Well, this solves nothing. I don’t really know what’s going on with Thunderbird but it is looking like a piece of crap, the latest UI changes made it worse, a few months after the other revision that was actually much more visually pleasing. Is it that hard to look at what others do instead of adding random boxes everywhere?
Anyways, the worst part is that right now Thunderbird wastes more RAM than RoundCube running inside a browser with the Calendars and Contacts plugins. Makes no sense.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the article, my rant is entirely based on the title.
[a] Fork That Promises Better Features
Have they released anything yet? Or are we at the project stage, where they’re yelling at their CLI confused about git?
Promises are cheap, releases matter. I mean I could announce a project called Betterfox, promising to bring better features to a well-known browser. But in reality I’m by myself, overly ambitious, and going to leave the github page abandoned after the initial commit.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the article
A wise choice in this case. It’s 23 paragraphs that mostly describe standard Thunderbird features (as the author usually does not use email clients) and only one list with three (!) bullet points of new features in Betterbird.
Edit: to save you a click, here’s the list from the article (the actual feature list on the project page is longer):
Some notable features include:
- System Tray Icon (Linux)
- Accent Colors (for folders)
- Multi-line Inbox View (disabled by default)
I came here because of the clickbait title, ready to lambast thunderbird for the empty promises… But it turns out that they’re pretty clear on the specifics of what separates them from Thunderbird.
But I’m not gonna let that righteous indignation go to waste, so instead I’m gonma rip Sourav Rudra('s writing skill) a new one. Prepare your (writing skill’s) ass for a kicking Sourav.
Betterbird: A Thunderbird Fork That Promises Better Features
Better features?! Can I also have updated elements and improved aspects? Maybe superior components too??? Ah. A girl can dream.
Vague buzzwords and nothing more. “Better features” is not only subjective, but also vague enough to be almost entirely meaningless. Let’s hope the rest of the article does better.
Thankfully, the author included a shortlist of “Must-Know Bits.” I’m sure that’s a good summary of what’s to follow.
— Features many long-requested features.
I’m glad they’re finally listening to my request of compatibility with the Lovense remote control vibrator app’s API. Now I can feel good about receiving emails instead of stressed! They sure took their sweet time, it’s been long [time units] since I requested it!
How long and who requested? Or better yet, what features??? Why should I care??? Please, give me somethinbg concrete to grip onto!
— A more streamlined alternative to Thunderbird.
Streamlined! Wow! Is it also more efficient, and higher quality? Will they make it sustainable? Maybe it can also be more ethically sourved.
Could you be more vague please? This almost accidentally told me something about the changes they’ve made.
— Highly customizable, thanks to Add-ons and Themes.
Like Thunderbird? Like the addons you can find at the official Thunderbird site at addons.thunderbird.net?
Do they also plan to send and receive email in betterbird? Will it work with a graphical desktop environment? Will it be computer software? Or does the failure to mention these assumed “features” imply that it will diverge from Thunderbird in these key aspects?
Deeply shit lead-in. The rest of the article stands in stark contrast, being actually specific and informative. It’s like ol Sourav wrote an actually good article, then some idiot editor slapped it in ChatGPT and told it to fart out a title, subtitle, and highlights list. And then ChatGPT ignored all that and made the most generic tech article heading of all time.
FWIW, itsfoss.com: you should fire that editor for being a completely incompetent moron.
This doesn’t really seem like something that needed to be done. Thunderbird already has too many features. It needs less, not more. A bunch of stuff in the email client part is also badly designed. That needs fixing, preferably upstream, but I wouldn’t think of that as feature enhancement.
In linux it doesnt have a tray with mail count that sends a notification when new mail arrives. It’s a pretty basic feature nowadays to be honest. It didn’t even have the auto fetch every 30 minutes when I switched!?!! Like Thunderbird expected me to click on the sync button every 30 minutes. That’s not how people use email I’m sorry.
I agree that all those calendar and contacts features are completely unnecessary and that it could integrate with other tools instead, but the main use is lacking.
I use TB under Debian and there is a tray icon and an arrival notification, poll time of maybe a few minutes, seems fine. Showing the # of messages in the tray icon could be sort of handy I guess, though I had never thought about it before and didn’t miss it. Basic features = shut off the “email contains remote content” banner or “spam filter thinks this email is spam” (I can recognize spam for myself). I just want a preference that permanently disables remote content without throwing banners at me. And eliminate the client side spam filtering completely since I have that on the server side, and can manually flag any that gets through. Plus various other stuff like that. Yes, get rid of the calendar and contacts stuff. Biggest feature needing significant code changes: make message search not suck.
Does it have the new UI update that came with Thunderbird recently? Didn’t see any screenshots of the UI on their website.
