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Claws Mail

claws-mail.org

138 pointsandrewshadura80 comments

It is a shame that open source is much more of a subject in the world of programmers than in the world of user interface designers.

A face lift for claws would be worth 1000 new features.

It is a fact that people rate software by how it looks, and anyone who is not a geek will pass up Claws - and the geeks will install it alongside whatever they regularly use.

I wonder if there is a way to get more open source UI work?

Is that a problem though? Claws is great and I hope it will not get a dumbed down Gnome interface by someone on a Mac who does not even use the software they redesign, with buttons in unexpected places, unintuitive icons for the most basic functionality and its options limited to a maximum of 25 because of some metric that says more options are hard to understand.

Hyberbole, yes, but the interface of Claws is pretty much what makes me use it. It's blazingly fast and efficient. What would a re-design improve?

> What would a re-design improve

That is exactly the question people often forget to answer. We see this with both software and webdesign. Stuff gets a facelife, because it doesn't follow the latest trends. During the process features or design decisions made previously is often ignore or forgot, because they don't fix the new "vision".

In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows.

There is a lot of value in a stable UI. You can get caught in old or even deprecated libraries and UI interaction, that's a risk. There is however also value in being conservative and consistent. If you take an application(/web-application) like Chrome or Gmail, and you haven't used that in a few years, then you'll get overwhelmed. Something like Claws Mail or TextMate doesn't have that issue, you learned the concepts years ago, and they are just a valid now as they where then.

> In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows.

Since last year, they have a release branch (4.x.x) built with GTK+3. I know GTK 4 is on the way, but I think nobody is using it nowadays.

Gtk4 is just new. Adaption will require years.

What you're saying may be true for some, but I personally don't care.

The UI is functional, simple, easy to use.

What I do care about, what I fear, are UI changes which remove options, obscure clarity, make workflow difficult, which seems to be 99% of UI "improvements" these days.

I want descriptive text under or as buttons. I want to see, and be able to easily grab and use a scrollbar.

I want things like this, and more. At the very least, if not be default, by config options.

But again, the ongoing trend seems to be not only to design for looks, not usage, but also prevent user change.

I am so happy with claws, so please, I say this politely, go away and take your UI thoughts with you.

Please, I beg you.

He's talking about good UI and you're talking about bad UI.

It’s almost impossible to make good UI without dumbing things way down. Either that or I’m lacking imagination.

Just look at the Date format field in the Preferences screenshot. It's really hard to not find a more user-friendly way to do it, IMHO.

UI and UX matters more than developers care to admit.

Ok, I'll bite-

What would be a functionally equivalent, but more user-friendly way to do it? (And preferably not 10x harder to implement)

For example an additional drop-down menu with common date string formats, where the first entry is the OS default for the given locale.

Additionally one could add a text label, which displays an example date formatted by the currently selected choice.

See? It's really not that hard, you just need to switch the perspective for a minute: what would I prefer if I were a user? Hiding the complexity from the user is one step forward to a better UI.

There was only mention of a facelift, which can be good or bad. And lots of facelifts nowadays are quite bad, so I understand the concern.

so, he is suggesting not to change anything about claws? :-)

I haven’t seen any modern UI for desktop apps which wasn’t bad in the sense the parent meant: too little affordances, not following long-established OS conventions, not using the native controls and look&feel, not being keyboard-navigable, etc.

The main reason I've used claws for the last 12 years is because it looks elegant, clear, clean, simple, and most important: consistent.

It doesn't need a facelift or an overhaul! In fact, as soon as that happens I (and I suspect, majority of users) will leave it forever.

The shitshow that happened to GNOME isn't the only way that UI improvements can go.

Like it or not, irrespective of whether or not you personally care about UI/UX, lots of people do and bad UI/UX has turned away thousands of people from Linux and friends.

Just from the screenshots:

- The same icons are recycled in multiple places, like queue and outbox. Why can't they get more icons? Why aren't they distinct?

- Why is it called "trash" AND "wastebin" in the same place, with two different styles of icon?

- Each of the "reply", "forward", etc buttons are all menu dropdowns. Each menu is a small click target. Why isn't this just an overflow menu? Why can't these be customized?

- The "connected" icon at the bottom appears to be stolen from an ancient Mozilla build (though I'm unsure of the origin). Is that truly the best visual indicator for connectivity in the year 2022?

- The inbox shows the file size of emails in two separate places, with a precision that goes down to tens of bytes. Why?

Your idea of good or bad UI doesn't consider that this UI already has things that could be net improved without actually removing or changing functionality. "Designed" implies that thought went into how it's used and looks. Nobody is advocating making it look like Material UI.

> Why is it called "trash" AND "wastebin" in the same place, with two different styles of icon?

Localization? One of the screenshots is clearly in a uk locale where it's a wastebin, not trash? However... that screenshot is still connected to a server where the trash folder is named trash. Changing the name of server folders is gross, regardless.

> - Each of the "reply", "forward", etc buttons are all menu dropdowns. Each menu is a small click target. Why isn't this just an overflow menu? Why can't these be customized?

How can you tell it can't be customized from the screenshots? I think it's setable in the preferences, but it's been along time since I used Claws. I don't remember drop downs next to the reply buttons (and can't fathom why they'd be there) either, though. Maybe some address selection? They can still be buttons and have drop downs next to them, though. That's nice for reply, and then have a reply all in a drop down next to it, because reply all is terrible, but sometimes needed. (Actually, in a perfect world, it might be nice to carry all the address info into the draft and be able to select people to send to later, but that's a change in substance, and has issues when you're saving drafts on imap and restoring them later)

> - The "connected" icon at the bottom appears to be stolen from an ancient Mozilla build (though I'm unsure of the origin). Is that truly the best visual indicator for connectivity in the year 2022?

I mean... You click on it, and get disconnected operations. You could update it, but why? It works, it's clear if you've used it. It's unobtrusive if you don't.

> - The inbox shows the file size of emails in two separate places, with a precision that goes down to tens of bytes. Why?

I see three sizes in the main view, one for the list, one for the whole inbox, one for the currently selected items. This is pretty handy if you are trying to clean up mail to manage a storage quota, which is fairly important for people who have a storage quota. I don't remember if Claws uses three significant figures for size or two digits after the decimal place. We can't really critique this without more information.

I agree that the UI often holds back open source. When looking at the features of Claws, nothing is jumping out at me as both unique and something a lot of people would really like/need. Is there something specific you're seeing that you think people are missing out on due to the interface scaring them away?

A working, open source, fully featured email client... not much of them left after mozilla ditched thunderbird.

I don't have an opinion on the discussion above, but want to point out that Thunderbird is still alive and well. I use it every day, and donate to it.

Likewise. Another T-Bird user here.

On the other hand, I am what you might call a "geek", and I find that Claws is actually lacking important features that I need, such as support for multiple "sending identities". I couldn't care less about the UI being pretty, but I do care about it being usable, and I care about it having the features that I want.

I use claws with multiple sending identities.

How? I spent a long time trying to figure it out and searching docs.

Add a new account, set protocol to "None (SMTP only)", set it up.

I just use multiple "accounts", they don't necessarily need unique SMTP/IMAP settings. With more than one you get to pick a From: via drop-down in Compose, and you can also set (per-folder) the default account and/or CC:/Reply-to:

If by multiple identities you mean accounts, I currently use it with 4 accounts, each one with rules to receive mail to its own folder, and in the past have easily exceeded a dozen accounts.

Also, backup and restore are super easy: just copy the ~/.claws_mail and ~/Mail directories and you're done: messages, attachments, accounts, contacts, everything.

You can also contribute to Claws Mail themes. [0]

A set of icons/font would probably achieve the facelift you would like to see.

[0] https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php

That's not the problem. That's like changing the color on the walls, in a house where the light switches were placed too high for small children to reach.

Sounds like a dream house!

> A face lift for claws would be worth 1000 new features.

But it would probably tax the hardware as such. Claws Mail, which is my #1 choice since decades, is probably the best that can be achieved without surrendering it to a more "modern" development style that could make it at least an order of magnitude bigger and slower. It's simply amazing that I can keep all my emails since 1997 (tens of thousands posts, with attachments, the older ones easily converted from Eudora, my then client under Windows) online so I can search everything I have posted or received instantly on indexed fields or in like 30 seconds on any other field, including spam.

Claws Mail could benefit however from being ported to a cleaner and better thought interface such as Qt (sorry for GTK lovers but to me latest GTK versions are an abomination), and possibly incorporating a conversation mode, but I wouldn't sacrifice anything of what makes it so great to add those features.

> It is a shame that open source is much more of a subject in the world of programmers than in the world of user interface designers.

Is that actually a disadvantage?

Different people have different tastes. This is true for both the aesthetic and utilitarian aspects of user interface design. Our software should look and behave differently to reflect that reality, and the metric of success ought to be maintaining enough interest in the software to sustain its development. (In the case of open source software, that is attracting enough contributors. In the case of commercial software, that is attracting enough customers.)

Indeed, attracting more people may be more of a detriment than anything else. It may alienate the most dedicated contributors or it may attract users who do not contribute. (How many times have we seen open source developers gripe about their product garnering users who place excessive demands upon them?)

I really liked the Claws UI. I stopped using it because I wanted something more portable with more features (Thunderbird), and the whole UI freeze single thread thing was a bit painful.

I am personally only interested in technogy that makes me productive, not tech that looks good. I want to be on the computer for as little time as possible.

This is GTK. Which (still) can be themed, though that is harder today, than in the times of GTK2. But maybe these https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php suffice? Those change just some icons. I used it in the past, and had no problems with it(after theming). It was much more light than thunderbird, at the times, so it could run in the background without dragging other(desktop) stuff down.

I've been using this for years, and would recommend it to power-user types.

Pros:

- You can define custom actions to run, including running external programs

- Very keyboard-accessible (including bindings for those custom actions)

- You can define boolean filters to process messages as they come in, but also per-folder processing rules to run when you visit a folder. Again, you can run external programs as one of the actions when a filter or processing rule matches.

- You can write whatever From address you want. A lot of mail clients make it way too hard to do this, but it's important if you have multiple aliases or a catchall at your domain.

Cons:

- Seems to be single-threaded. Certain UI and network operations block the rest of the UI.

- Has a good search feature (same as filter rule language) but not great -- it doesn't build an index and doesn't search across more than one folder at a time.

- Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled. :-P

- One big keyboard binding that's missing: You can quickly get a list of all URLs that are in the email, and select and launch one, but not just copy it. (Most people won't care about this, but I prefer opening some email links in a private browsing window.)

> doesn't search across more than one folder at a time.

But it does search recursively, which makes this way less problematic than it could. Just search your entire archive.

And you can switch folders with the search staying active and only showing the matching mails in the folder you switched to! It drives me mad that Thunderbird insists of clearing the search filter when I switch folders.

I use Claws when I need to quickly check an email update or do a simple search, because it's much faster and less memory hungry compared to Thunderbird. In fact, the inability to read HTML emails is pretty much the only thing keeping me from using it as my main mail reader. (I didn't know about this plugin, clunky or otherwise, could you mention that it's called? Also, in what way is it clunky - is it unstable/unreliable, or is it just slow to load or something?)

https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php

There are three. Dillo does some crazy embedding thing (and only works in X, not Wayland), litehtml is simpler but can't render everything. Haven't tried 'Fancy' - since it's webkit, it's probably the closest to a real HTML email experience.

There are a few [1]. I've used "fancy" in the past. I can't say I have a complaint.

[1] https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php

Long time user, ~17y, first Sylpheed then Claws. I have 20 years of email (90k messages, over IMAP). Running Claws on Slackware, and (reluctantly) Windows.

Stable, fast, functional (limited threading, and single view notwithstanding).

Sadly I am being pushed into using Outlook - a UI that looks like an explosion in a widget factory, and which crashes at least twice a week :/

Outlook fails to hold my attention. Tried it several times and it is just complete over-stim. I feel repulsed by it and need to look at something less busy.

Disclaimer: autistic.

I'm using Outlook for the first time after more than a decade away from Windows, and I feel the exact same way. Just looking at the app is overwhelming and makes me want to panic-close it.

(Idk how it can have so much garbage all over the UI and still be missing basic features I care about, either.)

I'm going to try the web client today. Hopefully I can stick to that one.

The single threaded nature is what kills it for me. I placed the indices on a ramdisk to make the performance viable.

I moved from Thunderbird to claws because it works on my 2GB ram Linux netbook.

Performance is great but one feature I miss is an "archive" button that would let me move selected messages to an archive folder. I can still manually drag them, but sometimes I drop at the wrong place and have to navigate around to make it right. Would love to see this simple feature.

Also, claws search is horrible, I often have to open thunderbird on another machine to find things that claws mail can't.

You can select messages and press C-o to open the "Move" dialog, which has a select-as-you-type interface. (For example, I might press T, R to select a Trash folder, then press down-arrow to jump to the Trash folder in my second account.) It's very, very few keys.

However, if you're always moving to the same folder, I think you could define an Action with a keyboard shortcut.

> Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled. :-P

That is a huge pro for me, I despise HTML emails and it is actually so easy to spot scams when their button hyperlinks are shown in plain text, full URL.

I used claws for some time, but I ended up going back to Thunderbird. The big issue I had was that when I switched to another folder it would freeze for a time. I think it had something to do with the folder size. Sometimes the freeze would be over a minute. After some time I simply had enough. Other than that, I very much liked it.

That's really my only complaint as well, sometimes the whole thing just freeze, I'm sure it does something in the background, but there's very little feedback.

One way to fix it might be to some mail retrieval agent that supports MH format and just read the emails that way. It's a little old-school though.

I do like the interface, it's much let busy that more modern email clients, and it have everything I need.

I think it's when you have processing rules in place for some or all folders, it seems they get applied to all messages again every time you open a folder. Normal filter rules don't expose that behavior, and I've been too lazy to look up what the difference is supposed to be. However, ever since I only add rules to "configuration" -> "filter..." I can switch between 5k+ message folders instantly (using IMAP).

I had no processing rules.

Yep, unfortunately the network and folder loading code is really slow in Claws. There's lots of scope for improvement but no real development effort towards it - a few years ago I made some patches fixing a few low-hanging fruit but they were just left to rot and it hasn't improved since.

It seems to do IO on the UI thread.

"Graceful, and sophisticated interface" based on GTK 1.

It's based on GTK2.

My bad, I saw a "CHANGELOG.gtk1" in the repo, and the interface reminded me of GNOME running on my SuSE installation in 2001.

I'm pretty sure that's the iconic clearlooks theme on top of gtk2 (that combination is obvious if you've spent any amount of time with it).

In any case, those screenshots are too old, and the UI is using gtk3.

https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=configure.a...

Latest version (4.x) is GTK3.

Oh wow, I almost didn't notice! Just the annoying spaces between buttons which will move the entire window if accidentally dragged.

Looks comfy, IMO.

That page hasn't changed much in 15 years: https://web.archive.org/web/20070103185316/https://claws-mai...

It's a good app. I used it for months.

But it's very very close to Sylpheed, which is also a good app.

They're good but the overlap is huge. They really need to merge, or be merged.

AIUI the maintainer of Sylpheed won't accept patches. His problem, which he should get over.

But ISTM it doesn't need his cooperation to merge the codebases, or resync CLAWS against the Sylpheed codebase.

The result would be better than either.

I really like the message composer in Claws Mail. It has proper line wrapping, meaning that you don’t get strange line breaks in quoted text when replying inline. I’ve never got that to work on Evolution and Thunderbird (which I haven’t used in a while, so maybe this has been fixed already).

Nice to see that this still exists! I've been using it ages ago when it was still called Sylpheed Claws, and I loved it. Clean and very snappy GUI, lots of sensible features, still not as bloated as many alternatives.

Lost track of it after switching back to Mac about 2005.

I still use it. Too bad it doesn't support IMAP push, otherwise an excellent client.

Can someone who is familiar with both this and mutt explain why one would choose to use the former rather than the latter?

Claws has a GUI, so buttons, drag and drop, etc. It has a pretty good html rendering engine. Also it uses MH format which I prefer.

>It has a pretty good html rendering engine.

I'm a bit confused. Another comment listed the following as a con of Claws:

>Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled.

True HTML rendering is made through a plugin. Although if I remember correctly, plugins are included in the base package. Never had an issue with the HTML plugin but didn't use it on complex HTML so YMMV.

Mutt supports MH. I didn’t know about the HTML engine, thanks. (Personally, I prefer mutt’s approach, where I can use the external HTML viewer of my choice, but don’t sacrifice the speed of a terminal interface when manipulating mail.)

How does this compare with Thunderbird?

A genuine question: why is it that most open source email clients have websites that look like they were put together by Tim Berners Lee, as a test of "this web thing"? Here is another one https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/

Does it support OAUTH 2? (I don't see any mention of it.)

Why would an email client need OAUTH2?

Edit: Apparently that's a thing: https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=commit;h=d65f9fb28...

There are fast setups for e.g. Gmail that use oauth. Vivaldi, Evolution etc also use them

> Why would an email client need OAUTH2?

Office365 mandates it. So if your work e-mail uses that, and you want to use neo/mutt, it's a requirement.

Given some of the answer I got, seems that it is doable:

* https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-offic...

* http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#oauth

Yes, as of 4.0.0

Will Claws let me identify and delete duplicate messages?

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