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Why Desktop Email Still Trumps Webmail
p3net writes "Shortly before the release of Thunderbird 2.0 RC1, Wired held an interesting interview with Scott MacGregor, the lead developer of Thunderbird. He presents some views as to why desktop email clients still triumph, even in this much-dominated web age. 'Some users want to have their data local for privacy and control. Furthermore, you can integrate data from different applications on the desktop in ways that you can't do with web-based solutions, unless you stick to web solutions from a single provider. For example, you can use your Outlook address book with Thunderbird. We'd like to continue to expand the kinds of data you can share between Thunderbird and other apps (both web and desktop applications).'"
I haven't tried it yet - I've been using Sunbird - but the additional features that lightning provides will help Thunderbird on the road to becoming a more complete Microsoft Outlook competitor. If only we could convince someone to write the Exchange competitor on an open database...
From the Sunbird / Lightning page http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightnin
You may prefer Mozilla Sunbird if...
you prefer your calendar to be separate from your email client
you don't currently use Mozilla Thunderbird for your email
you don't like adding add-ons [such as extensions or themes] to your applications
You may prefer Lightning if...
you send or receive meeting invitations via email
you already use Mozilla Thunderbird for email
you customize your applications with add-ons [such as extensions or themes] You can follow the Mozilla Calendar Weblog here >> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar/
Generally speaking, desktop based applications will have more features and better integration, but web based applications have the advantage of being portable, not to mention they're (generally) easier to upgrade for multiple users.
I was a huge advocate for these types of programs... Then Gmail came out. I rationalized sticking with them in that I didn't want Google reading my email. Then I started using Zimbra. It doesn't make sense to have thick clients anymore, when the web apps can do everything that the desktop apps can, and there is a solid open source program for hosting it yourself.
The Zimbra guys even have connectors for Evolution and Exchange if you want to stick with thick desktop apps, but if there is one thing Gmail has proven is that users are willing to give up functionality for remote accessibility, and with Zimbra, they don't even have to do that.
Didn't we already see this?
More to the point: desktop applications are inherently preferable to the individual user. The argument can be made that a corporate environment, in which more than twenty people may need to use a program with limited seats in a license, or in which more than five people need to work collaboratively on the same data set, a client-server type may be more appropriate. Webapps are a client-server type of application in which the client is the web browser and the server is the application running within the web server. Viewing it as such may help to expose the odd nature of allowing so many middle layers to persist.
Desktop apps are important not only for security but also for efficiency and to prevent the gratuitous overconsumption of network resources.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
But on the other hand Webmail is catching up when you consider some of the features of G-Mail.
Gmail has the distinct advantage of being both web accessible while at the same time also accessible via any pop3 e-mail client.
Sort of a "cake and eat it too" scenario.
I currently use Thunderbird to keep track of the 4 accounts that my wife and I use. I also have the ability to access my mail online should I not have my laptop with me. I also have the ability to use GMail as an offsite backup of my mail should I ever have a total OS crash and need to reinstall. The large amount of storage on the gmail servers plus the ability to re-download anything stored on the gmail servers means that I can restore my local copy of my emails.
If more webmail sites used gmail's strategy, webmail would likely catch up to pop3 and possibly surpass it
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
One of the main things I don't like about web mail is I've not seen one that lets me just drag a file or picture right into the message pane. If I want to email 8 pictures to someone, I normally have to click "add file," locate it, then do that 8 times (and many make me upload them one at a time as well, so that takes even longer). Another thing is the ability to get all 5 of my email accounts at once, instead of having to log into 5 different web pages.
The discussion about local e-mail clients vs. web clients is similar to discussions about digital cameras and pistols.
.45 will do the job, it has _stopping power_." There will usually be folks on the other side who say "Those are nice, but I prefer a .22 Pistol. It's small enough that I'm much more likely to actually have it on me if something happens in public. A heavy, bulky gun that's sitting on the dresser is much less useful to me when I'm in danger than a small .22 that I can carry every day."
When talking about cameras to buy, some folks advocate SLR, expandable, large cameras that have huge optical zoom, attachment points, and a huge slew of features. Other folks will say "I'll take an Elph" (or some other small format, quality camera that's the size of a pack of cigarettes. The most common argument the big camera people will use is something to the effect of 'yes, but you're sacrificing 20% image quality' (or something along those lines. A common response? "Sure, but I'm about X times more likely to actually HAVE the camera on me when something interesting happens. A big camera that takes slightly better pictures that's at home is less useful to me than this."
Concealed pistol arguments have both sides too. "I prefer the 9MM Glock" or "Nothing less than a
E-Mail clients seem to be heading in the same direction. T-Bird has some great features and rationales for using. It does stuff that can only really be done from a fixed location (private mail, etc), and yes, it can integrate with desktop apps. But... I rarely use those extra features. I've switched to webmail knowing that I'm trading off some features, but the payoff of being able to actually GET to it wherever I am has paid off many more times than not having integration into MS Word or something.
Different audiences, different needs, but both sides have their reasons.
For example, you can use your Outlook address book with Thunderbird.
And Outlook also works with just about any mass mailing worm, virus, or trojan out there!
I'd like to see you try that with a web client!
Nope, I'm stickin' with Outlook.
That's the main reason I like using Apple's mail.app. I can write emails when I'm somewhere where I don't have an Internet connection and then send them later when I do. Also, if you're somewhere with a slow connection, it only affects the sending and receiving, whereas, in my experience, a slow connection affects all of the navigating through messages and almost everything else you might do with Web mail.
Graphically, I also think most clients are nicer to look at. That may not be that important to most people, but it is to me.
That said, I like that I have the option of using Web mail when I'm near someone else's computer. (Ideally, I think I'd use IMAP so that my folders, etc. from my client would match the ones I see when I log on using the Web. I've actually been looking for a provider that offers IMAP where I could also transfer my domains so I'd still have everything in one place. I'm also looking for a price that would be competitive with GoDaddy, who currently handles my email and domains.)
I'm just sayin'.
Thunderbird won't be replacing Outlook for me until they figure out that not everybody wants the reply to show up underneath the original message. I've tried to switch twice because IMAP support sucks in Outlook, but I can't stand paging down through 5 screens to get the most recent comment on an email that has gone back and forth. Hey guys, how about a configuration option?
You guys would be really impressed with the insightful comment that I made about this in my desktop version of /.
I would tell you about it, but I would just be repeating myself.
+5 Insightful
-5 Lonely bastard
I host my own personal mail and use horde exclusively - at work I use Outlook because I need considerably more horsepower than a web client is able to give me.
.psts for the string 'digital sender' in a bit more than half a second. 709 hits that I can browse because the word order number is in the subject line.
Today I had to pull page counts from ten HP 0299c digital senders and the scanners IP addresses were spread out through ten different work orders - using an outlook plugin called Lookout (this company was eaten by Microsoft but you can still find the plugin if you look around) I was able to search a bit less than 4gb of email archive in two different
You'd play hell doing that with a webmail client.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Actually, Zimbra has that as well. As well as salesforce.com integration, and integrated mashups via Zimlets.
"Funny"? How about insightful!? Lol.
I run several independent qmail/vpopmail mail clusters, with a couple of different webmail packages, IMAP access from anywhere, and Eudora, Thunderbird, and MSOE at various times, and user IMAP from another Exchange server for our corporate parent.
And I *still* prefer to shell in and use pine for my "personal" account on campus rather than the other solutions they provide. It's convenient, easy, has never lost me an email, works under low bandwidth conditions, and after 10 years is just as fast as any of the other clients for me. On the off-chance I actually do need to view something with images in it, I simply (B)ounce it to my work account.
Can't beat simplicity.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Really. all the major mail clients piss me off in different ways.
Thunderbird - where is my ability to point Thunderbird at two or three address books simultaneously? Still way behind the times when it comes to cross-account integration. You can only add ONE remote address book, and it HAS to be LDAP. No remote VCARD address book support. Just starting to get on board with multiple remote calenders.
Also - why the hell is there not a white-list for SSL certs? I KNOW my mail server has an untrusted self-signed cert. Frankly I don't give a fuck -it's my server I trust it, all I care is that it's encrypted. So Why do you have to pop up an annoying SSL cert dialog every freaking time I start up? Every other mail client on the planet allows me to accep tthis dialog once and NOT PROMPT ME AGAIN.
Outlook 2007 - WHY THE HELL DO YOU NOT HAVE PROPER THREADING YET. It's been 6+ years since this feature was available in all the open source clients. You'd think a billion dollar company could pull it off.
However, much better than thunderbird now when it comes to multiple accounts and calenders and address books. Supports a crapload of formats for both. Still not as good as KMail in this area, but a close second.
KMail - Stop crashing on me already. Also get HTML composer support in order, this is 2007 now you're like 4 years behind the times. As well, why can't I work in one folder while another account loading? There is no need to put this stupid wait screen up over the whole message area. However - nice work on the multitiude of calender and address book formats. If only exchange calenders worked properly.
I am starting to think I need to fork my own client off to get the functionality I need.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Big risk at being modded down, but I have to say it...
I have tried MANY times to use Thunderbird. Every time it fails for some weird quirk or another. The profile mechanism just doesn't work properly. It never stores the profile where i want without a whole bunch of fussing with a special start of Thunderbird (thunderbird -profile or something). Then, when I migrate my email into Thunderbird, it just cant handle huge volumes RELIABLY each time I have tried. Sometimes it imports, but invariably it fails afterwards in terms of speed or just disappearing the inbox -- which leads to the oh so helpful fix people point to about restoring the profiles.
So I am glad he has his opinions on email. But with all the issues with Thunderbird I think he should try to make that application must easier to manage (note, I didn't say "use") and less time on interviews IMHO. Oh, and please don't reply with "Oh, I have a 10k message inbox and it works fine for me." I know, many of you have no problems but if you google thunderbird you will see my own experience is not rare.
I was forced to give up using Thunderbird at work, because some people I started working with elsewhere in the organisation relied on Exchange+Outlook calendaring facilities. In other words, I ought to be a prime target for Lightning. I'm also a geek who understands more than a pretty UI about what's involved with actually doing this.
What do I see at the top of the lightning page?
Do you know how many of those I care about at work? Exactly none. And neither does pretty much anyone else in the target market for this product.
What I do care about is how well it integrates with Exchange Server, and whether its notifications for meetings and such are compatible with the business standard Exchange+Outlook combination. However, the word "Exchange" does not appear anywhere on the product home page; nor does "Outlook".
In other words, either their web page is terrible, or this isn't even close to making Thunderbird into a serious Outlook competitor. Given that the current version of Lightning is 0.3.1 (as in, starting with "0.") I'm going to go with the not-even-close version, and so it just about everyone else.
I'm afraid TFA was much the same: yet more of the popular "many eyes make secure software myth" (seriously, are we still peddling that nonsense?) and more cries about the greatness of Thunderbird due to its extensibility (does anyone reading this actually use Thunderbird with any extensions, never mind the natural way they are routinely used by Firefox users?).
Sorry to be so negative. I'm grateful to those who spend their time writing Thunderbird and giving it away to others, I really am. But it's starting to suffer from the two major diseases of the OSS world: a mistaken belief that users care more about philosophy than functionality, and a mistaken belief that OSS is somehow immune to the normal problems with software development just because some of its popular applications haven't (yet) been compromised as badly as the mainstream commercial players. I like the product, but until its marketing stops talking crap, I'm going to criticise the marketing.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
FTA
Some users want to have their data local for privacy and control.
I can think of many reasons to use a desktop mail client. Some of them are actually good reasons. But this one is completely ridiculous. Email is not private. If he had said "Some users want to have their email local so that they can decrypt and encrypt it with GnuPG," that would have been an understandable statement. But plain text email is not private, under any circumstance, ever, any more than a postcard with plain text is private!
I hope people are not using desktop email thinking it is more private. A false sense of security is worse than no security!
Penny - plain text accounting
I find gmail search to be the only way I can deal with my 50,000 messages. Thunderbird just hangs and I can't get Google Desktop to play nice with IMAP unless I open each and every message manually first. Yes, I'm an idiot.
But seriously, has anyone been able to manage on the order of 50,000 messages with Thunderbird and do sophisicated searches that actually work?
A lot of posters here talk about certain features with a desktop client against a web client not realising that none of this has anything to do with weather the mail is web based or local. The interface can look the same weather on the desktop or a server ( at least in theory) the question is what difference the location of the actual process that handles the input and output makes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both schemes.
Web based:
Can be accessed from any computer that has a browser.
Mail cannot be read while offline
Desktop based:
Requires a configured mail client
All mail can be downloaded at once and read at a latter date when an internet connection is not available
It would appear to me that this means Web based mail would be more attractive to Desktop users who can't easily move their computer arround and who are likely to have a permanent internet connection whereas Laptop and Notebook users would prefer a local client as wireless availability can be limited and it is easier for them to move arround. Of course, you coudl always go with my aproach. I use a web based e-mail but keep a local copy on my desktop. That way I can read my mail from anywhere I want and I also have it available if my connection dies ( which is rather often unfortunately ). Best of both worlds in my opinion.
You don't need to sort by date, because you can search by date. Search for :after:2006/3/1 before:2006/4/1 to find emails from last March, for example.
People assume desktop clients mean POP3, probably because that's all that GMail offers. Well, of course that's what GMail offers - because they don't want you to know about IMAP.
My provider offers webmail AND IMAP support. I can view my mail on my computers using Thunderbird. Or, if I don't have Thunderbird available or configured, I can just log into webmail. All my mail is synchronized between the server and the client. If I delete something in webmail, it's deleted in Thunderbird - and vice versa.
Oh, and I can view my mail on my PDA, too - without using the crappy Google client. And with IDLE support, I get new messages the instant they arrive - on both my PC and my PDA. And I can set up rules on the server to filter mailing lists and other emails into folders.
People think GMail is the end-all of mail because the only other thing they have used is some ISP's crappy POP3 mail.
Thunderbird displays all 6500 messages in my inbox at the same time, on the same screen. Which webmail can do that? Thunderbird downloads mail to my local system, so I can access it offline. Which webmail does that? Thunderbird supports S/MIME encryption and signatures.
No it isn't - GMail lost 40-50 of my e-mails, and said they could basically do nothing about it. So much for storing all data!
Now, all of my GMail accounts get periodically - every 5-15 min. - fetchmailed to my backup server. And I find myself using GMail less and less now since it's easier to just fire up Thunderbird, pull POP off the backup server (my laptop automatically opens an SSH tunnel to my office network) and be able to read/write messages without waiting for a web site to update.
And GMail's POP implementation is horribly broken for use with more than one client. Recent mode is great, but not if you haven't used a given client for > 30 days. Give us a "normal" POP3 option, please, GMail!
-b.
There is a group working on an open source clone of Exchange using a reverse engineered version of MAPI. This is still pre-alpha, but it is interesting. The project is called Openchange.
Having wasted 2-3 years investigating open source alternatives to Microsoft Exchange I've finally given up.
There is *no* open source exchange alternative that is worth bothering with, certainly none that have the level of finish as Microsoft exchange.
Almost all Open Source exchange alternatives shoot themselves in the foot by either pricing the Outlook connectors above or close to the cost of Exchange or pay the outlook element lip service and not include all features and hope that everyone uses their crummy webmail app. Outlook is an excellent e-mail client, perhaps a bit bloated, but easy enough to use.
Typical problems with open source exchange alternatives are:
1. None or poor support for Nokia Phones / Windows Mobile PDAs.
2. Use the abortion that is IMAP, absolutely slow, buggy and hopeless.
3. Poor implementation of groupware functionality within Outlook.
4. No optimisations for slow links / mobile.
5. No reliable or efficent offline capabilities.
6. Poor choice of backup / archiving add-ons.
7. Poor LDAP / Active Directory support.
8. Crummy management tools.
This is really not worth debating, there can be no open source exchange alternative unless there is a credible Outlook alternative, which for the moment there isn't.
Jason
I use Thunderbird for work and Gmail for my personal mail. Each is ideal for its designated task. If I was forced to use webmail for work and Thunderbird for personal mail, I would go nuts.
So, enough with these "foo is better than bar" declarations. Both exist and are popular because they are the best solution for *some* problem.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Just my $0.02, it seems to me that although Thunderbird does run on various non-Windows OS's, this isn't entirely relevant because most PC's don't run on non-Windows OS's, at least not at this time. If you're attempting to debate whether Thunderbird is a competitor, it only seems proper to consider only, or at least give the most weight to, how each performs under Windows, as that's how most people will use the two products. Looking at how they do under Windows, perhaps Thunderbird is more of a competitor now than it was, but I wouldn't consider it a serious competitor quite yet, if only because Outlook/Windows in general are so well-established. And for that reason, people will be comparing Thunderbird's feature set to Outlook's and wondering why they should switch if they don't see all of the same features they currently have. I guess I tend to agree with Anonymous in the end, although I am always glad to see these projects improving.