
Thunderbird Usage Continues to Grow - wodenokoto
https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/
======
1wd
Thunderbird is great. I use it daily since over 12 years. I do have some
issues though:

* The ''Compose Email'' editor is weird. Especially for hyperlinks. Why is it so hard to check the URL of links? (No tooltip? No statusbar hint? Not even a right click menu to copy or open the link in Firefox?)[1]

* Font size handling is also quite weird. [2]

* But you can't ''View Source'' from compose email editor. (You have to save a draft and view source from there.)

* Getting the ''Compose Email'' editor in a tab instead of a window would be great too. (Is the Compose Email editor really the only thing still written in C and nobody wants to touch it?)

* Following authenticated RSS feeds theoretically works, but is completely unusable. [3]

Still one of my favorite applications. Many thanks to anyone spending time to
keep it alive and improve it further.

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457300](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457300)
[2]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=782215](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=782215)
[3]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=267203](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=267203)

~~~
moe
Having looked at it again today after about 8 years:

* The onboarding experience is horrible; tries to sell me a gandi email account, then the setup wizard fails with an opaque error. Had to abort and configure manually.

* Setting a reasonable font-size on Retina requires a 3rd party plugin and results in the GUI getting garbled bad; overlapping items, truncated labels, unusable dialogs etc. Sorry but 12px is not a reasonable font-size in 2015.

* The default conversation view seems to be some kind of in-joke, it only shows the first few hundred chars of each message. A semi-reasonable conversation view can be bolted on with another 3rd party plugin but it feels rough (flickering redraws, ugh).

* Forwarding multiple messages inline is still not possible.

* Search has improved a lot.

* Fully disabling HTML mail is still an exercise in frustration.

* A whole bunch of "wtf" was enabled by default (Silverlight plugin, Flash plugin)

* During setup it tried to connect to about 8 different domains (mozilla.org, CDNs, whatever other crap), none of which was my mailserver. It should not do that.

All that said. It's still one of the best (if not the best) GUI mail clients
available. That's how bad the competition is...

~~~
jcranmer
> * Fully disabling HTML mail is still an exercise in frustration.

Shouldn't View > Message Body As > Simple Text do that for you?

~~~
ddebernardy
Doubtful. If the parent poster is worried about privacy and security, he wants
to configure it so as to always read emails as plain text without ever loading
images.

~~~
jcranmer
Um... that's what the option does: it refuses to display HTML; if no plain
text part is given, the HTML parts are converted to plain text for display.

If you're only worried about http image bugs, TB disables all remote content
loading by default.

------
Kenji
I've been using Thunderbird for almost 10 years now and I literally never had
a crash or unexpected behaviour. Once the e-mail accounts are created,
everything just works. Software that is this pleasant to use is very rare. It
is the only reasonable free e-mail client that I know of. Why I use
thunderbird and not a web based client? I have multiple e-mail addresses and
it's nice to have everything in one place, also it's accessible if you're
offline.

My only nitpick about Thunderbird: If you want to search for a message, you
have to go through the menus "Edit->Find". I don't like that for two reasons,
a search is not an operation that edits anything so that's really a wrong
classification. And searching is not equal to finding. Maybe my search has no
results. "Find" is the wrong word here (the equality of searching and finding
is a very widespread misconception in software).

~~~
w1ntermute
> Why I use thunderbird and not a web based client? I have multiple e-mail
> addresses and it's nice to have everything in one place, also it's
> accessible if you're offline.

This is quite easy to do in Gmail (and presumably other webmail clients) with
forwarding.

~~~
stormbrew
Yeah? Now reply to someone with the appropriate From/Reply-To addresses from
that mashed up gmail account. Thunderbird does this seamlessly, figuring it
out from who the email was To if possible. That's why I still use it.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Now reply to someone with the appropriate From/Reply-To addresses from that
> mashed up gmail account. Thunderbird does this seamlessly, figuring it out
> from who the email was To if possible.

The Gmail web app can do the exact same thing:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22377?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22377?hl=en)

~~~
stormbrew
Fair enough. I wonder when they added this, it definitely didn't used to be
able to do that.

~~~
w1ntermute
It's 5+ years old. I've been using it since at least the late 2000s.

------
smtddr
Thunderbird is my go-to client in any company I work at if I can figure out
how to make it work.

For those of you at companies with newer Outlook exchange servers
_([http://i.imgur.com/J31q7xo.png](http://i.imgur.com/J31q7xo.png) )_ or the
even newest-newer
_([http://i.imgur.com/7eX8S1e.png](http://i.imgur.com/7eX8S1e.png) )_, get
davmail proxy server.
[http://davmail.sourceforge.net/](http://davmail.sourceforge.net/) ...and you
have to get the Lightning plugin to handle the exchange-calendar stuff.

____

Disclaimer: Don't ask me about how trustworthy davmail is with handling full
access to you email account. I just know a lot of people use it and I've never
heard negative. Though honestly, I wish mozilla would just acquire the project
and provide a verified source & binary on their site. Or just do whatever
davmail is doing directly in the thunderbird code.

~~~
stephen
+1 to davmail proxy; it is incredibly important to my productivity. I actually
donated some money to the developer, but I should do it again.

The davmail code even handles Outlook having two-factor auth enabled, e.g.
it'll recognize the extra form field, ask you to enter your token once, and
then keep the session open, just like keeping the webapp loaded in your
browser tab.

------
Yetanfou
I've used both Firefox and Thunderbird, but ended up 'moving back' to
Seamonkey. My reasons for this move were the rather heavy load the combination
of FF and TB puts on my - older - hardware as well as the fact that SM is more
or less up to par with FF and TB while offering some 'convenience'
functionality (eg. CTRL-2 opens mail from within browser, CTRL-1 opens browser
from within mail). Another advantage SM has is that it supports the 'original'
FF sync (which I use in combination with the Owncloud 'Mozilla Sync' app)
without the need to jump through hoops. It also has a 'normal' preferences
dialog, normal tabs, normal... everything. In other words, it did not succumb
to the 'Chrome copy' trend which FF embarked upon.

Seamonkey happily provides me access to my mail (several accounts), dozens of
open tabs in several browser windows and more in about 500MB of RSS. Firefox
and Thunderbird together would use almost double that. While this might not
matter on a recent system with 8+GB of memory, on this Thinkpad T42p with a
maximum of 2GB it is a significant difference.

~~~
asutherland
In general I'd advise against using the MailNews portion of SeaMonkey if
you're also using the profile for web browsing. (MailNews is the guts of
Thunderbird.)

MailNews results in a non-trivial amount of main-thread I/O that is going to
badly jank your browser experience. The good news is that the worst of it will
be when using the MailNews-related UI like switching folders for display, but
it's still going to have an impact.

~~~
Yetanfou
Although I'm close to ambidextrous, I have yet to manage the art of actively
browsing the web while actively switching folders in the mail clients. Maybe
if I had two keyboards attached to this machine it'd work, but I don't really
feel the urge to try.

In other words, while theoretically a problem, in practice I don't see this as
a viable reason to refrain from using both mail and browser in the same
process space, ie. Seamonkey, not even on a relatively under-powered (1.8GHz
Pentium M) machine.

------
addicted44
When I was looking for a new Mail client a few months ago, I wanted to pick
Thunderbird, but did not because I believe I read that Mozilla was sunsetting
it which is why I did not go for it. Is that not true? It was extremely
disappointing news since Thunderbird was an awesome mail client and with the
recent interest in mail clients, I thought it was a great opportunity for
Mozilla to provide an O/S alternative to the Mailbox, Sparrows and Outlooks of
the world.

~~~
wjoe
Mozilla stopped actively developing Thunderbird a few years ago. It's still
being maintained by a small group of developers, but it hasn't received any
significant new features in some time, and mostly just gets maintenance and
bug fixes. That said, they have did commit to adding more developers to the
project a few months ago, and do have some plans for new features in the next
few months - [https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2014/11/thunderbird-
reo...](https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2014/11/thunderbird-reorganizes-
at-2014-toronto-summit/)

~~~
mlinksva
That blog post is very informative and encouraging!

------
rdtsc
Love my thunderbird. It is the unsung hero of open source projects. Not as
visible and spoken about as web browsers, kernels or games.

Works on Windows, works on CentOS, works on Ubuntu. Never crashes. Gets steady
improvement since forever.

~~~
qznc
Crashes once a month for me. I could not even setup an account [0] until I
found a weird workaround. Anecdotes ...

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1069244](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1069244)

------
xiaq
> Germany has long been our #1 country for usage

I also heard that Firefox enjoys a major market share in Germany (a not-that-
reliable source is [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Internet-Explorers-market-
share-...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Internet-Explorers-market-share-so-
small-in-Germany?share=1)). I even heard from a fellow German university
student that "everyone [in Germany] uses Firefox" \- obviously an
exaggeration, but there must be some truth in it.

Anyone has an explanation (preferably backed by data) for the popularity of
Mozilla software in Germany?

~~~
fdsary
I'm a foreigner living in Germany, and can tell you this is true. 'Everyone'
uses Firefox.

They also really like these 2-click-social-media-buttons, because it
apparently gives better privacy (load the tracking/tweeting/liking script upon
the click of a button, and when clicking again run the like/tweet function)
[http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Fuer-mehr-
Datenschutz...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Fuer-mehr-Datenschutz-
Neue-Version-der-2-Klick-Empfehlungsbuttons-2101045.html).

Which seems like security theatre to me. Why not just load the script on the
first click, and then run the tweet function immediately after?

~~~
untog
_Why not just load the script on the first click, and then run the tweet
function immediately after?_

Because the tweet function invokes a pop-up window, which browsers won't allow
unless attached to a click function.

------
reuven
I have been using Thunderbird for many years now. Previously, I was using
Emacs for e-mail, but realized that I needed something that supported HTML.
Also, I was switching from Linux to the Mac, and I wasn't sure if I would ever
switch back -- and thus not only wanted an open-source solution, but also one
that was cross-platform.

Overall, I'm quite satisfied. The program is solid, the interface is good, and
it does a great job of handling the many messages I both send and receive each
day. It's smart about handling being off-line, many different accounts, and my
other needs. Searching for messages within a particular mailbox (which I do a
lot of) is fast and easy.

I realize that it's in vogue for everyone to use and love Gmail -- but several
of my clients have forced me to do so, and I really can't stand the Gmail
interface. Maybe it's just me, but having a standalone e-mail application is
just about what I want. (Although I still do miss SuperCite in Emacs...)

There was talk years ago about Mozilla abandoning Thunderbird, or spinning it
off. I'm very happy to see that they continue to invest time and money in its
development, that it continues to be popular, and that they're proud to
celebrate its popularity.

~~~
girzel
Gnus in Emacs does support HTML! It's not the most beautiful, but it works,
and is getting better.

I also use several Gmail-backed custom domains, and that works just fine as
well -- no one knows I'm using Gnus (unless they look at the User-Agent
header, of course).

~~~
reuven
Hmm, I'll take a look... it would be fun to return to Emacs as a mail client,
although I must admit that without working HTML, it might be a bit annoying.
That said, I so so so miss having all of my favorite Emacs commands at my
fingertips in e-mail...

------
Chirael
Best email client out there, hands down. I use GMail on the web for quick
checks, but it's impossible to do serious email management in GMail. If you're
serious about managing your email, you need a real email client and
Thunderbird is the best I've seen. VERY happy to hear it continues to grow,
and thank you very very much to those who continue to hack on / maintain it.

~~~
dasil003
It's impossible to serious email management in Gmail? Are you trolling?

Gmail was built by engineers to manage email efficiently. Everything can be
keyboard driven. Labels work better than folders. Filters super easy to
create. I receive 200+ emails a day, and Gmail keyboard shortcuts are my go-to
tool. Aside from sub-optimal (usually chorded) keyboard shortcuts, every local
client I've ever tried has simply choked on the volume of mail I deal with,
Gmail doesn't.

I use MailPlane to get the Gmail UI but with smooth integration into OS X and
multiple Google accounts loaded in parallel with the Google multi-login
nightmare.

~~~
addicted44
I am not learning new Keyboard shortcuts only for Gmail.

Thunderbird (and other decent desktop packages) allow me to reuse the over a
decade worth of training I have with my OS's KB shortcut semantics.

In addition, using the keyboard in a browser is a mess. It is very easy to not
have the current context set to a different application, and Gmail's non-
standard K/B shortcuts can lead to unpredictable (and destructive) changes in
other applications (for example, accidentally entering random text in a
document open in my text editor). Using standard OS K/B shortcuts means that
if I am doing a search, and even if my current app is not the one I think it
is, it's likely to still do a search, and not enter random characters.

~~~
dasil003
That's a nice post hoc rationalization but in practice it doesn't actually
come up. I don't have any other app with the same semantics as Gmail. For
instance, what app combines forward/next navigation with selecting, labeling
and archiving? Unlike vim which I miss in native text fields, there is no
context outside of Gmail that the muscle memory wants to kick in; the
corollary being that there is not a comprehensive set of OS default shortcuts
that maps cleanly to the set of things I want to do in email. In fact
Mailplane does attempt this for Gmail so you get ⌘-n, etc, but the common ones
are really not sufficient to cover a power user's email workflow—you're going
to need to learn a few things specifically for your client of choice
regardless of what that is.

~~~
mister_m
>That's a nice post hoc rationalization

Come on, you did sort of ask for clarification didn't you?

------
meesterdude
I used to use thunderbird before switching back to apple mail - I thought they
had discontinued work on it? I know I heard something about that. It also
doesn't do a few things apple mail seems to do; i think it was a matter of
rule execution and multiple from addresses.

The UI could also use some cleanup. While I don't like apple changing things
because they can change things (when they do), i feel like Thunderbird UI has
room for improvement in usability and aesthetics.

Well, i've been thinking about setting up a mail client in my linux VM, guess
I could install it and see how it fares.

Are there any other open source email clients that people use, that are
maintained?

~~~
e15ctr0n
I've heard praise for Slypheed.

[http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/)

~~~
xorcist
I think you're looking for Claws. It used to be the development version of
Sylpheed, but they're now separate. It has a lot more active development.

[http://claws-mail.org/](http://claws-mail.org/)

------
secfirstmd
I wonder is one of the reasons this is happening because Thunderbird works
well with PGP, Enigmail and Torbirdy etc and that many of the online guides
which show people how to use this?

~~~
dombili
Wouldn't surprise me if that's the case, or at least if it's a factor in
increased downloads. My default mail client on Windows is Postbox, but ever
since I started using PGP, I switched to Thunderbird because Enigmail doesn't
play nice with Postbox.

Thunderbird's UI could be a bit better but it performs well and does its job
without causing too much trouble, so I'm quite happy with it.

~~~
secfirstmd
Yeh, the UI could really do with an update. It would be great if it looked
like OS X Mail etc but I guess most open source stuff often looks a bit dated
- and Thunderbird does the job pretty well.

------
hhw
Thunderbird is great as a cross-platform mail client; I run it on FreeBSD,
Linux, and Windows. The Windows version has a slightly different menu layout,
but I don't really mind this and it rarely comes up in regular use anyhow.

I do however have two gripes:

1) When saving an e-mail as a draft, and then re-opening it another machine,
it often changes the From mail account. As such, I end up sending mail from my
personal mail account when intending to use my business mail account. This was
reported as a bug years ago, but has still yet to be fixed.

2) When logged into the same IMAP account from several machines, sometimes a
mailbox created on one machine doesn't show up on another, and the only way to
get it to show up is to toggle "show subscribed folders only", restart
Thunderbird, toggle it back, and restart again.

~~~
joelthelion
Have you reported the two problems, or at least asked about them on the
Mozilla support website?

~~~
hhw
There was already an existing bug report in Bugzilla when I first ran into
issue 1) years ago, and I added my comments to it.

Issue 2) I haven't. As annoying as it is when it does happen, it's not that
common and although requires some extra steps, doesn't result in looking
unprofessional to clients like in 1). However, there has been a few instances
lately where my staff have created new subfolders within a shared imap folder
and moved e-mails into them, and I've been unable to find those emails until I
recall this issue. So it's probably worthwhile to start gathering details and
file a report to prevent this interruption in workflow.

------
greggman
This will probably get voted into oblivion. I think it's great that people
like Thunderbird. I use it to back up my email once in a while.

But, I do find it interesting that anyone would chose an app mail reader over
an online mail reader, one that I can access all my mail from any device
anywhere in the world. (should I choose to trust that device).

Yes, I get that maybe you don't trust gmail/hotmail/yahoo but I guess I just
wonder if maybe the time and effort making Thunderbird would be better spent
on an open source email server that's as easy to install as something like
wordpress but more secure.

Of course maybe it's just me. I haven't used an email app since about 2003.
First it was oddmail, then yahoo mail, then gmail. There's no way I could go
back to having access to my mail stuck on one machine. If you like your setup
good for you.

I guess I'd be curious what you get out of it though. Do you run Thunderbird
on all your devices? Does each device have access to all your email? Can you
search it quickly? If you don't have thunderbird everywhere do you find
yourself waiting until you get back to device that does have it to use email?

~~~
tbirdz
With any IMAP client your mail will not be stuck on one machine, you can
maintain a copy on the server as well, and access it from any other IMAP
client.

~~~
Animats
Right. I can't see why anyone uses Gmail. The built-in mail client in Android
works just fine with IMAP servers. I have two desktops, a laptop, and an
Android phone all using the same IMAP server. Everything but the Android phone
runs Thunderbird.

It's rather nice that Mozilla maintains Thunderbird but doesn't change it
much. The Firefox UI keeps changing, but not improving. Over three years,
Firefox moved add-on icons from the top to the bottom, then hid them, then
moved them back to the top again. I'm worried that if they change Thunderbird,
they will "add social features", make it send your contacts list to Mozilla HQ
for "syncing", or something like that.

~~~
jsalit
> I can't see why anyone uses Gmail.

For a relatively consistent experience across platforms, without having to
depend on a local application.

------
beagle3
It's in maintenance mode, so unlikely to happen, but ...

please please add support for something which is not mbox format storage.

Maildir, sqlite, whatever. I hate "From" inside an email becoming ">From".
It's fragile as hell (although, last time I suffered corruption was in 2006 in
Windows; never had my mbox corrupted in Linux).

Even with this, I prefer it to all other email clients, native or web, that
I've tried.

~~~
e15ctr0n
> please please add support for something which is not mbox format storage.
> Maildir, sqlite, whatever.

Support for maildir format has existed since Thunderbird 12.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Pluggable_Mail_Stores](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Pluggable_Mail_Stores)

You can follow the steps outlined here but to minimize the risk of data loss,
please back up your profile first.

[https://jaisejames.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/to-activate-
mail...](https://jaisejames.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/to-activate-maildir-in-
thunderbird/)

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-
tb](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb)

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-
data...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-
new-computer)

~~~
beagle3
I'm kind of ashamed I missed this ..

Thanks!

------
aruggirello
I use Thunderbird since eons. IMHO it's the definitive email client - nothing
beats it; hence, it has no "export" features. :-)

------
Kjeldahl
Very annoying that the latest versions on the release channel 31.5.0 still
shows nothing on standard calendar invites. Yes, I might install a big ass
plugin, but what about just showing me the stuff that is actually in the email
(that can easily be verified with "view source")? It's been like this for ages
as well. Not very promising unfortunately.

~~~
e15ctr0n
The calendar component of Thunderbird needs to be installed as an add-on for
historical reasons.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/projects/calendar/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/projects/calendar/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird)

[https://blog.mozilla.org/calendar/2006/10/sun_microsystems_a...](https://blog.mozilla.org/calendar/2006/10/sun_microsystems_announces_int/)

------
cJ0th
I am glad that Thunderbird increases in popularity. But this makes me wonder
even harder why they don't work towards a features that allows syncing
Thunderbird (and it's calendar [sunbird]) with their FirefoxOS apps.
Apparently there aren't many people interested in offline-synchronizing
anymore these days. :(

~~~
e15ctr0n
Firefox OS has a dedicated Email app which supports multiple email accounts
and offline mode.

[https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/email](https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/email)

[https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia-email-libs-and-
more](https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia-email-libs-and-more)

What exactly do you mean by syncing Thunderbird with Firefox OS apps?

~~~
cJ0th
I would especially like to synchronize Firefox OS with my Lightning calendar.
As far as I know, you have to publish your Lightning calender online to make
it accessible for Firefox OS.

~~~
e15ctr0n
You can publish your Lightning calendar only on your home intranet and then
sync with the calendar app on your Firefox OS phone over your home wifi. Once
you step outside your home, the calendar app on your Firefox OS phone will
continue to show you your calendar entries because it has offline support.

------
orangea
Why are there annual bumps in the graph?

~~~
jffry
They seem to be in July/August - perhaps it's summer holiday season, and
people don't open their email as much?

~~~
nextweek2
Schools and Universities would be prime candidates for that and I bet the user
base has a large proportion of those users.

------
mholt
I haven't thought about Thunderbird in years! This is rather surprising to me.
What's the draw for using Thunderbird over the web- and mobile-based clients
like Inbox?

~~~
bane
local storage, multiple accounts, separate inboxes, doesn't try to be too
clever

~~~
Qantourisc
Well except with the new auto-discover when configuring an e-mail account
(workaround: work offline, it will skip the wizard).

~~~
e15ctr0n
Or you could just configure the email account manually.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manual-account-
configur...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manual-account-
configuration)

------
bresc
...and still it looks and behaves like we are in 2002.

Don't get me wrong, I like and use Thunderbird but sometimes I wish they would
put more effort into improving the UI

~~~
bane
I use Thunderbird every day, and I agree with you.

If they want to kill some low-hanging fruit, search is fundamentally broken.
I've almost never found what I'm searching for -- it's reddit bad. It's
usually better for me just to go log into that gmail account and search from
there.

~~~
Bill_Dimm
Really? I don't remember having any major problems with search recently.
Search is a few orders of magnitude better than the junk mail classification,
at least for me. I don't know what algorithms they use for junk
classification, but here are some observations:

1) I mark 100% of the emails from a particular sender or with a particular
subject line as junk, yet the junk classifier still puts emails from that
sender or with that subject in my inbox. This is the low-hanging fruit -- the
stuff that is so obvious that it is spam that a human can figure it out
without looking at the message body at all, yet Thunderbird can't seem to get
it right no matter how much you train it. I can only guess that they are
placing too much weight on the body content (which is easily padded with
hidden text to con the algorithm) when a bad sender/subject should trump
whatever is in the body.

2) Emails from people that I've emailed in the past sometimes end up in the
junk folder. I thought they were supposed to be whitelisted automatically (by
automatically being appended to some special section of your address book).

3) I've implemented message filters to detect certain words like our product
name and move the incoming message to a high-priority folder, yet messages
that should match the filter still end up in the junk folder on rare occasions
(and, yes, I have it configured to run the filter before junk classification
is applied -- I'm assuming that junk classification should not be applied if a
filter moves the message out of the inbox).

4) It sometimes seems to just stop learning, so I have to reset and retrain
the junk classifier or it gets to the point where the only emails that it
recognizes as being junk are the ones in a foreign language.

~~~
bane
Yeah, search is a huge mess. For example, I'm out looking for houses and I've
gotten a bunch of notices in the past couple weeks for open houses. I search
for "open house" and not a single result it presented was for any of the
emails I've previously received. In fact none of the emails it returned seemed
to have either "open" or "house" in them, I have no idea why it selected the
emails it did.

Actually, I've developed a theory that the search actually uses a stochastic
method that randomly samples emails from my mailboxes in the hopes that some
of them will match my search result.

~~~
asutherland
Assuming you're using the global search mechanism, a porter stemmer is used
which means that the search engine sees all of "house", "houses", "housed",
"housing", etc. the same.

The search also biases the results based on recency and things like whether
the message has been starred/flagged, whether it was authored by/involves
contacts in your address book, etc.

e15ctr0n is right that your best option is to use quotes to do a phrase search
of "open house" in this situation, although you will still run afoul of the
porter stemmer. (Unfortunately a post-pass filter if you realllly want "house"
was never implemented. There is an open bug, however.)

~~~
bane
No, I mean, I actually searched for "open house" in quotes. (I tried the terms
without quotes as well, but when that first set of results turned up useless I
tried the quotes).

The results were literally what I describe, just a random sample of emails
from the last few years. I keep using the search hoping I get something useful
returned, and even when I do things like put in exact phrases I know are in
the message, I get a random pile of junk back.

I should just learn my lesson and stop trying to be honest.

~~~
Bill_Dimm
I just did some tests using "Edit > Find > Search Messages" to search (I'm not
sure what asutherland means by the "global search mechanism") and based on a
few tests searching for "contains" matches on the body text here are my
conclusions:

1) If you use quotes, it is looking for the quotes in the text, so I'm
surprised you got any matches at all.

2) If you don't use quotes, it is still looking for an exact match (except
that it's not case sensitive), so searching for "open house" without quotes
should not match unless the words are adjacent to each other.

3) It doesn't seem to pay attention to token boundaries, so a search for
"house" (without quotes) matches "warehouse"

So, it is a little unintuitive (and really should have a help button that
explains exactly what it does), but it seems to work for me. I don't use IMAP,
though, and the comments by qznc about IMAP [1] seem like they may explain why
you are seeing what you are seeing if you use IMAP.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124667)

Edit: I just noticed e15ctr0n's link to info on the global search -- I don't
have that enabled (probably disabled it to save disk space a long time ago) so
if that's where you are seeing problems, that explains why I never noticed.

~~~
bane
Thanks for checking it out.

So for fun, I just sent myself an email with the subject "open house" and body
"open house" (no quotes).

I then searched for "open house" (with quotes) and got a list back. Sorted by
relevance, they return in the following chronological order: 2008, 2012,
2013x7, 2012x23, 2011x12, 2010x12 and on and on. Nothing from 2014 at all, and
nothing from 2015 at all.

All of the returns have "open house" (or some variant) in them, quite a few
have punctuation or non-alphanumeric characters right next to them, so that's
cool. In quite a few "open houses" scores more highly than "open house".

So I filtered down to one mailbox. Now, I get a few from 2014, but no joy on
my recent one.

I change the filter to another mailbox. About 10 down (there's only 12
"matching" in this mailbox) I see one of the relevant emails I was looking for
earlier, but not the one I explicitly just sent myself.

If I remove all filter constraints and sort by date instead of relevance, the
email I just sent shows up at the top, followed by some emails where "open
houses" match my query, followed by the earlier email I was looking for.

So it's kinda working if I sort it by date. Sorting by relevance seems to be
entirely useless. Sorting by mailbox is kinda useful, but doesn't seem to show
most recent.

I dunno, it still seems faster and more accurate to hit each of my mailboxes
separately from the web interfaces if I need to search them.

I think qznc might have hit the nail on the head about IMAP and getting
weirdly out of sync.

------
jqm
Thunderbird is great and I have been using it forever. I have only recently
run into the first real problem at work getting SMTP to work with our Office
365 account.

I have the settings the same as the MS online app smtp.office365.com, port
587, and I can receive mail just fine. I have spent a few minutes here and
there googling around and trying to figure it out but so far no luck sending
mail (if anyone has any ideas...)

~~~
e15ctr0n
Server Hostname: smtp.office365.com. Port:587 SSL: STARTTLS
Authentication:Normal Password

See [http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-
file.ashx/__key/communityserver...](http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-
file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-
weblogfiles/00-00-00-89-14-metablogapi/2677.image_5F00_6CC8A660.png)

Then click "Done" and not "Re-test".

~~~
jqm
I'm not at work and so can't try it out, but I'm pretty sure those are the
settings I used. Maybe I clicked "retest". Have to try again tomorrow. Anyway,
thanks.

------
a3n
I miss command line mh. While I can still use it, email has gotten
increasingly mimey, and using mh these days feels too much like swimming
upstream. I also think calendar and email is a natural integration.

That said, TB has been my email client for years and years. It has everything
I need, and works well. It also has warts, but if you use any kind of software
you get used to warts.

------
iand
I was a long-time Thunderbird user, but the mail application I really loved
was Opera's M2. It had an awesome auto-folder system that would create virtual
folders for mailing lists, people you regularly corresponded with and date
ranges. It's only downside was that it was tied into Opera and there was no
way to tell it to open links in another browser.

~~~
e15ctr0n
Have you tried Saved Searches in Thunderbird?

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-saved-
searches](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-saved-searches)

------
jschwartzi
I quit using this at my last job because, although it supports opening mail in
a new window, it did not support closing the message when you click
reply/reply-all/forward. It's not a big deal unless you have to clear upwards
of 50 emails a day.

Otherwise it was a great client, and it was much easier to customize than
Outlook.

------
pjmlp
Love Thunderbird since the days it was the email client of the Netscape suite.

Thanks for all the work invested into it.

------
ummonkwatz
The UI could still use polishing. For example, the attachment confirmation
dialog is so confusing. I'm tempted to send them a patch that makes the
wording clearer.

"Did you forget to add an attachment?" ("Oh, I didn't!", "No, I did!")

~~~
Jaymoon85
I notice that too when it pops up. I wonder if they make it confusing by
design, to ensure you carefully read it, and not just blindly click through?

------
WalterBright
My only complaint with Thunderbird is there is no easy way to backup/restore
its database.

~~~
e15ctr0n
Thunderbird saves personal information such as messages, passwords and user
preferences in a set of files called a "profile", which is stored in a
separate location from the Thunderbird program files.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-
tb](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb)

You can move your profile across computers, or back them up to restore later.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-
data...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-
new-computer)

~~~
WalterBright
I know about those (these are helpful links, thanks!). They are stored in
different locations on different OS's, even different versions of the same OS.
There needs to be a menu item called "Backup" where you give a path to back it
up to, and "Restore" where you give a path where it was backed up to.

Reading the documentation on those links just proves the point :-)

~~~
e15ctr0n
The beauty of open source is that you can scratch your own itch. :-)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/Thunderbird](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Thunderbird)

~~~
WalterBright
Yeah, I already wrote my own compiler, editor, games, language, etc. How far
do I have to go with this? :-)

------
larrys
Inveterate Thunderbird user here.

Would like an extension to be able to execute actions in 1 click (such as
creating a pdf rather than multi menu clicks) and I'm willing to pay for that.
Anyone who can write thunderbird extensions contact me by reply.

------
nickez
Ever had e-mails disappearing in spam/archive or other folders?

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615957](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615957)

------
ausjke
A loyal user of Thunderbird here, in fact I recommended it to many other
users, who are all using it now I believe.

Keep the good work, and evolve it please!

------
FranOntanaya
I keep asking Santa for regex email filters.

~~~
e15ctr0n
The FiltaQuilla add-on supports regular expressions.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/filtaquil...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/filtaquilla/)

If you look on the authors web page it describes how to use either JavaScript
or regular expressions in the search field.

[http://mesquilla.com/extensions/filtaquilla/](http://mesquilla.com/extensions/filtaquilla/)

Here is a related, tutorial-type blog post with screenshots:

[http://www.digiblog.de/2010/11/regular-expression-mail-
filte...](http://www.digiblog.de/2010/11/regular-expression-mail-filters-for-
thunderbird/)

------
sigzero
version 38? I am on version 31 and T-Bird says it's up to date.

~~~
kasabali
> our next major release, which will be Thunderbird 38 in May 2015

Thunderbird releases go like 24->31->38...

~~~
Bill_Dimm
Any idea why? On the surface, that seems completely insane.

~~~
e15ctr0n
24, 31, 38 represent the version of Gecko that Thunderbird ships with.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/New_Release_and_Governa...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/New_Release_and_Governance_Model)

Thunderbird now follows an Extended Support Release process, rolling out every
eight release cycles equaling every 54 weeks.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/organizations/faq/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/organizations/faq/)

This is because Thunderbird is no longer in active development; it is
primarily in maintenance mode.

[https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-
stabi...](https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-
and-community-innovation/)

------
saka
AH! Please, don't make me laugh. One of the worst email clients around. One of
the best open source email clients around.

That's all. (Why don't they make a new UI and add more stability?!)

~~~
btzll
Which email client do you use and think is better?

~~~
saka
honestly? Thunderbird, but sometimes I'm tempted to give it up and use just a
web app or Opera Mail. Why I use it? Proprietary software smells and it is the
best in security terms (that's why it's so much popular in Germany).

It has a bad integration with gmail/outlook for students (I know it's their
problem). It doesn't have a modern UI (things like a multi line view that
would make users happier). Furthermore, I can't use it in background since it
takes 300+ MB. I may list something else, but these are things that could be
solved with a more active development.

What is better? I would use mailpile (it promises a lot!), but web apps
doesn't give you so much freedom.

