Updates in code base, interface, mobile development, plus improvements to the look and feel on Linux. Pretty cool to see!

  • 418_im_a_teapot@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’ve been an Airmail (Mac) user for many years now. But it’s been really buggy lately and there’s no motivation to fix the issues apparently. So I switched to Thunderbird about a month ago after a lot of research. It’s … ok.

    • Search is great.
    • Seeing stats/charts on my last 20 years of emails is super interesting.
    • Composing emails is not great, but I use a markdown plugin that makes it better … but it’s still pretty bad UX.
    • I hate the way it quotes previous emails with “>” for each line instead of an indented block quote. Maybe I’m missing the setting to turn that off.
    • I miss having an avatar/icon for each sender. It let me quickly visually scan my inbox for the person I want to talk to instead of parsing through all the text.
    • The spacing of elements in certain places is weird and inconsistent. In places where it’s too tight it feels cramped and bothers me.
    • You can’t compose a reply inline. You just have to use a floating window on top of the rest of the app.
    • I miss the one-key shortcuts to label and archive emails. This was originally a GMail feature and Airmail also implemented it.
    • Sending an email doesn’t happen in the background. You have to stare at a progress bar modal while it sends, and it seems to take forever. I just want to move on to my next email but I’m stuck waiting.
    • The tabbed interface is really nice. It’s definitely an underrated feature.
    • I wish it had super advanced rules like you get with MailMate. But what it offers is fine for 99% of users.

    Again, I might be missing some settings to correct some of these issues, so take it all with a grain of salt. But these are my takeaways after about a month of usage.

    • cRazi_man
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      3 months ago

      Search is great?

      One of my biggest issues with Thunderbird is that I can never find emails I want.

      • octochamp@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Search works really well for me. Definitely reveals a less aesthetic side of Thunderbird but it works!

        A works to archive messages btw, I’m not sure about a shortcut for labels though.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 months ago

        It has the most powerful search of any email client I’ve used. That was one of the reasons I switched. What issues have you had?

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        What a weird thing to read. I open my work’s email in thunderbird because the search is so good. Outlook is really slow when searching for something and so so tedious.

      • seth@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        This is ultimately what made me try out Betterbird. It has regex searching which imo every search box of every app should have as a basic feature. Plus it still has all the features Thunderbird has and even some that Thunderbird has removed in recent releases.

      • 418_im_a_teapot@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        In all fairness, my usage is still minimal at this point. I’ve only searched a couple of times, but the thing I needed popped right up. Maybe my experience will change over time.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Apple seems to have a lot more variety in the email client ecosystem than Win or Linux. One of those weird unexpected things.