Thunderbird 3
Why?
What.
How...

Super Fast Intro
• Thunderbird history in 60 seconds
• who we are, what we do

Why Thunderbird matters
Successful messaging innovation is
happening in centralized models
HTTP does not mean open
IMAP, POP, SMTP endangered
Decentralized innovation and
user-level hackability matters
Data ownership matters
Closed email systems are winning

Thunderbird is good, and precious
What could make it better?
What to do? I thought so...
Scope of work ahead daunting
How should we prioritize work?

adding/changing features
(growing market)
• removing features
• centralized configuration is expensive!
• my bug fix is your regression
• “ the way that [...] works means it's not
an easy fix, IIRC”
fixing bugs
(higher quality)

Scary Facts
• 5-10M users
>0.5 MLOC
• 5-10 devs
Thousands of bugs
across three layers
• 2-3 QAs
(thunderbird,
mailnews, gecko)
AAARGH!

Still...
• With effort and
patience, lots of
improvements
possible
• It’s just code
• The opportunity
for impact makes
people do crazy
things

Thunderbird 3
What
• Based on Gecko 1.9.1 (== Firefox 3.1)
• Platform upgrade
• UX improvements
When
• Ship as soon as possible & ready

• Firefox 3.0/3.1 improvements
• JavaScript faster
Platform • XUL more stable
Update • Looks better
• Add-on manager

User Experience
• optimize high-use paths
• reflect modern realities (disks, bandwidth)
• autosync, delete, archive, add to addressbook

• the hardest problem of all:
getting started
• we can help 90+% of users
Auto- a lot
configuration: • user experience trumps
code simplicity
• the data we collect can be
used by all email clients

Bigger UX vision
• Learn from evolution of messaging in
last 10 years (Gmail, Facebook,
Twitter...)
• Aim for the largest market possible,
not just technophiles
• Preserve key values
• openness, extensibility, accessibility

Civilians think in terms of
conversations with people, not
servers, accounts, folders,
protocols, ports
• These are cultural changes.
• Cultural changes are hard.

Making contributing easier
• Cleaner, higher-level APIs
• JS APIs rather than C++ APIs
• Making room: moving specialized
functionality to extensions
• Help needed!

Gloda: a powerful message DB
SQLite & JavaScript
• Architecture converstations
• Concepts identities messages
collections async
• Strengths &
weaknesses + simple
+ extensible
• Case study + ajax-compliant
- young
MIT Timeline
1 plane flight
demo

experiments
• New models to provide interactions that:
• requires less from the user
• integrate with how users work elsewhere
• Experimental toolbar
• conversation & person based search results
• tabs for state management

Bigger themes
• Sorting is not the smarter search
• Conversations, not trees
• Tags are richer than folders
• Protocols are not how people think
about communications

Hacking for a product with a
significant market
A successful contributor has
• motivation
• balance of community fit and personal drive
• ego in check
• satisfaction from shared outcome, not
personal glory

GETTING
INVOLVED

Helping with bugs
• 30+ bugs / day need more info, triage,
dupe
• Bug followup
• more info needed, verification
• Untouched 10-year old bugs
• Work with others:
• Test days, Bug days

With more time & passion
• Writing automated tests
• JavaScript is all you need
• Patches!
• developer.mozilla.org
• Extension development
• Learn how it all works

Helping non-en_US
• Localization, obviously
• new website for
mozillamessaging.com!
• Support sites per locale

Experimentation
through add-ons

Futures & Challenges
• Linux distros, netbooks
• Mobile
• How to leverage the web?
• Calendaring options
• Everyone wants your address
book - and you want it
everywhere.

Thank you
dascher@mozillamessaging.com
ludovic@mozillamessaging.com