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digitalmars.D - [OT] Thunderbird 3 vs. 2

reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

"Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of 
tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do 
we do for version 3?"

"Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish 
even on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old 
screen whenever they click on something."

"Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such that 
the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the 
slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

"And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while the 
user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of sync 
with the screen!"

"Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter 
functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index 
all emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will 
confuse the heck out of everyone."

"Go Thunderbird 3!"


Sigh.

Andrei
Mar 10 2010
next sibling parent Robert Clipsham <robert octarineparrot.com> writes:
On 10/03/10 23:53, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do
 we do for version 3?"

 "Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish
 even on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old
 screen whenever they click on something."

 "Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such that
 the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the
 slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

 "And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while the
 user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of sync
 with the screen!"

 "Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter
 functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index
 all emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will
 confuse the heck out of everyone."

 "Go Thunderbird 3!"


 Sigh.

 Andrei


It's a shame your experience of Thunderbird 3 has been like that. I've 
noticed almost no difference in speed between Thunderbird 2 and 3, and 
the search functionality is far more useful to me now, in v2 it was too 
restrictive for me... I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for 
you though, that seems to be the way of Mozilla's apps atm, they get 
more and more bloated with each release :/ I don't use Thunderbird too 
much so the difference isn't too major for me, but with Firefox it was 
hellish, as I always have a minimum of 5 tabs open, most of which have 
ajax/js heavy apps running in them... If one of them triggered a bug 
it'd freeze the whole browser if not crash it. I switched to Chrome as 
soon as it became native for x86-64 Linux and haven't looked back :) 
It's a shame there's no other real alternative out there to 
Thunderbird... unless I'm mistaken of course :)
Mar 10 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:
 
 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of 
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do 
 we do for version 3?"
 
 ...


The main reason why I went back to Thunderbird 2 is that version 3 eats 
too much of my precious screen space, displaying useless information 
such as the group a post was posted to. I couldn't find out how to get 
the brief subject-poster one line display for post headers...


 Sigh.
 
 Andrei
Mar 10 2010
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/10/2010 06:13 PM, grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What
 do we do for version 3?"

 ...


 The main reason why I went back to Thunderbird 2 is that version 3 eats
 too much of my precious screen space, displaying useless information
 such as the group a post was posted to. I couldn't find out how to get
 the brief subject-poster one line display for post headers...


I forgot to post that one! Incredibly annoying. I'm looking at all that 
crap and all that comes to mind is: "What were they _thinking_?" I mean 
it's so obviously a step back!

Andrei
Mar 10 2010
next sibling parent MIURA Masahiro <echochamber gmail.com> writes:
On 03/11/2010 09:42 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The main reason why I went back to Thunderbird 2 is that version 3 eats
 too much of my precious screen space, displaying useless information
 such as the group a post was posted to. I couldn't find out how to get
 the brief subject-poster one line display for post headers...


 I forgot to post that one! Incredibly annoying. I'm looking at all that
 crap and all that comes to mind is: "What were they _thinking_?" I mean
 it's so obviously a step back!


You might like CompactHeader extension for Thunderbird 3:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/13564
Mar 10 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent reply sybrandy <sybrandy gmail.com> writes:
Wow...you guys must have the worst luck.  I use both Thunderbird 3 and 
the latest stable Firefox without any of these issues you guys have. 
Just out of curiosity, are you using the version that came with your 
distro (assuming non windows/mac) or did you get a version from Mozilla?

Casey
Mar 10 2010
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/10/2010 08:41 PM, sybrandy wrote:

 Wow...you guys must have the worst luck.  I use both Thunderbird 3 and
 the latest stable Firefox without any of these issues you guys have.
 Just out of curiosity, are you using the version that came with your
 distro (assuming non windows/mac) or did you get a version from Mozilla?

 Casey


I'm using 3.0.4pre code name "Shredder". It's what Synaptic wanted to 
upgrade on my Ubuntu.

There are instabilities that probably will get fixed, but I don't mind 
those as much as the unbelievable obtuseness of the entire experience. 
These people hold the user in the utmost contempt. I can't figure 
another explanation for what's going on.


Andrei
Mar 10 2010
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hn9e8o$4ls$2 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/10/2010 06:13 PM, grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What
 do we do for version 3?"

 ...


 The main reason why I went back to Thunderbird 2 is that version 3 eats
 too much of my precious screen space, displaying useless information
 such as the group a post was posted to. I couldn't find out how to get
 the brief subject-poster one line display for post headers...


 I forgot to post that one! Incredibly annoying. I'm looking at all that 
 crap and all that comes to mind is: "What were they _thinking_?" I mean 
 it's so obviously a step back!


Standard Mozilla practice is to change shit in questionable ways and give 
the finger to anyone who liked the old way. That's one of the main reasons I 
can't stand Mozilla. </rant that's been a looong time coming and that I'm 
glad to finally get out>
Mar 10 2010
prev sibling parent reply =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=E9r=F4me_M=2E_Berger=22?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What
 do we do for version 3?"

 ...


=20
 The main reason why I went back to Thunderbird 2 is that version 3 eats=



 too much of my precious screen space, displaying useless information
 such as the group a post was posted to. I couldn't find out how to get
 the brief subject-poster one line display for post headers...
=20


	Same here, I mean who needs two toolbars when there's enough room
to put everything in one? Plus place them far from one another so
that users never know in which one the button they want to push is
and waste time going back and forth...

		Jerome
--=20
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr
Mar 11 2010
parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

 	Same here, I mean who needs two toolbars when there's enough room
 to put everything in one? Plus place them far from one another so
 that users never know in which one the button they want to push is
 and waste time going back and forth...


HAHAHAHAAA, I should post the user interface for my thermostat. It's so 
awful the company (carrier) had to post an online video to try and 
explain how to set the temperature.
Mar 11 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hn9be6$3128$1 digitalmars.com...

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of 
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do we 
 do for version 3?"

 "Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish even 
 on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old screen 
 whenever they click on something."

 "Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such that 
 the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the 
 slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

 "And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while the 
 user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of sync 
 with the screen!"

 "Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter 
 functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index all 
 emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will confuse 
 the heck out of everyone."

 "Go Thunderbird 3!"


That's exactly how I feel about 90% of software these days.

(In that light, it's probably no surprise why I'm so damn bitchy and 
stubborn about things so much of the time ;) )
Mar 10 2010
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message 
news:hna05f$14b8$1 digitalmars.com...

 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:hn9be6$3128$1 digitalmars.com...

 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of 
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do 
 we do for version 3?"

 "Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish 
 even on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old screen 
 whenever they click on something."

 "Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such that 
 the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the 
 slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

 "And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while the 
 user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of sync 
 with the screen!"

 "Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter 
 functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index 
 all emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will 
 confuse the heck out of everyone."

 "Go Thunderbird 3!"


 That's exactly how I feel about 90% of software these days.

 (In that light, it's probably no surprise why I'm so damn bitchy and 
 stubborn about things so much of the time ;) )


Come to think of it, Mozilla can just do exactly what Epic did in that 
situation:

Optimization, downward-scalability and targeting *normal* 
hardwa^W^W^W^W^W^W^W...Form an "alliance" with hardware companies to try to 
cram even more overpowered hardware down the necks of average Joe's all 
while pretending to be doing their prospective users a favor.
Mar 10 2010
prev sibling parent reply "Denis Koroskin" <2korden gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:53:33 +0300, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of  
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What do  
 we do for version 3?"

 "Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish  
 even on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old  
 screen whenever they click on something."

 "Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such that  
 the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the  
 slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

 "And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while the  
 user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of sync  
 with the screen!"

 "Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter  
 functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index  
 all emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will  
 confuse the heck out of everyone."

 "Go Thunderbird 3!"


 Sigh.

 Andrei


If would recommend using Opera. If not as a default Web-browser, at least  
as a Mail-agent.
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7317/picture1qf.png
Mar 11 2010
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/11/2010 05:14 AM, Denis Koroskin wrote:

 On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:53:33 +0300, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 The kick-off meeting for Thunderbird 3:

 "Thunderbird 2 is quite sluggish, has poor asynchronous execution of
 tasks, poor focus control, and annoying modal dialogs on error. What
 do we do for version 3?"

 "Let's build on all that! We'll make Thunderbird 3 even more sluggish
 even on the best of machines. Let them wait for second with an old
 screen whenever they click on something."

 "Excellent! While we're at it, let's make the selection colors such
 that the user never knows where the focus is. That, combined with the
 slugishness of the UI, will go a great job at confusing people."

 "And how about this - let's even insert large delays at random while
 the user is typing an email. There's nothing better than typing out of
 sync with the screen!"

 "Awesome! To make the deal sweeter, we'll replace the useful filter
 functionality with a full-blown search. That would require us to index
 all emails in the background thus making things even slower, and will
 confuse the heck out of everyone."

 "Go Thunderbird 3!"


 Sigh.

 Andrei


 If would recommend using Opera. If not as a default Web-browser, at
 least as a Mail-agent.
 http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7317/picture1qf.png


Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try. 
Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among which 
out-of-sync display:

http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one 
clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm 
talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync 
period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.

It is technically very easy to put a nice progress display up as soon as 
the selection is changed so as to keep the user in the know about what's 
going on. But it takes a Steve Jobs to actually understand the 
importance of UI and to make sure it gets done right. The man is worth 
every penny.


Andrei
Mar 11 2010
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:13 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try.  
 Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among which  
 out-of-sync display:

 http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

 The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one  
 clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm  
 talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync  
 period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.


Give a little break here, you are loading almost 500,000 headers :)  I use  
opera for newsgroups, and day-to-day use is pretty good.  Yes, the first  
time you set it up, if you ask it to download all headers (which I did  
because I want to be able to search on old articles), then it takes a  
bit.  In other words, when you are downloading a day's or even a week's  
worth of messages, the sync problem is not noticable.

One thing it does do which I think could be better is as it downloads  
messages, it threads them individually.  This probably explains why it  
takes so long to download all the headers.  I suppose it does this so you  
can read messages as others are downloading, but obviously this is not  
possible ;)

I chose opera over thunderbird because, well, I can't remember why, but I  
think it had something to do with being able to download all the  
messages.  Or maybe it threads them better.  One command to memorize is  
the 'g' key, which marks the current message as read and goes to the next  
unread message.

-Steve
Mar 12 2010
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 06:55 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:13 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try.
 Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among
 which out-of-sync display:

 http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

 The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one
 clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm
 talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync
 period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.


 Give a little break here, you are loading almost 500,000 headers :) I
 use opera for newsgroups, and day-to-day use is pretty good. Yes, the
 first time you set it up, if you ask it to download all headers (which I
 did because I want to be able to search on old articles), then it takes
 a bit. In other words, when you are downloading a day's or even a week's
 worth of messages, the sync problem is not noticable.


There is only one level of tolerance for that kind of major goofiness, 
and that is zero. The screenshot I sent was not taken while Thunderbird 
is blocked - you can still change the selection in the list or the tree. 
The only problem is that the message pane does not change for a long time.

The flow on selection change is very simple:

1. Display "wait" cue in the message pane.

2. Fetch the message immediately with top priority.

3. Display the message in the message pane.

Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and 
Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the 
background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a message, 
I click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a worker who can't 
tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer cleanup! The right 
behavior is to pause everything that's going on if that would slow down 
the user.

The fact that the responsiveness of the interface is so dependent on the 
connection activity is only one extra _fault_ of the engineers, not a 
reason to cut them some slack.


 One thing it does do which I think could be better is as it downloads
 messages, it threads them individually. This probably explains why it
 takes so long to download all the headers. I suppose it does this so you
 can read messages as others are downloading, but obviously this is not
 possible ;)

 I chose opera over thunderbird because, well, I can't remember why, but
 I think it had something to do with being able to download all the
 messages. Or maybe it threads them better. One command to memorize is
 the 'g' key, which marks the current message as read and goes to the
 next unread message.


Thanks, that's a useful shortcut.

As far as I can tell, however, I'm unable to use Opera for news. 
Yesterday I exited Opera before having downloaded all headers. Today I 
started it and it seems to be in an infinite loop. The status bar says 
"Connecting", then "Authenticating", then "Fetching Groups". It has done 
so for ten minutes and is not making any progress in terms of loading 
headers.

Oh, and yesterday I crashed Opera twice. Even Thunderbird does not have 
such instabilities.

Update: as I finished this post, the toolbar stopped oscillating and 
Opera went in a quiescent state. According to it, the last message was 
sent on 04/26/2004. Changing the selected newsgroup makes it start 
oscillating again, and again without making any progress.

This is the stone age of software.


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:17:36 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 On 03/12/2010 06:55 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:13 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try.
 Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among
 which out-of-sync display:

 http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

 The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one
 clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm
 talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync
 period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.


 Give a little break here, you are loading almost 500,000 headers :) I
 use opera for newsgroups, and day-to-day use is pretty good. Yes, the
 first time you set it up, if you ask it to download all headers (which I
 did because I want to be able to search on old articles), then it takes
 a bit. In other words, when you are downloading a day's or even a week's
 worth of messages, the sync problem is not noticable.


 There is only one level of tolerance for that kind of major goofiness,  
 and that is zero. The screenshot I sent was not taken while Thunderbird  
 is blocked - you can still change the selection in the list or the tree.  
 The only problem is that the message pane does not change for a long  
 time.

 The flow on selection change is very simple:

 1. Display "wait" cue in the message pane.

 2. Fetch the message immediately with top priority.

 3. Display the message in the message pane.

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and  
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the  
 background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a message,  
 I click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a worker who can't  
 tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer cleanup! The right  
 behavior is to pause everything that's going on if that would slow down  
 the user.

 The fact that the responsiveness of the interface is so dependent on the  
 connection activity is only one extra _fault_ of the engineers, not a  
 reason to cut them some slack.


Sure, but What I'm telling you is, you are talking about an unusual  
circumstance, one that you should not encounter every day.  I agree it  
could be done better, but at least for me, I can tolerate an initial  
annoyance if the product works fine afterwards.  It's like the D download  
requiring me to chmod the binaries.  Annoying once, could be better, but  
does not really get in the way of day-to-day activities.


 One thing it does do which I think could be better is as it downloads
 messages, it threads them individually. This probably explains why it
 takes so long to download all the headers. I suppose it does this so you
 can read messages as others are downloading, but obviously this is not
 possible ;)

 I chose opera over thunderbird because, well, I can't remember why, but
 I think it had something to do with being able to download all the
 messages. Or maybe it threads them better. One command to memorize is
 the 'g' key, which marks the current message as read and goes to the
 next unread message.


 Thanks, that's a useful shortcut.

 As far as I can tell, however, I'm unable to use Opera for news.  
 Yesterday I exited Opera before having downloaded all headers. Today I  
 started it and it seems to be in an infinite loop. The status bar says  
 "Connecting", then "Authenticating", then "Fetching Groups". It has done  
 so for ten minutes and is not making any progress in terms of loading  
 headers.


That seems sucky.  I haven't tried that, but I'll remember not to...

I have managed to get opera hung in a similar state, but usually a restart  
fixes it.  It's certainly not perfect software.  But it's better than  
everything else I've tried for newsgroups anyways.  If you find something  
better, please share.


 Oh, and yesterday I crashed Opera twice. Even Thunderbird does not have  
 such instabilities.

 Update: as I finished this post, the toolbar stopped oscillating and  
 Opera went in a quiescent state. According to it, the last message was  
 sent on 04/26/2004. Changing the selected newsgroup makes it start  
 oscillating again, and again without making any progress.


You put opera in a weird state.  This can be true of any software.  Even  
your precious Apple made such shit happen with iTunes once on my  
computer.  An upgrade (triggered by their popup-based downloader)  
completely disabled iTunes from starting (couldn't load some library) and  
only after removing all apple-related software, rebooting, and  
reinstalling did it work.  We as software developers should tolerate bugs  
in programs much better than others, being understanding of how hard it is  
to get software right, but for some reason, the exact opposite seems to  
happen.


 This is the stone age of software.


It's a shame people can't write bug-free software these days, I agree... ;)

One thing this does point out -- the first experience with software is the  
most important.  People have no tolerance for bugs in the first usage.

-Steve
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 10:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:17:36 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 On 03/12/2010 06:55 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:13 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try.
 Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among
 which out-of-sync display:

 http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

 The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one
 clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm
 talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync
 period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.


 Give a little break here, you are loading almost 500,000 headers :) I
 use opera for newsgroups, and day-to-day use is pretty good. Yes, the
 first time you set it up, if you ask it to download all headers (which I
 did because I want to be able to search on old articles), then it takes
 a bit. In other words, when you are downloading a day's or even a week's
 worth of messages, the sync problem is not noticable.


 There is only one level of tolerance for that kind of major goofiness,
 and that is zero. The screenshot I sent was not taken while
 Thunderbird is blocked - you can still change the selection in the
 list or the tree. The only problem is that the message pane does not
 change for a long time.

 The flow on selection change is very simple:

 1. Display "wait" cue in the message pane.

 2. Fetch the message immediately with top priority.

 3. Display the message in the message pane.

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the
 background, user actions have bottom priority. I want to see a
 message, I click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a
 worker who can't tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer
 cleanup! The right behavior is to pause everything that's going on if
 that would slow down the user.

 The fact that the responsiveness of the interface is so dependent on
 the connection activity is only one extra _fault_ of the engineers,
 not a reason to cut them some slack.


 Sure, but What I'm telling you is, you are talking about an unusual
 circumstance, one that you should not encounter every day. I agree it
 could be done better, but at least for me, I can tolerate an initial
 annoyance if the product works fine afterwards. It's like the D download
 requiring me to chmod the binaries. Annoying once, could be better, but
 does not really get in the way of day-to-day activities.


 One thing it does do which I think could be better is as it downloads
 messages, it threads them individually. This probably explains why it
 takes so long to download all the headers. I suppose it does this so you
 can read messages as others are downloading, but obviously this is not
 possible ;)

 I chose opera over thunderbird because, well, I can't remember why, but
 I think it had something to do with being able to download all the
 messages. Or maybe it threads them better. One command to memorize is
 the 'g' key, which marks the current message as read and goes to the
 next unread message.


 Thanks, that's a useful shortcut.

 As far as I can tell, however, I'm unable to use Opera for news.
 Yesterday I exited Opera before having downloaded all headers. Today I
 started it and it seems to be in an infinite loop. The status bar says
 "Connecting", then "Authenticating", then "Fetching Groups". It has
 done so for ten minutes and is not making any progress in terms of
 loading headers.


 That seems sucky. I haven't tried that, but I'll remember not to...

 I have managed to get opera hung in a similar state, but usually a
 restart fixes it. It's certainly not perfect software. But it's better
 than everything else I've tried for newsgroups anyways. If you find
 something better, please share.


 Oh, and yesterday I crashed Opera twice. Even Thunderbird does not
 have such instabilities.

 Update: as I finished this post, the toolbar stopped oscillating and
 Opera went in a quiescent state. According to it, the last message was
 sent on 04/26/2004. Changing the selected newsgroup makes it start
 oscillating again, and again without making any progress.


 You put opera in a weird state. This can be true of any software. Even
 your precious Apple made such shit happen with iTunes once on my
 computer. An upgrade (triggered by their popup-based downloader)
 completely disabled iTunes from starting (couldn't load some library)
 and only after removing all apple-related software, rebooting, and
 reinstalling did it work. We as software developers should tolerate bugs
 in programs much better than others, being understanding of how hard it
 is to get software right, but for some reason, the exact opposite seems
 to happen.


 This is the stone age of software.


 It's a shame people can't write bug-free software these days, I agree... ;)

 One thing this does point out -- the first experience with software is
 the most important. People have no tolerance for bugs in the first usage.


Good point, and I'm glad that there's work being done on dmd installers 
for Windows and Linux.

In the end I managed to get out of the wrong state. I don't know how. 
Later on (after a couple of restarts), I got into a state where I could 
see a recent message header, but nothing in the display pane. So I 
changed the selection and saw some quite hilarious message:

http://erdani.com/opera-many-new-messages.jpg


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 11:04 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 03/12/2010 10:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:17:36 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 On 03/12/2010 06:55 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:13 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Thanks, Denis. I'm looking at Opera now and will give it a try.
 Unfortunately it shares a number of issues with Thunderbird, among
 which out-of-sync display:

 http://erdani.com/opera-out-of-sync.jpg

 The message displayed in the message pane is unrelated to the one
 clicked in the list above. I'm not talking milliseconds here; I'm
 talking a dozen seconds. The headers were loading, and the out-of-sync
 period could be arbitrarily long. To me that's a crass error.


 Give a little break here, you are loading almost 500,000 headers :) I
 use opera for newsgroups, and day-to-day use is pretty good. Yes, the
 first time you set it up, if you ask it to download all headers
 (which I
 did because I want to be able to search on old articles), then it takes
 a bit. In other words, when you are downloading a day's or even a
 week's
 worth of messages, the sync problem is not noticable.


 There is only one level of tolerance for that kind of major goofiness,
 and that is zero. The screenshot I sent was not taken while
 Thunderbird is blocked - you can still change the selection in the
 list or the tree. The only problem is that the message pane does not
 change for a long time.

 The flow on selection change is very simple:

 1. Display "wait" cue in the message pane.

 2. Fetch the message immediately with top priority.

 3. Display the message in the message pane.

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the
 background, user actions have bottom priority. I want to see a
 message, I click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a
 worker who can't tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer
 cleanup! The right behavior is to pause everything that's going on if
 that would slow down the user.

 The fact that the responsiveness of the interface is so dependent on
 the connection activity is only one extra _fault_ of the engineers,
 not a reason to cut them some slack.


 Sure, but What I'm telling you is, you are talking about an unusual
 circumstance, one that you should not encounter every day. I agree it
 could be done better, but at least for me, I can tolerate an initial
 annoyance if the product works fine afterwards. It's like the D download
 requiring me to chmod the binaries. Annoying once, could be better, but
 does not really get in the way of day-to-day activities.


 One thing it does do which I think could be better is as it downloads
 messages, it threads them individually. This probably explains why it
 takes so long to download all the headers. I suppose it does this so
 you
 can read messages as others are downloading, but obviously this is not
 possible ;)

 I chose opera over thunderbird because, well, I can't remember why, but
 I think it had something to do with being able to download all the
 messages. Or maybe it threads them better. One command to memorize is
 the 'g' key, which marks the current message as read and goes to the
 next unread message.


 Thanks, that's a useful shortcut.

 As far as I can tell, however, I'm unable to use Opera for news.
 Yesterday I exited Opera before having downloaded all headers. Today I
 started it and it seems to be in an infinite loop. The status bar says
 "Connecting", then "Authenticating", then "Fetching Groups". It has
 done so for ten minutes and is not making any progress in terms of
 loading headers.


 That seems sucky. I haven't tried that, but I'll remember not to...

 I have managed to get opera hung in a similar state, but usually a
 restart fixes it. It's certainly not perfect software. But it's better
 than everything else I've tried for newsgroups anyways. If you find
 something better, please share.


 Oh, and yesterday I crashed Opera twice. Even Thunderbird does not
 have such instabilities.

 Update: as I finished this post, the toolbar stopped oscillating and
 Opera went in a quiescent state. According to it, the last message was
 sent on 04/26/2004. Changing the selected newsgroup makes it start
 oscillating again, and again without making any progress.


 You put opera in a weird state. This can be true of any software. Even
 your precious Apple made such shit happen with iTunes once on my
 computer. An upgrade (triggered by their popup-based downloader)
 completely disabled iTunes from starting (couldn't load some library)
 and only after removing all apple-related software, rebooting, and
 reinstalling did it work. We as software developers should tolerate bugs
 in programs much better than others, being understanding of how hard it
 is to get software right, but for some reason, the exact opposite seems
 to happen.


 This is the stone age of software.


 It's a shame people can't write bug-free software these days, I
 agree... ;)

 One thing this does point out -- the first experience with software is
 the most important. People have no tolerance for bugs in the first usage.


 Good point, and I'm glad that there's work being done on dmd installers
 for Windows and Linux.

 In the end I managed to get out of the wrong state. I don't know how.
 Later on (after a couple of restarts), I got into a state where I could
 see a recent message header, but nothing in the display pane. So I
 changed the selection and saw some quite hilarious message:

 http://erdani.com/opera-many-new-messages.jpg


 Andrei


NEWSFLASH

I swear that right after I sent the message above, I clicked "OK" to 
download "ALL" those 3 messages and the next thing I saw was this (I 
wish I was kidding):

http://erdani.com/opera-crash.jpg

It's not impossible the code that handles the "All" download assumes the 
actual number of messages is greater than 250...


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:08:32 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 NEWSFLASH

 I swear that right after I sent the message above, I clicked "OK" to  
 download "ALL" those 3 messages and the next thing I saw was this (I  
 wish I was kidding):

 http://erdani.com/opera-crash.jpg

 It's not impossible the code that handles the "All" download assumes the  
 actual number of messages is greater than 250...


I'm going to go ahead and suggest you reinstall opera :)

I've never had near the problems you did.  That error message box may have  
been triggered in a weird state anyways, notice the <2> at the top.

A related experience:

I recently was forced to purchase a new computer after my XP machine  
died.  It happened to be right when Windows 7 came out, so I got one of  
the first compaq's that had Win7 on it.  After learning how the UI had  
been improved I was excited to start using it.

Several days into it, I started getting many bizarre errors.  First, it  
said really scary stuff like "could not mount \HardDrive\0".  Then it told  
me my hard drive had corruption on it, and chkdisk should be run (chkdisk  
never found any errors).  Then I set up a backup for my data, worried I  
was going to lose it all.  The backups worked at first, but sometimes  
would hang the entire OS because the "volume shadow copy" failed.  I  
called compaq to try and straighten it out.  I ran all requested hardware  
diagnostic tasks, and they all passed with flying colors.  They asked the  
question (I kid you not) "have you altered the software on the system at  
all."  They had me try removing my USB attached hard drive for a few days  
(of course this cleared up the backup hang problem because there was *no  
media to backup to*).  I still had issues, and finally they had me  
reinstall the OS from recovery disks.  During the hour-and-a-half process  
to reinstall the OS and test and see that there were no immediate  
problems, the technician mentioned that others have had similar issues and  
a reinstall fixed the problem (AAAAH!! Thanks for telling me that right  
away!)

Since the reinstall, everything has worked very smoothly, my backups never  
fail, and the system seems very stable.  There was absolutely nothing  
wrong with the hardware, despite all the issues with hard drives, it was  
simply a corrupt first install.

Moral: always run the recovery as the first thing you do with a new PC,  
because the first install usually comes from a factory image, and is not a  
"fresh" install :)

-Steve
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 One thing this does point out -- the first experience with software is 
 the most important.  People have no tolerance for bugs in the first usage.


Absolutely right.
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hndpev$2oma$1 digitalmars.com...

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and 
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the 
 background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a message, I 
 click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a worker who can't 
 tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer cleanup! The right behavior 
 is to pause everything that's going on if that would slow down the user.


That sort of thing is a big pet peeve for me too (Maybe I'm just being 
pessemistic, but it seems to be all too common lately). It's definitely a 
dominant charactaristic of Mozilla in general though, not just Thunderbird. 
Literally at least half the time I use FireFox, there will be some point 
where I'll have something loading in one tab, so I'll try to switch to 
another tab so I can do something useful while I'm waiting, but then it 
won't switch tabs (or have any responsiveness at all, for that matter) until 
the first tab finishes loading. *Then* it'll switch tabs even though by then 
it's become pointless.

I *really* wish I could find a web browser that fixes those responsiveness 
problems AND has a normal non-skinned UI, FireFox's lack of any useless 
always-resident background services, AND FireFox's AdBlock Plus, NoScript, 
TabMixPlus, BetterPrivacy, and ideally DownloadHelper and DownThemAll as 
well...but I've yet to find anything that comes even close. I've been 
tempted to try to hack up SRWare Iron (ie, the only Chromium implementation 
I allow to exist on my computer) to do just that, but, heck, I sure as hell 
don't have the time :(
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent reply "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:39:42 -0600, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message
 news:hndpev$2oma$1 digitalmars.com...

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the
 background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a  
 message, I
 click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a worker who can't
 tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer cleanup! The right  
 behavior
 is to pause everything that's going on if that would slow down the user.


 That sort of thing is a big pet peeve for me too (Maybe I'm just being
 pessemistic, but it seems to be all too common lately). It's definitely a
 dominant charactaristic of Mozilla in general though, not just  
 Thunderbird.
 Literally at least half the time I use FireFox, there will be some point
 where I'll have something loading in one tab, so I'll try to switch to
 another tab so I can do something useful while I'm waiting, but then it
 won't switch tabs (or have any responsiveness at all, for that matter)  
 until
 the first tab finishes loading. *Then* it'll switch tabs even though by  
 then
 it's become pointless.


To add insult to injury, when you send an email using Thunderbird on  
Ubuntu, while the email is being sent, there are two windows in your face  
that you don't care about: the message you just wrote, and the  
"Sending..." window on top of it. Of course you'd want to move on with  
your life instead of watching your message being packaged and sent, but  
that's difficult with Thunderbird. So what you need to do is Alt-Tab twice  
and you can return to Thunderbird's main window and continue reading your  
email.

I read and write so much email everyday, for me the process of reading,  
replying, and archiving email must be entirely streamlined. For archiving  
I found the Nostalgy extension; I press Shift-A and the message goes to an  
archiving folder. I need to synchronously wait for the message to go away,  
but I can put up with that. I couldn't find a good extension "minimize the  
useless windows while sending". Even worse, I tried to make the point on a  
Thunderbird forum and a thundermoron brushed that off as a non-issue and  
suggested the Alt-Tab solution.

Anyhow, this version 3 takes serious steps towards making the streamlining  
of the read/reply/archive process more difficult. But then this is the  
second message I'm writing using Opera, and I was glad to see that the  
first one disappeared off the screen as soon as I pressed Ctrl-Enter.


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:op.u9gum0r0c5uhrj leptoc...

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:39:42 -0600, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message
 news:hndpev$2oma$1 digitalmars.com...

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and
 Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the
 background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a 
 message, I
 click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a worker who can't
 tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer cleanup! The right 
 behavior
 is to pause everything that's going on if that would slow down the user.


 That sort of thing is a big pet peeve for me too (Maybe I'm just being
 pessemistic, but it seems to be all too common lately). It's definitely a
 dominant charactaristic of Mozilla in general though, not just 
 Thunderbird.
 Literally at least half the time I use FireFox, there will be some point
 where I'll have something loading in one tab, so I'll try to switch to
 another tab so I can do something useful while I'm waiting, but then it
 won't switch tabs (or have any responsiveness at all, for that matter) 
 until
 the first tab finishes loading. *Then* it'll switch tabs even though by 
 then
 it's become pointless.


 To add insult to injury, when you send an email using Thunderbird on 
 Ubuntu, while the email is being sent, there are two windows in your face 
 that you don't care about: the message you just wrote, and the 
 "Sending..." window on top of it. Of course you'd want to move on with 
 your life instead of watching your message being packaged and sent, but 
 that's difficult with Thunderbird. So what you need to do is Alt-Tab twice 
 and you can return to Thunderbird's main window and continue reading your 
 email.


Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed 
stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems that 
were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have *anything* 
like that.

The closest annoyance I have to that is if you try to send a message or pull 
emails from a specific email account when it just happens to be in the 
middle of its scheduled "receive all" cycle, then it doesn't give any 
priority to your request. Mildly anoying sometimes...but at least I don't 
have to watch it try to send.


 Even worse, I tried to make the point on a  Thunderbird forum and a 
 thundermoron brushed that off as a non-issue and  suggested the Alt-Tab 
 solution.


That kind of thing is 100% typical for the Mozilla scene. When FF3 came out, 
I requested options to disable the new AwfulBar (instead of having to rely 
on some add-on hack) and replace the unified back/forward buttons (used that 
a lot with IE7, and the more I did, the more I hated it) with the old 
separate style (instead of using an add-on that, last I checked, didn't even 
exist). Well...all I got back was a bunch of rather nasty bitching about 
"How dare I even think of not absolutely loving the new changes. Lots of 
people are perfectly fine with it, so obviously I have no good reason to 
want it the old way". Arrogant bastards. With attitudes like that I think 
it's an absolute shame that they have as much of a following as they do.
Mar 12 2010
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have *anything*
 like that.


OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no 
question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages 
without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more 
productive than OE.

Andrei
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hne1t0$72k$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems 
 that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have 
 *anything*
 like that.


 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no 
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages 
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more 
 productive than OE.

 Andrei


Current folder: Alt-F, F, C
All folders: Alt-F, F, F
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message 
news:hne29f$8gj$1 digitalmars.com...

 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:hne1t0$72k$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems 
 that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have 
 *anything*
 like that.


 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no 
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages 
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more 
 productive than OE.

 Andrei


 Current folder: Alt-F, F, C
 All folders: Alt-F, F, F


Or did I misunderstand what you meant?
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 12:48 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Andrei Alexandrescu"<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org>  wrote in message
 news:hne1t0$72k$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems
 that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have
 *anything*
 like that.


 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more
 productive than OE.

 Andrei


 Current folder: Alt-F, F, C
 All folders: Alt-F, F, F


?

I have one folder called "Archive" in my IMAP account. I have read a 
message and I want that message moved to "Archive". What steps do I need 
to take?


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hne38s$a8f$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:48 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Andrei Alexandrescu"<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org>  wrote in message
 news:hne1t0$72k$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems
 that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have
 *anything*
 like that.


 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more
 productive than OE.

 Andrei


 Current folder: Alt-F, F, C
 All folders: Alt-F, F, F


 ?

 I have one folder called "Archive" in my IMAP account. I have read a 
 message and I want that message moved to "Archive". What steps do I need 
 to take?


I never really use IMAP, so I'm not sure if this will apply (though I assume 
it will), but this works for me:

Move message (email-only): Ctrl-Shift-V, then type (or use arrow keys) to 
navigate to the desired target folder, then Enter to move it, or Esc to 
cancel.

Copy message (both email and newsgroup): Just like "move", but use "Alt-E, 
P" instead of "Ctrl-Shift-V".

Not sure if that's good enough?

Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know they 
may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually 
tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead hands).
Mar 12 2010
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 03/12/2010 01:40 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Andrei Alexandrescu"<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org>  wrote in message
 news:hne38s$a8f$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:48 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Andrei Alexandrescu"<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org>   wrote in message
 news:hne1t0$72k$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 12:27 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Wow. You know, a lot of people consider Outlook Express the red-headed
 stepchild of email/ng clients (largely because of the security problems
 that
 were fixed ages ago). But I use it every day and it doesn't have
 *anything*
 like that.


 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more
 productive than OE.

 Andrei


 Current folder: Alt-F, F, C
 All folders: Alt-F, F, F


 ?

 I have one folder called "Archive" in my IMAP account. I have read a
 message and I want that message moved to "Archive". What steps do I need
 to take?


 I never really use IMAP, so I'm not sure if this will apply (though I assume
 it will), but this works for me:

 Move message (email-only): Ctrl-Shift-V, then type (or use arrow keys) to
 navigate to the desired target folder, then Enter to move it, or Esc to
 cancel.

 Copy message (both email and newsgroup): Just like "move", but use "Alt-E,
 P" instead of "Ctrl-Shift-V".

 Not sure if that's good enough?


Well it would be difficult to compare to Shift-A. To be frank it's a 
non-starter.


 Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know they
 may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually
 tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead hands).


Pledging allegiance and/or being a fan of a Windows OS is an interesting 
concept :o).


Andrei
Mar 12 2010
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hne5tf$f8a$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 03/12/2010 01:40 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 I never really use IMAP, so I'm not sure if this will apply (though I 
 assume
 it will), but this works for me:

 Move message (email-only): Ctrl-Shift-V, then type (or use arrow keys) to
 navigate to the desired target folder, then Enter to move it, or Esc to
 cancel.

 Copy message (both email and newsgroup): Just like "move", but use 
 "Alt-E,
 P" instead of "Ctrl-Shift-V".

 Not sure if that's good enough?


 Well it would be difficult to compare to Shift-A. To be frank it's a 
 non-starter.


I suppose so. Personally, I don't use a separate archive folder, I find 
read/unread (plus custom sorting rules for incoming mail) to work fine, so 
for me it's a non-issue.


 Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know 
 they
 may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually
 tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead hands).


 Pledging allegiance and/or being a fan of a Windows OS is an interesting 
 concept :o).


Heh :)

In all truthfullness though, out of all OSes, there is one and *only* one 
that I actually like, and that's PalmOS (and particularly the ones before 
they screwed up Grafitti). But that's abandoned now in favor of that WebOS 
Google/Apple-wannabe crap, plus it never would have worked well as a desktop 
OS anyway.

I don't actually like Windows or MS all that much, but I absolutely hate OSX 
(and post-Woz Apple as a whole), and as far as Linux/Unix, well, there's a 
lot that I do and don't like about those (for instance, I can't find a file 
manager that doesn't piss me off), so I figure "Better the devil I know", 
hence Windows. And as far as windows goes, the only changes I particularly 
like about Win7 are that renaming doesn't select the extention and the 
ability to *always* use folder-tree view in the file explorer. But those are 
small and there's a bunch of other things I don't like that I can't change, 
so it's XP for me.
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:40:14 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:



 Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know  
 they
 may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually
 tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead hands).


OE is gone in Win7.  It's now called something like Live Mail

-Steve
Mar 12 2010
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.u9g0qne2eav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:40:14 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:



 Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know 
 they
 may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually
 tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead hands).


 OE is gone in Win7.  It's now called something like Live Mail

 -Steve


I was under the impression that was just an updated and renamed version of 
OE. Is that not so?
Mar 12 2010
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:13:51 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message
 news:op.u9g0qne2eav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:40:14 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:



 Of course, this is all on XP, Outlook Express v6.00.x. For all I know
 they
 may have changed things for Vista or 7 (although, after having actually
 tried both Vista and 7, they'd have to drag XP from my cold dead  
 hands).


 OE is gone in Win7.  It's now called something like Live Mail

 -Steve


 I was under the impression that was just an updated and renamed version  
 of
 OE. Is that not so?


I have no idea.  It certainly looks a lot different.  I haven't really  
used it at all, since I don't normally do emailing (besides from my web  
email address) on the computer.

-Steve
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 OE (at least as of the last time I used it) is much worse than TB, no 
 question about that. One simple matter - you can't archive messages 
 without using the mouse. As bad as Thunderbird is, it is way more 
 productive than OE.


What drove me away from OE was the inability to backup/restore its 
database. (OE tries to hide the database in hidden directories with 
long-strings-o-garbage path names.)

Even if you backed up / restored those hidden files, OE still was 
screwed up because it also stored critical information in the registration.

Further blows against OE were storing its database in a secret format. 
No way am I going to have business critical data stored in a secret 
format. Thunderbird's database is a text file, so even if TB vanishes in 
a puff of smoke I can still extract my data.
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 That sort of thing is a big pet peeve for me too (Maybe I'm just being 
 pessemistic, but it seems to be all too common lately). It's definitely a 
 dominant charactaristic of Mozilla in general though, not just Thunderbird. 
 Literally at least half the time I use FireFox, there will be some point 
 where I'll have something loading in one tab, so I'll try to switch to 
 another tab so I can do something useful while I'm waiting, but then it 
 won't switch tabs (or have any responsiveness at all, for that matter) until 
 the first tab finishes loading. *Then* it'll switch tabs even though by then 
 it's become pointless.
 
 I *really* wish I could find a web browser that fixes those responsiveness 
 problems



I had the same frustration with IE 7. One tab would hang due to 
javascript slowness, and every other tab (and every other window on the 
computer) would grind to a halt.

This has gotten much better with IE 8, though Windows still does a poor 
job of giving the window with the focus higher priority than background 
windows.

What also helped was upgrading to a multicore system.
Mar 12 2010
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Step 2 is another huge reason of annoyance with both Thunderbird and
  Opera. As far as I can tell, if they are downloading headers in the
  background, user actions have bottom  priority. I want to see a
 message, I click, and then I wait and wait and wait. It's like a
 worker who can't tend to an urgent task because of doing drawer
 cleanup! The right behavior is to pause everything that's going on if
 that would slow down the user.



I agree with your complaint. The whole point of multithreading is so
that the app will appear to be very responsive to user input. Things
that don't show to the user get put in background threads.



 Yesterday I exited Opera before having downloaded all headers. Today
 I started it and it seems to be in an infinite loop. The status bar
 says "Connecting", then "Authenticating", then "Fetching Groups". It
 has done so for ten minutes and is not making any progress in terms
 of loading headers.


This is totally unacceptable for any program that reads stuff over a 
network. It must update its local database in a transactional, 
restartable manner, so that it transparently recovers from random 
network outages.
Mar 12 2010