Thunderbird is not so great really

Something odd is going on then. I use Thunderbird and have done for ages. It doesn't do that here even at all with quite large mailbases.

I suspect something else is going on to produce the wading through treacle syndrome. Virtual memory swap file on a dodgy disk would be one scenario that slows things down insanely. Check SMART stats on disk.

The only snag I see is it sometimes moves focus onto a popup box that pops up from time to time and shouldn't. One about mailserver certificate does not match mailserver override Y/N save Y/N and it doesn't matter how many times you say save it never does :(

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

rickman schrieb:

Maybe you first try to determine if it's Thunderbird itself or one of the installed extensions (particularly the calendar). Use TB with a fresh profile and observe if that happens again.

Also, find out if it's your OS (apparently Windows) that causes these pauses eventually. It may also be related to a network connection - I once experienced that a particular combination of LAN adapter (within a PC) and switch caused the connection to be broken and reconnected every now and then, and that always caused several seconds delay for applications that were using the network. You might have a look at other applications if they "fail" at the same time when TB pauses.

SeaMonkey is the successor of ancient Netscape Navigator and later the Mozilla Suite. At some time Mozilla decided to split the functions into separate programs, a browser (Firefox) and a Mail/News client (Thunderbird). They still share the same code base with SeaMonkey, but the UI is somewhat different. I still use SeaMonkey, and I like its "classic" UI much more than that of FF and TB. Yes, it also does news.

However, the SM team lacks some support by the Mozilla foundation (which still provides the build servers) and also has only a few developers left. Since the further development of FF and TB is apparently now moving into different directions, it will become harder for the SM team to keep integrating them into their suite...

Tilmann

I was possibly the one that mentioned that. I'm posting this from SeaMonkey under Xubuntu.

I haven't used Thunderbird for years due to the baffling slowdown you mention. The only difference I note is the lack of the slowdown; everything else is as good/bad.

The browser is plain-vanilla. I use Firefox/Chrome/Opera for any significant browsing, and the SeaMonkey browser for following links in posts. Reminds me how important adblockers are!

To the best of my knowledge you can simply point either of them at the existing file tree containing the mbox files etc, and they will simply work. Personally I copy the directory tree so that I could reverse the changeover if necessary.

I ought to say the only time I see a freeze is when it is copying my mbox files, e.g. when I "compact" them or close the browser. This is unsurprising since my main Inbox is an IMAP of my google mail, and is currently 920MB!

Were you thinking of Fossamail?

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Jeff

Tom Gardner schrieb:

JFYI, adblockers are also available for SM. And yes, they are important...

Tilmann

That's modern software. It litters it own house to the point of getting mired. When it gets too bad, I do this:

- Unsubscribe from the affected group

- Quit thunderbird

- Find directory .thunderbird/.default/News/news./

- Delete all files relevant to the group

- Restart thunderbird

- Subscribe again to the group

- Mark everything as read

That will usually make it behave. There may be better ways. I've used seamonkey in the past. Basically the same problem.

Jeroen Belleman

A key cause of slowdown on Windows can be temp files. On Windows, your temp directory usually grows like a cancer, and if it is left unchecked all sorts of programs slow down.

It may not be the problem, but it is worth checking.

Thanks. I should have been less ambiguous: I choose to keep the Seamonkey browser plain-vanilla. That way I have a simple test of whether any browsing related problems are related to plugins.

A problem with Thunderbird is that very large lists of items (mail or group messages) have to be sorted in memory, and if it starts thrashing pages, it can take minutes.

I couldn't make Thunderbird limit the number of newsgroup items by date, so finally gave up and went to knode. (GigaNews keeps everything on text-only newsgroups back to the creation of the universe.) On knode, the limiting by date works, so I only see messages boack to a month old or so, and it is quite responsive. I break up my email files by year, and every month or so move older emails to that year's inbox. That keeps Thunderbird working quite well.

Make sure you empty your junk and trash folders regularly.

Jon

Pan. My choice after setup in view, body, ect.

p t

There's some quadratic-time algorithm in the guts of TB, and it runs in the same thread as the UI and screen repaints. And if you start typing into th e search window, it grabs the first term and goes out to lunch for minutes before noticing what else you did.

I tried knode, but it was too stupid.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I like Agent, have been using it for many years... after several years using TIN on DOS ;-)

There's even a free version.

But I use Eudora for E-mail ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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             I'm looking for work... see my website. 

          Thinking outside the box... elegant solutions.

Related reading for programmers?

Tim

-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website:

There's some quadratic-time algorithm in the guts of TB, and it runs in the same thread as the UI and screen repaints. And if you start typing into the search window, it grabs the first term and goes out to lunch for minutes before noticing what else you did.

I tried knode, but it was too stupid.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Many years ago I found Eudora had a fatal flaw: it would junk attachments.

Given email X with an attachment A.pdf, it would store X in one folder and A.pdf in another, for reasons best known to itself.

Given another email Y with a different attachment A.pdf, it would so the same, thus *overwriting* the first A.pdf.

I can't even begin to imagine the stupidity of those programmers, nor how the application was allowed to escape and harm unsuspecting users.

I've never seen Eudora trash an attachment in this way. When an attachment comes in with the same name as another, it just appends '1' to the file name, foo1.bar. This happens to me all the time. It has

*nothing* to do with what directory the files are stored in. In fact, this most often happens when email from the same source sends attachments with the same name on a recurring basis, like the "order action report" I get from a customer or the routing guide they send. The one is up to xxx17.xlsx and the other is xxx36.pdf.

If Eudora is overwriting files for you, there is some other problem.

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Rick C

That was probably 15 years ago, and other people definitely had the same problem. At that time nobody could point to a workaround. Presumably it is less braindead now.

I still prefer having critical archival information stored in application-neutral industry-standard format files, so that I know I will be able to access them in 20 years time.

Development on Eudora stopped nearly 15 years ago!

As to your files, there is no such thing for email.

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Rick C

mbox format is used by a wide range of completely independent mail client applications. That makes it, for practical purposes, a de-facto industry standard format.

Even if one mail client application disappears, I'll have easy fallbacks. That's important to me.