The Perfect Email Client?

An anonymous reader sends: "Can those who review also design? Trying to practice what it preaches, CNET published this article, a description of the perfect e-mail client. Next up, apparently: hardware and electronics designs."

Comments

stored searches instead of folders

[macpeep]

I've been planning an email system that is based on searches rather than folders. The user interface might be "folders" but in reality, each "folder" is actually a search into an email database. This means a number of things. First of all, emails can exist in any number of folders (including no folder at all). Folders can have all kinds of "complex" rules such as "unread emails plus emails that have been read within the last 10 minutes". This would be a kind of "inbox", for example. Then there could be "Today's emails". "Yesterday's emails", "Emails from Firstname Lastname", "Work related email" and so on. Emails can be flagged using filters to help categorizing them. For example you could have a folder "work emails" that simply search for all emails that have a "work" flag set. The work flag would be set when the email arrives by checking if the email matches a set of rules (is from certain people, is to a certain email address, has a certain topic etc.).

The basic idea is to get powerful email management without having to actually manage "at runtime". Instead, the management happens by setting up folders and rules.

One implementation idea is to implement it as an IMAP server that one would run locally. That would allow people to use existing email clients with this system. I haven't decided about that yet though.

Can those who review also design?

[gazbo]

Frankly no. The majority of the features they list I would turn off (they would have that option, right?) Some are good but obvious (integrate PGP - no-one's said *that* before)

Some just show that these people do not understand UI design (all powerful right-click. Yup, nice idea, but when you say how many options there are in modern clients, I wonder how you expect them all to fit in a context menu? As an example they give 'send all mail from this user to folder x' Well great, but to be all powerful they also need 'block email from this user','automatically reply to this user with x', direct all email with this subject to x' etc. all in the context menu)

Overall, a couple of nice ideas, a couple of dumb ideas, and a rehash of some oft-mentioned ideas. Hardly anything groundbreaking.

Where is "respects Internet standards"?

[Charles Dodgeson]

Others have alreadypointed out the bloat. (I want an emailer that includes a doctor/Eliza function!), but there is a terrible amont of stuff missing from the list. Making it hard to compose messages which violate standards should be close to the top of anybody's list.

As for autoresponders, they shouldn't be in the client unless that client (a) has access to envelope information, and (b) can send things as error messages (null envelope from). I also have rant about broken autoresponders.

Let me IGNORE HTML mail!

[Sax Maniac]

The #1 feature that I want in a mail client is:

When some moron sends me dual-encoded HTML/text mail, let me prefer to show the text version. If they sent HTML-only mail, convert it to text. I never want to see HTML. Ever!

I am sick of getting HTML spam that automatically starts banging on my net connection, even before I get chance to blacklist the appropriate site through Junkbuster.

(And no, I don't want to use a text-mode client. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water.)