I think I’m speaking for a lot of TB users if I ask for some kind of ballpark figure for a timeline. Most people, who aren’t into programming have no clue how long things can take, and by no clue I mean _absolutely_ no clue. So will it be TB 14, TB 15…? When will first testing be possible?

Give the crowd something to hold tight to.

Good to hear. I cannot wait to give the new addressbook a try. If you need any help, please let me know.

Regards

Koen

> Honestly, I see this as a huge *DIS*advntage. No XUL means no overlays means no extensions means
> no customizability means not having the reason half of the users use Thunderbird to start with!
Thankfully, XUL is not a requirement for extensions anymore. Jetpack and the Addon Builder (https://builder.addons.mozilla.org/) are proof of this. So I must respectfully disagree with your assertion.

But you’re only disagreeing with the second half (extensions): do the Jetpack/Addon builder actually let you overlay content? It’s my understanding they don’t, AFAIK they let you add a bunch of HTML widgets here and there, but not dramatically change the UI of something (like changing a binding so it changes the look everywhere it appears or overriding the behavior of a particular method of a binding…). I’m sure some of this can be done in HTML, but it would not be as clean.

Besides, why would I learn an extra (complicated) API for Jetpack when I can just use the real API? (I should note that I don’t really get why Jetpack exists, I think restartless extensions were great, but you don’t need Jetpack to do that…) I have to respectively disagree with the assertion that “HTML5/JS/CSS [is] a lower barrier to entry for hacking on.” Basic XUL/JS/CSS is the same barrier of entry as HTML (probably less in fact since Mozilla has pretty good documentation on it, unlike HTML which has lots of bad documentation mixed with the good).

Besides, XUL has a whole lot of platform look & feel widgets already, why would you not want to take advantage of that? One of the reasons I’ve often heard cited about why people prefer Firefox, Thunderbird (and Instantbird ) is that it looks native on every platform: it’s not a GTK/Cocoa app on Windows. Wouldn’t you lose this if you switch to an HTML layout. Of course you can make an HTML layout look pretty, but you’d spend a ton of time customizing it to make it look NATIVE, when all the work is already done for you with XUL.

I still assert that it makes sense to share the backend with a mobile UI + a desktop UI on top of it. You could easily create XPCOM components to interface with different services (Facebook, the OS address book, what-have-you) with no specific UI information. So really what I’m saying is, I agree that sharing code is awesome! Sharing the UI? Not so awesome: is UI designed for a phone really good for use in a desktop application?

Customization and add-ons are a huge part of Thunderbird (and Mozilla), and I don’t see that changing.

So it’s a pretty safe bet that the Contacts app will be extendable.

That’s good to hear! It really is one of the greatest strengths of the Mozilla platform.

Thanks for commenting,

Thanks for responding. I’m excited to see the address book redone! (Hopefully you don’t think I’m trolling, I just disagree with this trend toward HTML; it really defeats one of Mozilla’s biggest strengths.)

> Honestly, I see this as a huge *DIS*advntage. No XUL means no overlays means no extensions means
> no customizability means not having the reason half of the users use Thunderbird to start with!

Thankfully, XUL is not a requirement for extensions anymore. Jetpack and the Addon Builder (https://builder.addons.mozilla.org/) are proof of this. So I must respectfully disagree with your assertion.

Customization and add-ons are a huge part of Thunderbird (and Mozilla), and I don’t see that changing.

So it’s a pretty safe bet that the Contacts app will be extendable.

Thanks for commenting,

-Mike

Well.. there’s already carddav which does this, and it works. Please don’t reinvent the wheel here and bring native carddav to Thunderbird!