Mike Conley's Blog

I wrote a while back about how Matt, Avi Halachmi and I have been ironing out performance problems with the Australis curvy tabs.

Well, it looks like that work is finally paying off.

Our SVG usage seemed to be the big slow-poke, and switching to PNGs gave us the boost that we needed.

But enough squawking, let’s see some charts.

Before Optimizations

Let’s compare – here’s a chart showing the difference between pre-curves and post-curves, before our optimizations:

Here’s the before shot

Note: it’s been a while since I’ve done data visualization work. I think the last time I did this was in grad school. So there might be way better ways of visualizing this data, but I just chose the easiest chart I could manage with Google Docs. Just go with it.

Let me describe what you’re seeing here – we take samples every time a tab opens, and every time a tab closes*. What we’re measuring is the interval time (how long it takes before we start drawing the next frame), and the paint time (how long it takes to actually draw a frame).

The blue bars represent the performance measurements we took on a build using the default theme.  The red bars represent the performance measurements we took using the Australis curvy tabs.

This is where my graph could probably be clearer – in each group of four bars, the left two represent interval times, and the right two represent paint times.

So, hand-wavey interpretation – we regressed in terms of performance in both painting, and frame intervals, for tab opening and closing.

So that’s what we started with. And then we did our optimizations. So where did we get to?

After Optimizations

Here’s the after shot!

The red bars shrunk, meaning that we got faster for both interval and paint times. In fact, for tab close, we beat the old theme! And we’re really super-close for tab open.

Pretty good!

Curvy tabs for all

Last night, Matt landed our optimization patches, as well as preliminary curvy tab work for OSX* and Linux GTK on our UX branch. So, if you’re on the UX branch (and why aren’t you?), you should be receiving a build soon with some curvy tabs. They’re not perfect, not by a long shot, but we’re getting into the polish stage now, which is good.

* Some notes on our measuring methodology. All tests were performed on a low-powered Acer Aspire One netbook. Intel Atom n450 processor (1.66Ghz), 1GB of RAM, running Windows 7. The device has no graphics acceleration support. We also switched to the classic theme to avoid glass. Avi wrote a patch that opened and closed a tab 15 times, and averaging the frame intervals and paint times for each frame. Those were averaged over the 15 openings and closings. We then ran that test 4 times, giving the machine time to “relax” in between, and averaged our results.

* We don’t have hi-dpi support yet, so if you’re on a Mac with a Retina display, your curves might be fuzzy. We’re working on it.

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Hey all.

I’ve been pretty bad about talking about the address book. Sorry about that. I’ve been pretty busy helping to get Instant Messaging shipped for TB 15.

But with IM polished off, I’ve (once again) started refocusing my attention to the address book.

So where am I?

The Ensemble Project

In short, I’m writing an add-on to experiment with approaches to a new address book. I’m calling it “Thunderbird Ensemble”, because every project needs a cool code name.

The add-on is in its very very early stages. Nothing is usable. Nothing is stable or guaranteed. There’s no UI yet, but there are some tests.

You can track my progress here.

Here are some highlights, implementation details and unstructured thoughts about the add-on, and where I’m going with it:

SQLite Storage Back-end

I’ve chosen to use SQLite (via mozStorage) for the contact database. I was originally toying with using indexedDB, but it’s lack of support for substring searches (which is necessary for things like auto-complete) wasn’t very appealing. I briefly toyed with throwing my own indexing layer on TOP of indexedDB, and then I realized that I was probably reinventing the wheel.

So SQLite it is!

Diffs, Diffs Everywhere

Contact records are a representation of the fields and meta data about a contact. My add-on will be able to calculate diffs between records, and those diffs can be applied on top of records to make changes.

So, for example, suppose I decide to make some changes to a contact – I add some email addresses, remove a phone number, and change a birthday. I’m effectively creating a diff.

Now we apply the diff on top of the original contact, and send the resulting contact record to the datastore for storage.

If the storage happens to be on the network, and the original record we applied the diff on to was out of date, we should get a fresh copy of the contact record, apply the diff, and try again.

Conflict Resolution

With diffs comes conflicts resolution – but conflict resolution is never a pleasant experience, and I’d like the user to not have to deal with that if possible.

My solution is to just be optimistic – if a diff is asking to remove something that isn’t there, great! Mission accomplished! If the diff is adding something that already exists, no problem! We skip!

And for things that get changed, like birthdays, we simply say that the last writer wins.

Maybe that’s naive, but that’s the approach that I’m taking.

What do I have?

I can create contact records, diff them, apply diffs, and “merge” two records together. And I have tests for all of that work.

I’ve got the start of the SQLite backend working (basically, we can set up the database…but that’s it.)

I’m currently working on importing old Thunderbird contacts into Ensemble’s notion of contact records.

After that, I’ll work on getting them written to the database.

Comments? Questions? Complaints? Ask them here. It’s still really early on in the process, but if you find bugs in my code, please file issues on GitHub.

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Once again, I’ve let my blog gather dust.  And the comments have been piling up.  And the emails have been rolling in.  And I’ve been silent.

Sorry about that!

I’ve been pretty heads-down lately – here’s what’s going on:

1. The address book work I was talking about has been put on a tiny bit of a backburner as I deal with two more pressing Thunderbird projects, namely, finishing up the Account Provisioner (a service that offers you email addresses if you don’t already have one) and Tabs on top (a part of the general UX refresh that Thunderbird is working towards)
2. A few weeks ago, I was knee-deep in sound design for a show called FIREraisers being put up by the red light district.
3. UCOSP has been going strong, and our Review Board students have been pluggin’ away.

About the address book – I’ve received a bunch of email making suggestions and asking for things.  That’s great!  I’ll comment on that shortly – I just need a little more time to clear Account Provisioner and Tabs on Top off my plate.

More soon.

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So my dream of redesigning / rebuilding the Thunderbird address book is moving forward.  Here’s the draft feature page.

I also got the Contacts add-on from Labs working (limping, rather) in Thunderbird.  Some very interesting ideas in that add-on.

I’ve also started reading some related work.  Here’s what I’ve been gazing at for the past few days:

1. Bug 674720 (WebContacts or Contacts+)
2. The W3C Contacts API draft spec
3. The PortableContacts draft spec
4. The vCard spec
5. The Firefox Sync development documents

So, basically, I’m exposing myself to as much current work in this problem space as possible.  Is there anything else I should be reading?

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So yesterday I posted some mock-ups for a new Thunderbird address book design, and I got a bunch of really awesome, useful feedback.

Probably what rang out loudest for me was that I don’t really have any data on how real users actually use Thunderbird’s address book.  I know how I use it, but that’s about it.  In fact, I talked a Thunderbird user the other day who didn’t even know that the Thunderbird address book existed.  Go figure.

And here I went and jumped the gun, and tossed together some mock-ups.

If there’s anything that my grad supervisor Greg Wilson taught me, it’s not to jump to conclusions (or mock-ups) when we don’t have any data to back it up.  I’m a scientist, damn it, and that’s just how we roll.

Credit: http://cowbirdsinlove.com/46

Firefox has this great add-on called Test Pilot that lets Firefox users volunteer to have data periodically collected from them.  Work to get Test Pilot working for Thunderbird is underway, and I think that’d be an awesome tool for gathering feedback about how users use the address book.

Some questions I’d want answered, right off the top of my dome, in no particular order:

1. Does anybody actually use Thunderbird’s address book?
2. When someone is using the address book, what are they likely doing?
   1. Looking for a contact?
   2. Sorting and organizing their contacts?
   3. Creating or editing contacts?
   4. Other?
3. Do people use mailing lists?  If so, how many do they tend to have?
4. How many address books do people tend to have?
5. How many address books do people want to have?
6. How many contacts to people tend to have in their address books?
7. Is it important for people to be able to group their contacts into sets, like “Family”, “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Employees”, “Co-workers”, etc?
8. Given several address books, where each address book has some large number of contacts, how quickly can an individual contact be found?
9. How much switching back and forth from mouse and keyboard is required to create a new contact, or to edit an old contact?
10. How important is it for Thunderbird’s contacts to be synchronized with other contact services, like Google Contacts or the OSX address book?
    1. Or is it sufficient just to import them?
11. How important is it for Thunderbird’s contacts to be synchronized with user’s mobile devices?
12. On average, how long does it take to create a new contact?
13. On average, how long does it take to edit a contact?
14. On average, how much time are users spending in the address book?
15. What fields do most users want to associate with a contact?
16. What are the top 10 complaints about Thunderbird’s address book?
17. What are the top 10 best things about Thunderbird’s address book?

What are some other questions I should try to get answered?

UPDATE (Aug 29 – 10:00EST)

I’ve gotten some awesome feedback on this post, and some new questions to add to my list.  Here they are, in no particular order:

1. What is the main way in which Thunderbird users use and manipulate their address books?
   1. Through the main address book interface
   2. Through the contacts sidebar in the compose window
   3. Through the inline contact editor within a message header
   4. Other?
2. If the answer to the above is anything other than 1, is it possible that the address book manager is not needed?  Or does not need to be as complicated as it already is?
3. How many duplicate contacts does the average user possess (where a duplicate contact is a contact with the same e-mail address, or possibly the same name)
4. How frustrating is it to add a contact in Thunderbird?
5. How frustrating is it to edit a contact in Thunderbird?
6. How frustrating is it to search for a contact in Thunderbird?
7. How often do users want to create a contact based on a pre-existing one?  Example – creating co-workers, with similar fields for work addresses, etc, but different names, phones, etc.

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State of the current Thunderbird address book

While I was hacking away on my EDS Contacts Integration add-on, I got pretty familiar with the Thunderbird address book.

And as it stands, it’s adequate – but adequate like a pickle is adequate for dinner if it’s the only thing left in the fridge.

The address book interface hasn’t even really changed that much since it was part of Netscape Communicator.  Check it out:

Before:

After:

Verdict: the Thunderbird address book is still stuck in the 90′s.  It still assumes that your contacts only have one or two email addresses.  It doesn’t have any notion of Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, LinkedIn Profiles, or anything that we would associate with a modern online contact identity.  It’s not flexible in the type and quantity of fields that can be associated with a contact.

We can do better.

Some designs I’ve been fiddling with

I should start by saying that the following are just ideas that I’ve been tossing around, and it’s still very very early in the design process.  This is just a starting point. Feedback is encouraged!

Ok, enough disclaimer.  Here we go:

The first thing to notice is that the address book is now contained in a tab, as opposed to a separate pop-up window.

Next, notice that he tree of “address books” on the left is now gone.  I always found it strange to open up the Thunderbird address book, and see that there were…address books inside of the address book.  What I imagine instead is that the Thunderbird address book will know about “contact providers”, like Google Contacts, the OSX address book, the Evolution Data Server contacts database, etc.  Thunderbird will copy all of those contacts locally for fast searching and processing, and synchronize changes both ways.  It’ll also merge contacts that it realizes are the same person. (that’s a ton of work already…).

“But wait!”, I hear you cry.  “I don’t want my Google Contacts to be mixed with the contacts from my OSX address book!”.

No problem – the new address book could have a notion of contact groups.  Contacts imported from the OSX address book will belong to the OSX address book.  Contacts imported from Google Contacts will belong to the Google Contacts group.

And contacts that were common between the two contact providers, and merged, will belong to both groups.  Think of it like Google Plus’s Circles – a user can belong to one-or-several contact groups.

And if you want to view the contacts in a particular group, you could just choose that group from the contact group dropdown:

If we select a contact, we could view it like so:

And then we could edit it by clicking the “Edit” button towards the top right:

When we’re editing a contact, the contact list slides away, and we get the full space of the address book to edit the contact.  I haven’t exactly figured out what the various editing tools will look like on a contact (especially considering a merged contact where some elements of the contact exist in one contact provider, but cannot exist in another…ugh).

So one thing that we’re missing in that last screenshot is a “Cancel” button.  Notice that we have those back/forward navigation buttons in the top left.  I’m not sure if those are sufficient / clear enough for the job…but suppose the user could just click “back” to return to viewing the contact without having saved it.

But what about selecting multiple contacts within the contact list?  That might look like this:

So I’ve selected a few contacts here, and I can do various things with this selection – like removing the contacts from my address book, or printing them, etc.  I can also assign these contacts to contact groups en masse.

Highlighting Barry Addison, Bruce Botrill and Phil Cassidy, I can see that all three belong to my “Friends” and “Clients” groups.  Notice that the “Baseball Team” group checkbox looks a bit funny – it’s half filled in, which means that only some of my selection belongs to this group.

From here, I can just click on the various groups I want to assign these three contacts to.  If I click on “Baseball Team”, the half-filled checkbox turns into a check – meaning that all of the contacts I’ve selected will be assigned to that group.  Clicking it again would clear the check, meaning that all of the contacts I’ve selected will not be assigned to that group (and will be un-assigned if that already were assigned).  And if I were to click that checkbox one more time, then it’d go back to it’s half-filled state, meaning that I’ll just keep the contacts that are assigned to “Baseball Team” where they are, and won’t add or remove any contacts from that group.  It’s a tri-state checkbox.  Kinda funky, but it’s my current solution.

Some other ideas worth mentioning:

Asynchronous

Currently, many operations conducted by the address book are synchronous, meaning that the user interface can feel sluggish while it’s waiting for certain events to occur (like writing contact data to a database).  These events should really happen in the background so that the address book stays nice and snappy, and the user can go about their work.

Undo / Redo

This is a big one – any edit or delete events should be un-doable and re-doable.  No exceptions.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about.

Feedback?

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While I was focusing on getting EDS contacts integration working in Thunderbird, Phillip Kewisch started working on an EDS provider for Lightning.  This would allow the Lightning calendar add-on to read and manipulate EDS calendars.

One of the reasons we want to do this is because EDS calendars are nicely tied in with the indicator-datetime applet:

That’s really cool integration – at a glance, I can see what’s going on today, and I don’t need to open my full-blown desktop calendar application to do it.

In just a little over a week, Phillip had us doing basic reading of the default EDS calendar:

Awesome!  But there’s still a lot of work to do.

In particular…

Indicator-datetime integration

When we click on an event in the indicator-datetime applet, we want Thunderbird to open with the Lightning tab focused, and the selected event in view.  If we click on the “Add Event” menu item, we should be brought to the dialog that allows users to add new events to their EDS calendar.  Also, when a user double-clicks on a particular day in the indicator-datetime applet, we want that day to open up in Lightning.

So there are a few challenges here.  The first one is that opening Evolution calendar is hard-coded into indicator-datetime.  That means that we’re going to have to do a bit of reorganizing so that indicator-datetime can figure out what application to open when the user starts clicking on things.

And remember that we want this to occur whether or not Thunderbird / Lightning is open.  If Thunderbird is closed, and the user starts clicking around in indicator-datetime, then Thunderbird and Lightning should open and react appropriately.  If they’re already open, they should probably focus (although Evolution calendar doesn’t seem to do this).

That means making a way for Lightning to be summoned up from a command like “thunderbird -calendar”.

Full reading and writing to EDS calendars

The provider that Phillip got working is a good start, but it’s far from complete.  For example, it will only read a single calendar from EDS.  It also seems to choke if I restart Thunderbird after loading up my EDS calendar.

Luckily, Lightning was developed with extensibility and other back-ends in mind.  No de-RDF’ing required.

So what’s the ETA on this?  Hard to say.  I’m new to Lightning development, and I’m still feeling my way around.

I’ll keep you posted!

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Some of you might be wondering what the advantage is of having Thunderbird share address books with Evolution.  I mean, what’s the point?  A user will most likely use Thunderbird or Evolution – but rarely both.  Why is sharing contacts between the two interesting at all?

So, the answer lies in how Evolution stores contacts.  If you’re running Evolution, you’re actually running two pieces of software – the Evolution client, and the Evolution Data Server (EDS).  The client is what most users think of as Evolution – it’s the program with the GUI that allows users to access and manipulate their mail, contacts, calendar, etc.

But the heavy lifting is really being done by the Evolution Data Server.  The EDS is the program communicating with the e-mail servers to get and store your mail.  It’s the program communicating with your various address books (local or remote, like Google Contacts).  It’s the program that’s communicating with all of your calendars and task lists.

Essentially, if your Evolution experience was a restaurant, then the Evolution Data Server is the kitchen.  The Evolution client is just your waiter.  The waiter takes your orders and passes them off to the kitchen, the kitchen does all of the cooking, and then the waiter brings you the tasty results.

The fact that GNOME has split Evolution like this is really handy.  It means that alternative clients can access Evolution’s mail, contacts and calendars.  Essentially, the user could uninstall the Evolution client, but keep EDS installed, and still have access to all of their mail, contacts and calendars.

To stretch the restaurant analogy a little bit, what I’m saying is that the GNOME developers made it possible for you to order take out from the Evolution restaurant via a third-party.

So what’s the advantage of that?

Well, for one thing, Evolution Data Server talks to some services that Thunderbird doesn’t – for example, Google Contacts (although, this extension suggests that Google Contacts integration for Thunderbird is possible without EDS).

The other big one is Ubuntu One contacts sync.  Ubuntu One contacts are stored in CouchDB address books that are accessed through EDS.  Now that Thunderbird can read your EDS address books, it means that you get your Ubuntu One contacts as well (at least, it will be able to, once Ubuntu One contacts sync starts working in Oneiric).

Not bad, eh?

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After a bunch of searching, I’ve found that the easiest way of converting video to WebM on OSX for FREE is….drum roll…

Miro Video Converter.

It’s easy.  It’s open source.  It’s awesome.

It blows the other “free”, sketchy alternatives out of the water.

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It’s been a really long time since I posted any updates about what I’ve been doing with Thunderbird.

There’s a good reason – I’ve been hauling ass. My Unity Launcher and Messaging Menu extensions have gone through several iterations, and are shaping up well.  The plan is to bundle those extensions with the latest Thunderbird 5.0 beta to get some more user feedback.

The majority of my work lately has been on a project called EDS Contacts Integration.  Do you remember when I talked about Ubuntu One contacts sync, and how I wanted to integrate that with Thunderbird’s address book?  Well, I went to UDS a few weeks back, and I learned that a bigger / better goal would be to integrate with EDS (Evolution Data Server), which acts like the global address book, task list, calendar, etc for Ubuntu.  If I integrate here, then *all* Evolution address books (including the Ubuntu One address book and Google Contacts address books) should be available in Thunderbird.  So it’s a pretty big win.

So, like the Unity Launcher and Messaging Menu integration, this integration is currently being implemented as a Thunderbird add-on.

Currently, this add-on has basic read-only.  I can view EDS address books, contacts and mailing lists.  EDS contacts appear in the auto-complete when I start typing an e-mail address.  They’re searchable.  I can view the photos of EDS contacts.  There are some edge cases that I haven’t addressed yet (reading address books that require authentication, for example).  That’ll be coming soon.

Here’s a screenshot.

I’ve also started work on write capabilities.  I can now add and remove addresses on a mailing list, and set whether or not I want e-mail addresses to be hidden when I send mail to the list.

So, in short, I’m making pretty decent progress.  Not bad for a month’s work.

But I can’t just fork over the add-on for you to play with, because this work has several other moving parts.  The first moving part is the core address book de-RDF’ing work I started a few months back.  The patch for this is landing in Thunderbird’s trunk shortly, which I’ve very excited about.  And the second moving part:  a patch in trunk where I’ve made a few slight modifications to the address book infrastructure.  This makes it easier for add-ons (like my EDS integration add-on) to extend the behaviour of the address book.  This will also, hopefully, be landing shortly once I’ve polished it up, and gotten it through review.

Once those patches land, my add-on should work properly on trunk.  And not long after that, the patches will land in an Early Bird release for you all to try!

More blogging soon.  And more screenshots.  And maybe a video.  Stay tuned.

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