[Trainer-Talk] Thunderbird vs. Outlook Classic - my own real-world comparison with optimization tips for screen reader users

[Brian Vogel]

Raul,

Thanks for taking the time to post this.  Very helpful.

The only thing I'll add is that the optimizations you describe are possible
in virtually any email client you can name, including Outlook.  And when it
comes to Gmail, there are things you can do on the server side, using their
webmail interface to get at settings, that can be incredibly helpful in
limiting what you see on the email client side.

Any of the modern email access protocols, and that means IMAP and
MS-Exchange, are designed from the get-go to avoid the storage of email
messages on the local device other than for a select time span (usually a
couple of weeks to a couple of months) or for specifically selected
messages.  Once a given message has not been accessed for a certain number
of days, the local copy of its message body is purged.  Searches are not
performed locally, either, but handed off to the server and it sends back
the results, in the form of message headers, not the full messages
themselves.  The message body and attachments are snagged when the message
is opened.

These protocols are also designed to keep every client accessing their
respective accounts in perfect sync, while also minimizing the on-device
space taken up by messages.

A lot of folks still have the POP3 mindset, where everything was downloaded
locally and kept locally, often while being purged entirely from the
server, and that's not how modern email protocols have worked since they
hit the streets.

The heavy lifting in modern email is intentionally designed to be on the
server side.  It has, effectively, been "in the cloud" long before the term
was coined in reference to storage of other data.  The clients are designed
to serve as viewports into the server, not as the long term storage or
management mechanisms for email messages (or calendar, or contacts for that
matter).

Thunderbird has always been my first "go to" when anyone doesn't wish to
use or cannot use Outlook in one of its desktop app forms.

Brian