Why is WebMail better?

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

I have all the mail clients on my machine. Yet I use Gmail on the desktops, why?

The main reason seems to be that the protocols are cleverer. Gmail gives me instant, fluid response and all my IMAP based clients give me a long pause to download mail.

IMAP does have some advantages, I can read mail offline for a start. So it is better for mobile devices. But on the desktop, Gmail wins.

This doesn't have to be the case though. The IMAP protocol is slow because it is poorly designed. It is single threaded with every transaction requiring a separate request/response. So one big file causes everything to jam up. Sorting of messages takes place in the client and the changes are uploaded back to the server.

Gmail also optimizes the user experience by separating out metadata downloads from content and message data from attachments. Their protocol is S/MIME aware while IMAP is not.

These are all fixable. 

[Dave Koelmeyer]

On 12/12/15 07:21, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> I have all the mail clients on my machine. Yet I use Gmail on the
> desktops, why?
>
> The main reason seems to be that the protocols are cleverer. Gmail
> gives me instant, fluid response and all my IMAP based clients give me
> a long pause to download mail.
>
> IMAP does have some advantages, I can read mail offline for a start.
> So it is better for mobile devices. But on the desktop, Gmail wins.

On the desktop Gmail wins for some use cases, for other use cases other
webmail services win, and for yet other use cases a desktop email client
wins over both.

Also, as far as webmail goes, Gmail is bloody atrocious.

Cheers,
Dave

--
Dave Koelmeyer
http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz
GPG Key ID: 0x238BFF87

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[Ben Bucksch]

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote on 11.12.2015 19:21:

The IMAP protocol is slow because it is poorly designed. It is single threaded with every transaction requiring a separate request/response. So one big file causes everything to jam up. Sorting of messages takes place in the client and the changes are uploaded back to the server.

Gmail also optimizes the user experience by separating out metadata downloads from content and message data from attachments. Their protocol is S/MIME aware while IMAP is not.

These are all fixable.

I'd like to correct some mis-information above.

1. Thunderbird's IMAP implementation is multi-threaded. (In fact, it's pretty much the only multi-threaded thing in all of TB, if I remember correctly.)
2. The protocol itself is asynchronous. You can issue several commands at (almost) the same time, and the second can finish before the first. This is basically the same concept that node.js follows, which is very fast and modern. IMAP had this 20 years ago, on a protocol level.
   (Thunderbird additionally uses one thread and connection per folder. I don't remember whether TB uses the async nature of IMAP very much.)
3. IMAP does separate metadata from content. For that purposes, it parses email messages on the server, and can return the headers of an email separately from the body, and the body separate from the attachments. That, too, was very modern for its time.
4. IMAP and Thunderbird are blazingly fast on my machine here. The folder with my primary work project has currently about 15000 emails, and is sufficiently fast. QuickSearch in TB is almost instant, it takes about 1s to search the whole folder for a subject.
   (Admittedly, my IMAP server is on my local network. Maybe the slowness you encounter might be attributed to a slow IMAP server or a slow desktop machine?)

TB has serious problems, no doubt. But they are not those you mentioned.

[Axel Grude]

Also a comment on fastness & stability: I have about 57 Gbyte footprint (when I backup all my mail accounts which happen weekly) and although startup can take a little while (20 / 30 secs until fully responsive) once it runs, it just runs. I mainly use POP3 because of a not blazingly fast internet connection (4G)

Conversely my exchange server based outlook constantly crashes and is just slow as hell when a folder has more than 5000 emails in it. Also it crashes quite a lot, even after repairing and redownloading the outlook.pst file and even though there are company enforced quotas. Outlook has other advantages (such as better Calendar integration) but Thunderbird is head and shoulders above it as regards stability and speed.

There is something to be said for a local message store, if we have beefy enough hardware to deal with it.

Axel
 
--

Axel Grude
Software Developer
Thunderbird Add-ons Developer (QuickFolders, quickFilters, QuickPasswords, Zombie Keys, SmartTemplate4)
AMO Editor

Subject: Re: Why is WebMail better?
To: Tb-planning
From: Ben Bucksch
Sent: Wednesday, 16/12/2015 06:55:21 06:55 GMT ST +0000 [Week 50]

[Gervase Markham]

On 11/12/15 18:21, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> This doesn't have to be the case though. The IMAP protocol is slow
> because it is poorly designed. It is single threaded with every
> transaction requiring a separate request/response. So one big file
> causes everything to jam up. Sorting of messages takes place in the
> client and the changes are uploaded back to the server.

As well as what everyone else said:
http://jmap.io/

Gerv