Thunderbird 3.0 to begin ascent next month: what to expect (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Thunderbird 3.0 to begin ascent next month: what to expect (ars technica)

Posted Mar 5, 2008 16:42 UTC (Wed) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

The javascript support may be for extensions.  Hopefully it would be disabled for actual
messages.  Of course, since TBird is more than just an email client, they may be expecting
javascript to be needed by some RSS/Atom feeds.  That could also explain the need for better
HTML rendering, though RSS and HTML-formatted email should both have pretty minimal needs.  We
won't really know until they ship a beta.

Thunderbird 3.0 to begin ascent next month: what to expect (ars technica)

Posted Mar 5, 2008 18:16 UTC (Wed) by orev (subscriber, #50902) [Link]

The ENTIRE application is written in javascript, which is then run on top of the gecko engine.
This has nothing to do with supporting javascript in email.  It's the very basis and
foundation for all Mozilla products -- they are ALL written in Javascript.  A new version of
javascript allows the developers to make Thunderbird do more things.

As for the HTML renderer, that already relates to my previous point, because the entire
application is rendered (using XUL).  In addition, your comment has the air of an attitude
that no one should be using HTML email.  All I can say to that is: welcome to the >13th
century.  Even when the printing press was invented they had variable width typefaces.  Anyone
who is wedded to the idea that email should only be plain text has lost the battle, and wasted
their time while they were at it, because it's a ridiculous thing to be arguing about.  We
don't have flying cars yet, but at least we have real word-wrapping.

Thunderbird 3.0 to begin ascent next month: what to expect (ars technica)

Posted Mar 5, 2008 23:14 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Proper word-wrapping (rather than hard newlines forcing everything to <80 columns) is a good
thing, but see format=flowed in RFC 3676.  No need to go to HTML mail to get it.

Thunderbird 3.0 to begin ascent next month: what to expect (ars technica)

Posted Mar 6, 2008 3:35 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I would prefer to have a standard for rich e-mail, possibly a subset of HTML, carefully designed to limit risks from malicious contents to the recipient. I'm not aware of such standard. Maybe the new Gecko could help develop such standard by making it possible to limit HTML? That would be interesting.

By the way, I've noticed a strong correlation between HTML e-mail and cluelessness of the author. If I answer an HTML post in a mailing list, there is a good chance that I would get a personal reply without a copy to the mailing list, perhaps with some questions others can answer better or with information others may need. At which point I should take an extra effort and tell the sender to post to the list.

The end result is that "HTML writers" are losing in those lists every day, because their posts are not answered by those who don't have time for clueless replies and private conversations. Mind you, no arguing about the mail format is taking place, it's just a natural selection.

Text only email

Posted Mar 7, 2008 16:17 UTC (Fri) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]

Huh,

At my employer all mail clients are set to send text only email by default (a change to the
Thunderbird default) and images in email are blocked.  No decent systems administrator wants
animations, pop ups, html redirects, javascript, flash, automatic return receipts, and all of
their associated Microsoft Outlook like security problems in their employers email.
Especially in the >20th century.

Variable width type faces, wheee, now tabulated data looks like !@$#!...