. If you already have a browser you like (most likely), you can ignore the browser part of this altogether - if you launch it as "opera mail", it starts up in email view by default, and the UI is customizable so you can get rid of all unnecessary widgets.
Re:Other options? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the hilarious thing about the "bug" is that there is an operating system in this day and age that can't handle upper/lower case in filenames correctly. I'm spilting the blame 50/50 between Windows and Thunderbird.
Although this is a problem unique to Windows, it's not really a Windows bug. You can tell Windows to do the rename in those circumstances and it will. Thunderbird was the one that barfed.
What happened was that Thunderbird was written to ask if a file exists before doing the rename. Windows, ignoring the case said "Yep!" and so it refused to do the rename. This is expected behaviour. The fix is just to check if the names are the same if they're both lcase'd, and to skip the existence check if it's true, then tell Windows to do the rename.
This isn't really the sort of thing where a bug report would be sent to Microsoft.
Not a big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a bad thing.
Let's start with the biggest reason: now they can't completely ruin it with a redesign. On an "active" project, you eventually run out of stuff to do. No new features to add, no glaring design problems, just boring bugs and maintenance. So you're eventually going to do some big overhaul, some big redesign, if only to justify being an active, major project. See: almost every major desktop environment. Sometimes a big redesign is necessary, but quite often, the change is just for the sake of change. Downshifting development means you don't need to "justify" your project's existence - you're just maintaining it, fixing bugs and minor issues, keeping up with the times. Because let's face it, there's only so many features you can add to an email client.
Second reason: how many people don't even use a dedicated email program anymore? I haven't used one in years (discounting the GMail app on my phone, that doesn't count). I just use a website, either GMail or whatever that online Outlook is. It's faster, and I *always* have a browser open anyways, so why not? Sure, some people will actually need features they don't have, or maybe just want a dedicated email program anyways. That's fine - Thunderbird still exists for those people. But I do not doubt that the potential userbase is shrinking.
Third and final reason: it's open source. If you really think they are no longer doing a good job with it, do it yourself. Fork it. Fix it. If you need help, you'll find people, as long as the work is worth doing.
Re:Not a big problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason I even use outlook is not for its email client, its all the other shit that it also does, none of which thunderbird does and thus I never use it
Re:Not a big problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha. Let's see, counting ... yep, I have seven different email accounts that I have to keep an eye on at least hourly, and a few more that I need to check less often. Gmail is just one of them. (No, forwarding them all to gmail is not an option.) I'm sure I'm going to maintain seven different web pages to dink around with each email - especially since most of the webmail clients don't do simple things like select and delete/move numerous emails at once, or drag and drop. Some webmail clients are truly horrendous (network solutions comes to mind)
Using TB I can move mail between accounts as well as between folders within accounts. I can use the same filters for mail coming in or going out on different accounts. And no ads, or tracking cookies, etc.
Re:Not a big problem (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know a single person - literally not even one - who still uses local mail.
Ah, to be 13 again...
Don't be crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Thunderbird is the only effective way to restore the functionality on Windows that Microsoft took away by removing Outlook Express, short of being frog marched by Microsoft into its own creepy cloud.
Re:Don't be crazy (Score:4, Funny)
Hey now, Creepy Cloud is my exotic dancer stage name.
Re:Don't be crazy (Score:5, Informative)
By removing Outlook Express, they did the world a favor. What a gigantic piece of crap that was. Getting double mails for no good reason? Remove and reinstall the offending account. Lost all your mail? Well, don't clear your recycle bin any time soon, or its probably gone forever. Just quit working altogether? That's normal for OE.
I worked for a small web hosting company during the time that OE was en vogue. Don't tell me about "lost functionality". That thing was and still is a huge piece of crap.
Did I mention it was a piece of crap?
It was a piece of crap.
Re:Don't be crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
By removing Outlook Express, they did the world a favor. What a gigantic piece of crap that was.
Indeed. In 1999 the Global 1000 company I worked for banned Outlook Express from the company after spending $5 MILLION on support and lost time by users, mostly dealing with malware that was tied to OE. To this day they do not use Exchange either.
Not all of us want web mail only! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have used Thunderbird for a long time, and am sad to see developers being removed from it. I don't want my mail in "the cloud," especially when the cloud fails. Web browsers suck for managing email, and the stand-alone client does a far superior job. I can have a back-up of my own messages, and view them off-line any time I want. Stop ceding your privacy, and power, to "the cloud." When it comes back to bite you, you will regret it. "Oh, you want to access your old email? We archived it, and there is a fee to have us reload it for you." Just wait, it will happen.
Re:Not all of us want web mail only! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you mean just like what IMAP was doing before the Web was ever invented? Great, webmail has almost gotten the basics into place.
Now all it needs is seamless integration of multiple accounts, easy transfer of mail between accounts, a standard protocol/API for manipulating mail, offline operation, a truly responsive UI, a way to encrypt mail without giving your host the key, timely notifications without keeping a Web page/browser open, ease of installation if you want to run your own server, and whatever else the Web-based toys are missing.
Apparently, by "better", you mean "lowest common denominator".
Part okay, part stupid (Score:3)
Well, as a Thunderbird user I don't think this is the end of the world, for now. It's not like they really change anything between versions anymore anyway. Email is pretty much a known thing, and the client gets the job done. There's not a whole lot of innovation going on for desktop clients anymore. Plus, fewer people are using them. The danger is that they so understaff it that things stop working and don't get fixed, but I guess we'll see.
Then of course I read they're going to shift the people over to something completely ridiculous like Firefox OS. Mozilla is really all over the map these days, and the product is suffering for it. Firefox OS is just a stupid idea that will never gain any real traction or have any impact, and most of Mozilla's "goals" these days are terrible. Pretty much any time they touch the UI now they make it worse.
At the rate they're going, the time to migrate away will be coming soon.
Re: (Score:3)
They get $300 mil per year from Google!
They should spend $100 million, and bank the rest instead of wasting all on dumb stuff like FF OS, or redesigning FF and a new version every two months.
Then, with the interest of the banked amount, work on projects that don't have a business model.
You know, because they're supposed to be a non-profit.
Thunderbird is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why webmail is bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Under the ECPA of 1986, all mail left on the server after 180 days is fair game. Law enforcement does not need a warrant, just a subpoena, and you'd better cough up the mail. This is because back in 1986, all mail clients stored locally. Leaving your mail on the server all the time was considered rude, frankly. It's your shit, take it and get out of here.
26 years later, people are encouraged to leave their mail on the server for years. Google even goes so far as to tell people they don't ever have to delete. But the law has not changed. It's still the same old ECPA which assumes you don't give two cents for stuff you left on the server for more than 6 months.
Tbird and other mail clients allow you to grab the mail off the server and delete it off the server and store it locally. Once this is done, and the mail is in your possession only, it is no longer covered by the ECPA, but rather the 4'th and 5'th amendments to the US Constitution.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Very good (and interesting) point you make, which I suspect most people aren't even aware of.
BUT, I'd also say that practically-speaking, I'm not sure how big a concern this really is for most folks? If law enforcement is interested enough in your mail content to get a subpoena to download/view it, there's a REALLY good chance that in today's legal climate, they'd have absolutely no problem getting a warrant for it either.
If you have concerns the law might look in on some "sensitive" email content, you real
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This is why we need to make email encryption more popular. Thunderbird is one of the best with its enigmail PGP/GPG plugin.
Re:Why webmail is bad. (Score:4, Interesting)
And as a non American, I support the above. My email archive goes back to the days prior to Gmail, prior to my current email address, infact even prior to using Thunderbird (it's been in Eudora, Netscape Communicator, Mozilla Suite, and Thunderbird variously over the years).
I keep the last month or so's email live on my mail server and read it with IMAP. From Thunderbird. On a half dozen different machines. Windows and Linux. All Thunderbird.
Every month or so I use POP3 to pull all the email server-side down to my archive installation of Thunderbird on my home server.
I refer to my archive about every month or two at minimum, and have already found value in being able to pull transactional email notifications from 2 years ago out of an archived folder, to help rebuild a mailing list that was hosted in the cloud (but where said cloud service provider decided to be nasty and delete an entire VM, plus backups, simply because they could, and not because it was reasonable).
My email archive is mine, it's on hardware I control, backed up by my own backup regime, sitting in property I control and subject to local jursidiction. My live mail platform is one I personally administer, that I can read from the several computers I use week-to-week using exactly the same software (Thunderbird).
I'm glad to hear Thunderbird will still have 'some' attention, though I hope the writing isn't on the wall. We need Thunderbird. My entire corporate office uses Thunderbird + Lightning (Mac and Linux clients) to talk to our POP/IMAP platform and soon, to talk to Zimbra. Zimbra might be a powerful web based app but it's still nice to be able to carry out work when you're disconnected!
Re: (Score:3)
Ah yes, the "If you have nothing to hide, why worry" canard.
>anonymous coward
But of course.
--
BMO
All Done? - But for Lightning (Score:2)
Lightning, the calendar - addon for thunderbird, is the only aspect of thunderbird development where I feel some work is still needed, but apparently there are no resources available for it. For years.
This may turn out to be somewhat offtopic, I'm not at all sure about the actual relation of the sunbird/lightning and the thunderbird dev team and whether the decision has effects for the lightning development.
However, thunderbird and lightning are so tightly integrated that deficiencies in lightning look like
Re:All Done? - But for Lightning (Score:5, Interesting)
Lightning is full of bugs. Its been getting better over the years - but its so far behind Outlook and Exchange. Its a pity, because a little work with this, and it could be a very good Outlook/Exchange replacement. Cyrus-IMap is a better mail server than Exchange in every way, and the remnants of Netscape Calendar (now with Oracle) is a better calendar server in every way - its just the clients suck.
These are some wishes from semi-enterprise...
Mail:
1. No auto-configuration. Why should users have to configure mail servers - configure it through DNS srv records. (Dont get me started on the current mail configuration - theres plenty of rants here already.) If the srv records are there, it knows all of the account details, just provide a username and password and thunderbird is configured.
2. The text editor is only a minor improvement from the original netscape (and in some ways that was better.) Have a look at MCE editor for ideas on providing a better editor (and its already in javascript for easy porting)
3. Plugin deployment is difficult.
Calendar:
1. No auto-configuration. Using Caldav means adding a horrible url for each calendar you want.
2. No way of administering these calendars. - Delete, rename etc. I can add new ones, by crafting a new url.... https://caldav.example.com:8080/caldav.php/username/NewCalendar [example.com]
3. No adding of modifying permissions on calendars.
4. No listing available calendars from the server. I should simply be able to list my own calendars that are on the server - and list ones available from other users, and resources.
5. Invites are still spotty.
6. Theres very little insight to when it goes wrong. no meaningful error messages - stuff just doesnt work.
Sogo is addressing some of these things, however, this should all be included functionality - core to lightning.
It really highlights some of the issues - calendars are hard, and because its a plugin - its in javascript - and thats damn hard too.
But its annoying, because its so close to being a great enterprise product.
Enough with this bullshit. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not an urgent scoop that can't wait for the official announcement in two days. The submitter was a dick for leaking it, and timothy was unprofessional for approving it.
Re: (Score:3)
This is not an urgent scoop that can't wait for the official announcement in two days. The submitter was a dick for leaking it, and timothy was unprofessional for approving it.
Bullshit. You do realize how "news" operates? It doesn't wait around for official announcements when there's a leak beforehand. And the nice thing about this leak is we get to see the internal memo, which is already plenty sanitized, before the even further sanitized announcement.
Re:Enough with this bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
The person who leaked this memo did so for a reason. He believes that things like confidential notices to Mozillians and planned press releases a few days later are part of where Mozilla is going wrong. The community should be informed and their feedback should be discussed openly before such decisions are made. The way that Mozilla operates today is more like any other large and secretive company than a community-driven effort. Which is, arguably, what they have become (at least judging from their revenue and the large number of employees).
Wherever you stand on this decision, the person who pasted the confidential message to Pastebin didn't do so out of spite, or because he was being "a dick", but because he's concerned about what Mozilla is becoming. Here's the commentary at the end of the leaked memo:
CJ
Public admission of the de facto state (Score:3)
There are bugs in the Thunderbird UI and elsewhere that have persisted for a timespan of years when they've been reported to GetSatisfaction and Bugzilla. (E.g., 'new' message status is handled very poorly and inconsistently.) Really this announcement is a public admission of what some of us could already see was true: Mozilla hasn't given a damn about Thunderbird since it was split off from the browser. Really that split was more about taking out the trash than making it thrive on its own. They've thrown in the towel at the messaging match to Microsoft and focused on trying to win the browser bout. I wish they'd just get it over with and fully disown Thunderbird so that others who do give a damn can do something with it.
I wouldn't care myself, and would have reverted to Outlook some years ago, were it not for the existence of "portable" versions of Thunderbird and my current reliance on that portability. I keep it and some other portable apps on external storage to ensure that my messaging history is always consistently with me regardless which or whose computer I'm using. I wish I could do that with Outlook and ditch the bad behaviors of Thunderbird, but the only means to do it with Outlook are all much more kludgy than the portabilized Thunderbird.
Downhill (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla jumped the shark when they replaced started taking design decisions away from programmers and putting them in the hands of "user experience designers" who are nothing more than glorified fashion designers. Mozilla's "user experience team" has 25(!) people on it (http://blog.mozilla.org/ux/who-we-are/). How many people does it take to design an interface for a browser? Every new release of Firefox copies more things from Chrome and dumbs down the interface in the process.
I like having a status bar. I do not want the add-ons manager, the preferences manager, or the download manager in a tab because I am using a windowing operating system with a high resolution display. I do not like being forced to wade though about:config because putting some semblance of actual configurability in the options screen is not in vogue. I do not want to have to install 20 add-ons just to get some semblance of a usable browser.
I ditched Firefox for Seamonkey. It is the continuation of the original Mozilla suite, based on the up-to-date Firefox code but without most of the stupidity (unfortunately, they don't have enough developers on the project to undo ALL of the stupidity that comes from upstream). It is also compatible with most Firefox addons (either directly or through porting which is mostly a simple find/replace affair).
Re: (Score:3)
Anybody remember when UI was was UI? (User interface)
If you want a quick gauge of the pretentiousness of a project, just check if the UI is called "user experience". What are they, selling perfume at Nordstrom's?
The average 15" laptop is 1366x768.
With 25 (!) people, each could be responsible for a 54x31 block, barely bigger than a large icon. Talk about bloat.
And they can't spare 5 people to continue with Thunderbird work? How about a simple thing like Assign Tasks? Languishing for years.
Re: (Score:3)
Mozilla jumped the shark when they replaced started taking design decisions away from programmers and putting them in the hands of "user experience designers" who are nothing more than glorified fashion designers. Mozilla's "user experience team" has 25(!) people on it (http://blog.mozilla.org/ux/who-we-are/). How many people does it take to design an interface for a browser? Every new release of Firefox copies more things from Chrome and dumbs down the interface in the process.
Oh boy, do I agree with you.
:headdesk: (Score:4, Insightful)
A few days ago I asked whether Mozilla could be counted on to remain committed to FirefoxOS, such that it would be a wise choice for anybody to adopt.
Just a few days later, Mozilla pulls resources off of their #2 application to assign them to the New Shiny.
If I had suggested that Mozilla couldn't even be counted on to remain committed to Thunderbird, you guys would have rightly laughed at the suggestion.
So, now I'm left wondering if Mozilla can be counted on to keep developing the desktop version of Firefox.
Somebody has dollar signs in their eyes over app-store percentages and emerging markets populations, don't they?
dear web browser developers (Score:5, Insightful)
(including firefox, chromium, and others)
please continue with your delusional thinking that a web browser is an operating system and that web apps are a sensible and desirable alternative to native apps.
i really really like having badly-written javascript code chewing up 100% CPU on every core of my 6-core machine doing ajaxy instant updates of data i don't care much about - that's so much better than having a reload button. all this javascript gives me all of the joy you get from the kind of crap code written by newbie PHP developers but running on my own computer instead of the server. brilliant!
i also love the power consumption from a constant load average of 8 or 12 or higher. and the 2 or 3 minutes of staring at the screen while the computer switches from one window to another on my core2 machine at work? sheer genius!
furthermore, i can't tell you how impressed i am that web sites that would have worked nicely with just fairly plain html in a tabbed browser now forces me to work in just the one tab because all that js crap just fucking breaks when you 'open in new tab'.
lovely! and totally "web-scale"!
keep up the great work!
Grammar Nazi (Score:3)
E.g. not i.e.!!
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
What more is there for email?
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The browser was perfectly adequate back in the 3.0 days.
In fact, server auto-discovery has made it difficult to configure Tbird on my systems, since I do my own imapd but rely on my ISP's smtp.
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets even worse when you have to get at your imap servers over an ssh-forwarded port. Prior to auto-discovery it was pretty easy. Now it's hit-or-miss.
"Just works" (TM) is great when it does, or when you need to do something slightly unusual. Then it just gets in your way. That's the thing that bothers me most about people trying to make Linux "user friendly", because it can only ever be "mostly user friendly" and when they do that they usually also take away the hacker hooks.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It gets even worse when you have to get at your imap servers over an ssh-forwarded port. Prior to auto-discovery it was pretty easy. Now it's hit-or-miss.
"Just works" (TM) is great when it does, or when you need to do something slightly unusual. Then it just gets in your way. That's the thing that bothers me most about people trying to make Linux "user friendly", because it can only ever be "mostly user friendly" and when they do that they usually also take away the hacker hooks.
Why I stopped using windows so often, too many magical things that happened automatically and me saying ........ noooooooooooo.... that's not what I wanted, but it was too late.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm having a flashback to when I used Thunderbird. The server configuration was a disaster. Instead of just typing in the configuration, which anyone can do, you had to interrupt the auto-configure at EXACTLY the right time and THEN type in the parameters. If you interrupted it to early, there wasn't any way to get the configuration in place. Thunderbird was the most annoying email program I've ever had the misfortune to use, and that's covering a lot of ground.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly. The browser was perfectly adequate back in the 3.0 days.
In fact, server auto-discovery has made it difficult to configure Tbird on my systems, since I do my own imapd but rely on my ISP's smtp.
It's definitely a pain in the ass, I tell you, but you can work around server auto-discovery. Set Thunderbird in offline mode, and auto-discovery no longer works. You can then go to advanced setup and set up normally.
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Integrated PGP support. You have to install some weird 3rd party plug-in to get what's been standard in other mail clients for a decade.
Mail is insecure unless you encrypt it. This should be the default.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what we said about browsers, but they keep screwing them up.
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
What more is there for email?
Oh, I dunno... how about fixing bugs in the Thunderbird UI and elsewhere that have persisted for a timespan of years when they've been reported to GetSatisfaction and Bugzilla? (E.g., 'new' message status is handled very poorly and inconsistently.)
Really this announcement is a public admission of what some of us could already see was true: Mozilla hasn't given a damn about Thunderbird since it was split off from the browser. Really that split was more about taking out the trash than making it thrive on its own. They've thrown in the towel at the messaging match to Microsoft and focused on trying to win the browser bout. I wish they'd just get it over with and fully disown Thunderbird so that others who do give a damn can do something with it.
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Interesting)
What more is there for email?
Something more for Thunderbird is integrated instant messaging [mozilla.org]. I want unified email and instant messaging in one application so I'll have unified contacts and search. The number of instant messaging services supported by Thunderbird seems like it will be limited at first but that will improve with time and perhaps there will be add-ons available to support more services.
Re: (Score:3)
Lightning support would be useful, yes, but NNTP? Why?
Just as IMNSHO email client are superior to Gmail, dedicated news readers are much better than Tbird's news reader.
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Funny)
They could do a ton more for their NNTP support..
Yeah!
How's Firefox's Gopher support?
Re:Tunderbirds are NO! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they dropped it from the base release about a year ago but it is still there as a plugin.
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Interesting)
And tell them to go find something else to work on. Firefox is officially trash now, never used thunderbird (but I don't know anyone else that does either so whatever) and I know I for wont be touching firefox os after seeing how bad the browser platform has gotten in the last couple years.
Firefox is the least ram hungry browser [tomshardware.com] available! Chrome and even IE 9 last year kicked Firefox 4 ass in on a silver platter. However, the quality is considerable better for their browser at least.
I installed FF 3.6 on a machine to test something and it was PAINFUL and slow to scroll and ram and disk hungry. I was so used to it for so long I forgot about what made Chrome so special in 2009 - 2011 when people started using it.
I still feel comfortable using it and if Mozilla fixes just a few more things I may just switch back to using it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
FF3.6 vs FF13 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so down on the Firefox team, but it seems like Firefox OS will have a tough climb. What's the benefit for a phone maker? Is it more open than Android? Is the HTML5 core going to make development for it easier?
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Insightful)
never used thunderbird (but I don't know anyone else that does either so whatever)
I used Thunderbird for a while. Had to remove it after I got mad enough at it. The rich text editor in it was broken - it refused to use fonts that I wanted, reverting back at every opportunity. Also it loved to eat ends of lines - all of them in one big bite. Start typing your reply, press END, press DEL and now the first line of the quoted text is sitting at the cursor.
Eventually I got tired of that and reverted to the Dark Side. (Or is it Yellow Side now?) At least it works. This is not the year 2000 to endlessly mess with MUAs. I want my email to work, and the best MUA to do it gets the job.
Re: (Score:3)
In any case, it should be a choice available to the user, and Lookout, by design, makes it almost impossible to do anything except top post.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that bottom (or inline) posters are much more likely to trim the quotes, because they have to look as part of the response
True. However we are mostly discussing business email here (where Outlook is the king.) Personal email is moved to Web-based MUAs long ago.
In a business setting you do not want to trim quotes. In fact, you do not want to mess with the message besides typing your two cents on top. Here is why.
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:4)
Thanks for that. People should be free to choose, even if I disagree with their choice. Outlook, however, pretty much forces top posting. It doesn't really give you a choice.
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefox is officially trash now.
I beg to differ. I always have Firefox *and* Chrome open, but I spend most of my time in Firefox. 1) Firefox can scroll tabs. 2) Firefox will open a pdf or other document just by clicking on it. Chrome insists on downloading it and littering my Downloads directory with things I don't want to keep, besides requiring an extra step to open. 3) I use a Firefox plugin to remove Google's evil link obfuscation, so I can open search results much faster and cut and paste links in a way that makes sense. Not to mention making my eyes hurt less.
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know why this isn't built in, but you can install this extension in Chrome to see PDF and PPT docs in a sensible manner:
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you *want* that? One well-crafted malicious PDF coupled with a flawed PDF reader, and you're SOL.
Firstly, I run Linux, not Windows. On Linux the pdf opens in Okular, which uses libpoppler, which has not had a vulnerability in quite some time, unlike the secret binary crap from Adobe. Secondly, there is no difference in security between immediately opening a malicious appllication versus first saving the malicious application to disk then opening it. If you want to slowly compromise your Windows machine with an extra few clicks, be my guest. I will stick with Linux, which doesn't have these issues thanks. And so I can actually use the computer in the way it was meant to be used, not the way the spammers force you to.
Think about this: any new vulnerability in Linux is headline news because it happens so rarely. Usually the fix is within a few hours and new binaries are available for update *at my convenience* a few hours later. With Windows, new vulnerabilities are so commonplace that they are hardly worth mentioning, and good luck getting an update from Microsoft in any timely way.
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Thunderbird is pretty good. There aren't many open-source graphical mail clients out there that work consistently across all platforms. It is a little over-built and quirky, like all of Firefox. But there isn't really an equivalent alternative, especially if you need a newsgroup client.
The main competition at this point is webmail. But for people who need a desktop platform, Thunderbird is an easy go-to option.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:They might as well kick all the developers. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but Seamonkey, like the current Eudora, is based upon Thunderbird. No more Thunderbird updates, fewer Seamonkey and Eudora updates.
Re: (Score:3)
With all the developers moving, they will finally have the resources necessary to change the Firefox UX all over again. Hurrah!
I would like Mozilla to put the "reload" button back where it used to be. What do you think, Mr Anonymous?
Re:I can't wait! (Score:5, Informative)
Want the "Reload" button back where it used to be? Right-click, "Customize", drag the reload button where you want it, click "Done".
You're welcome.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Want the "Reload" button back where it used to be? Right-click, "Customize", drag the reload button where you want it, click "Done". You're welcome.
Thankyou, so now I understand. They just moved the the reload button to a stupid place to force everybody to learn their new customization interface. Right, that's it.
Re:I can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I happen to know personally the guys who design the FireFox interface, and they told me that they moved that button specifically in order to piss you off. I mean you, personally, Slashdot user handle 'Tough Love'. They told me that. If you customize your layout to show the button again, I bet they'll switch it back, just to piss you off some more.
Re:I can't wait! (Score:4, Interesting)
My F5 key hasn't moved in years. Not sure about yours.
Re: (Score:3)
My F5 key hasn't moved in years. Not sure about yours.
Hardly a valid point then, eh? You either don't use the reload function, or activate it via the GUI since you haven't pressed the key in years...
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure Firefox OS is the right move either.
I'm sure it isn't, but maybe Mozilla foundation will figure that out faster than Googlers, who have a nasty ingrained habit of ignoring the evidence before their eyes, such as 99% of ChromeOS trials coming back with "this is stupid, why cripple the computer and brick it when the connection drops".
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox OS works fine when there's no connection. Apps are cached for off-line use. When they get another connection, they sync.
Re: (Score:3)
Firefox OS works fine when there's no connection. Apps are cached for off-line use. When they get another connection, they sync.
You mean it kinda sorta works when there's no connection. For example, if you want to run an application you haven't downloaded yet, or forgot to download, you're out of luck. Just one of an endless list of common examples of why the concept suffers from serious braindamage.
Re:It had a great run (Score:5, Informative)
Please no. It is the only client that does what I need (including handling seven to ten separate email accounts, seamlessly). It's not perfect, but it's all I got.
Re: (Score:3)
Shut up!
Re:Mozilla "Foundation" is a corporation... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed you are correct. The Mozilla Foundation is a corporation. Specifically, it's a 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation. As a 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation, our "profits" are measured in the amount of public good we create.
We invest resources for the benefit of the public. If we invest resources wisely, we maximize the amount of benefit we deliver to the public. If we invest unwisely, we fail to maximize the amount of benefit delivered to the public. It's our responsibility to always invest wisely so we can maximize the return for the public. Not doing so would be a failure to deliver on our mission -- our promise to the world.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed you are correct. The Mozilla Foundation is a corporation. Specifically, it's a 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation.
However, the Mozilla Corporation [wikipedia.org] is a private, for-profit corporation. While it is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation, as far as I can tell the for-profit corporation doesn't have to say where the money goes. For example, if you were making $1 million a year in salary, I wouldn't know it.