Native Exchange Support is coming to Thunderbird
linuxiac.com
linuxiac.com
But given the garbage pile experience that is "Outlook on the Web" (and the fact that I have been forced into it at work) -- yeah, if this works that'll be an easy donation.
There is not one single “Exchange Protocol”. There’s MAPI, EWS, ActiveSync, and more. Anyone know what this uses?
What's the difference between an API and a protocol? From my understanding, if a developer publishes an API or a protocol spec, I can use that to retrieve data from their server either way
HTTP is a protocol because one cannot just socket.write whatever bytes they want and have any good outcome, whereas socket.write is an API that is available in a hypothetical library
Network protocol between MAPI.DLL and Exchange server newer was published (but partially revers-engineered).
And I've participated in project which uses MAPI.DLL, it was buggy as hell, and we delayed product release for whole year (!), trying to workaround all bugs. It was complete disaster and failed product too late to market.
What you're thinking of is called RPC-over-HTTP or sometimes "Outlook Anywhere".
I wonder how it deals with things like MAPI (which still forms internals of Outlook and Exchange) not actually supporting HTML email[1] despite having a message for it (and Outlook being infamous for pushing HTML email in minds of many)
[1] If you include a HTML Email message part in a MAPI store, the MS MAPI library explodes and declares the store unreadable. You have to wrap HTML in RTF and include it in RTF message part... ¯ \ _ ಠ _ ಠ _ / ¯
There's also a JSON-based web services API that is, as far as I know, unpublished (which OWA and I think the "next gen" Outlook uses).
[0]: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/microsoft-is-se...
just like I hope Evolution will rewrite the exchange handling by that point
Usually when someone claims some proprietary MS owned product is the future, they are either sorely uninformed, MS fanboy, or their income depends on sticking with proprietary tech. None of which one would want at a public institution, and least of all in institutions of the education system.
I still remember, when some admin at some educational place I went to wrote messages to everyone on the whole system to warn them about MS office document macros. But of course people did not get it and then some malware spread over many people's systems, because they ran the code. And this happened multiple times within a year or so and even after I had graduated, but still received e-mail, it happened again. So funny to watch that story play out over and over again.
You can implement TCP rate limits on top, but that doesn't work when botnets and spammers (likely using "crowdsourced VPNs") rarely use the same IP twice. Further if you're running robust mail infrastructure (backup/fallback mail exchanges) communicating these limits/ reputations is left up to the operator (not supported by protocols, rarely supported by servers). I don't think MAPI/OWA/EWS is better, at all, especially not against open mail standards, but SMTP & IMAP don't cut it either. On a new server, it only takes a few hours before someone connects over IMAP and starts testing passwords against accounts (faster if the server is assigned to the MX or A of an existing domain, and valid emails might be known from hacks/cracks/dumps/leaks/people posting their email in their profile).
Or lazy. Or understaffed. Needless to say, other universities do support IMAP and apparently it worked just fine. Anyway, I sent an angry e-mail and moved on with my life :)
Source: me, at almost all of my jobs, after being told to lock people out for using third party clients.
Native Sieve editor would be nice.
Or really good feature: store per-folder settings (like reply-to, sorting direction, view mode, etc) on IMAP server. There is per-folder key-value storage on IMAP server, and it is supported at least by dovecot server. Now I need to configure all my 100+ folders with 5 identities and different column settings on each new Thunderbird installation. It is SUXXXX.
If I need Exchange protocol I will use Outlook. Thank you.
Or good quoting engine. Does somebody remember FIDO's editor GoldEd? It made perfect multi-level quotes int most complex situations without problem, re-wrap and re-format lines to fit it in 80 columns (without breaking quotes in process!), it was real pleasure to read long threads because you always know who wrote what. And if you see broken quotes in echoarea you know, it is from usenet user, received via gateway with their shitty news clients.
Thunderbird is still shitty in this regard, 30 years later.
And, yes, Exchange supports IMAP for people who want to use it as bad and feature-limited email server ;-)
I want Thunderbird to be best e-mail client, not mediocre groupware client.
They explain it here, but it is basically not needed though they wanted to take advantage of rusts features.
Outlook is a reality in the world.
If people don’t have an option on the server they use, more people will be able to use Thunderbird.
So then came Internet Explorer, which after decades of spreading evil via non-standard behavior, annoying popups and malware, is finally gone.
Now it's the turn for Exchange to be erased from the collective memory of humankind.
"Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access linuxiac.com"
The same error even if I hit simply https://linuxiac.com/
Is it only me?
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/01/thunderbird-monthly-dev...
Perhaps share your ray id with Adam over email?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37051949
Meanwhile, does this load for you? https://archive.fo/OevXp
It’s not big things. It’s spacing, fonts, choice of pictograms and their locations. Some is opinion, and some is just functionally better.
In fact, I stand by that if I were them, I would be pushing as hard as possible for an Outlook Theme for people just coming in or back. Office 365 is too common to ignore - considering the native Exchange support post here.
> Now they're focusing on Exchange support when the best email servers on the planet have nothing to do with Microsoft?
People don't want Exchange because they like Exchange. For people who like Microsoft, the very last thing they care about is that their email client communicates with their server over Exchange.
This feature is for the unfortunate Linux fans, like you, who are stuck with a job that requires them to interact with a Microsoft server. That's not dumb, that's a smart move on the TB side (well, lucky, perhaps, that people are willing to work on it, more than being smart) to allow users to use TB in the first place. If you don't use Exchange you won't mind the support (barring perhaps reduced development elsewhere), but it will let many people use TB where they otherwise _could not_ without plugins.
Well, I guess lack of exchange support in Thunderbird might blog migrations to Thunderbird / Linux on the desktop in places using Exchange.
If users are already using Thunderbird, switching from Exchange to a regular mail server might be more easy: the UI doesn't change.
(now, I don't see many places using Exchange switching to Thunderbird, but that certainly opens a migration path)
Because you couldn’t.
There was a TB extension “OWL” but it wasn’t good enough for me, still lacked things like the contact cards with data from your Active Directory install, and other default Outlook features.
So the point for me is now you could take that path - maybe.
Thunderbird had a great looking (in my opinion) proposed new UI from the designer for the Supernova project, but it never actually shipped in 115 which was a real shame. I'd say they got about half-way there when they cut the release.
There's some more context here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36670946
I'm hoping in due course we'll start to see more of the original design start to be realised.
And the PWA is VERY feature incomplete:
It’s the UX that is a damn travesty.