MCBastos wrote:
Interviewed by CNN on 08/07/2012 18:23, Rufus told the world:
BIll Spikowski wrote:
I agree that the Seamonkey email client "is already pretty much what
its users want" -- but that doesn't mean we wouldn't want something
even better, or at least have confidence that we won't be losing a
familiar tool that so many of us depend on so heavily all day, every day.
Well, I read the post meaning "Users are not really asking for new
features, they want stability and debugging, so we are going to focus on
it and add new features very slowly." And, to be truthful, I can't think
of a much-needed feature for an e-mail client, short of rethinking the
whole concept from the ground up. The last major feature I remember
being integrated into e-mail clients was spam filters, about ten years
ago. Thunderbird added some niceties like auto-configuration of accounts
(which were well received, but it's one of those things you use only
once a year if that) and alternate views of the accounts (no so much, it
was a bit confusing), and tabs (which I'm still trying to figure out if
they make sense for e-mail) but nothing really game-changing.
There's some work being done to offer alternate storage formats for the
messages, but that's one of those things that 90%-plus of users never
think about. It's almost ready, so it should land before the change in
policy becomes effective.
Differently from web browsers, where the standards are changing fast
(demanding new features and support for new standards) and performance
is a real issue (in e-mail, performance depends mostly on external
factors, like server latency), the e-mail panorama is not changing rapidly.
I can only think of one thing I might like to see - an integrated y-enc
decoder...but I could, can, and do live without that. I like what we have!
From what I understand, the main reasons for not offering that are:
1. It's a feature desired by a pretty small set of users -- the ones
that frequent binary newsgroups. And those tend to use specialized
newsreaders anyway.
2. Which would make this a job for an extension, not the main program.
3. And the yEnc spec is horribly broken. Even the yEnc *creator* admits
as much.
And all of that pretty much sums up why I'd like it, as well as why I
can also live without it...I hate yEnc, but for the times I encounter it
I'd like to be able to do something with it. But I won't cry over not
being able to.
I've fallen completely for the Sync feature, and have been dreaming
about being able to Sync address books across my computers. It's quite
a shock to hear the opposite, that the Mozilla folks are about to
abandon further development of Thunderbird, and by extension Seamonkey
too.
Well, I understand that there is a project going on to overhaul
substantially the address book, due to several important limitations.
It's likely that it will make it better suited to syncing too. But it
was still beginning, I hope that it is not scrapped...
On the Mac OS side, I'd certainly like to see the SM Address Book be
improved regarding synch/import with my Apple Address Book. It's
workable, but the interface could use some attention, I think.
The idea that webmail is clearly superior is incredibly absurd! I'm
glad it works for lots of other folks (though I suspect mainly because
they don't realize there are superior alternatives). I use webmail
often, and hate every minute of it....
I don't think anybody in the TB project believes that. But the habit of
using webmail is growing for several reasons, all of which make a lot of
sense for non-technical users:
- People accessing personal accounts from computers they don't own (for
instance, at work) -- it's easier than using, say, Portable Thunderbird.
- People needing to access the same account from two or more machines
(work and home, or desktop and portable) -- it's easier than setting up
IMAP (if your ISP even offers it) or fiddling with the POP settings to
avoid missing messages.
- You don't have to set up anything (see above)
- You don't have to worry about backups (and most people don't care
about long-term archiving of messages anyway)
Dedicated e-mail clients are becoming a niche product for heavy e-mail
users.
Webmail is slow, feature-poor in most cases, there are *still* ISPs who
don't allow you to keep messages archived for very long, terrible if you
have two accounts you want to keep very clearly *separate*. But many
people don't care about those.
Lately, I see quite a lot of people who don't even *know* there are
things like dedicated e-mail clients. They think of e-mail like a
message board, or Facebook. In fact, I know at least one person who did
not even have an e-mail account -- she communicates *only* via Facebook
messages (well, now she has one, if only because FB turned every account
into an e-mail...). And she's not a kid either -- her oldest son is
college aged...
We all need to educate them!
--
- Rufus
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