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Open Source AJAX Webmail
scrasher writes "It seems AJAX webmail is all the craze. Right on the heels of both Microsoft and Yahoo launching beta versions of their new AJAX webmail clients, an Open Source startup RoundCube has released an alpha of a GPLed AJAX webmail client. While there are still many features missing (like search!), the demo they have is completely cross-browser compliant and overall very impressive."
Actually that is a good question. AJAX is great but it needs to gracefully fall back to solid useable HTML for clients that can't handle javascript or whatever.
Insert pithy comment here.
In the demo, if you click on a message in the inbox it gets selected. How TF do you read it?
Double click.
It's not so much buggy as it needs some serious HCI help. Web applications should NEVER require double clicks, and even in regular applications they should be used only in very specific circumstances.
On the bright side, the application is very pretty. (Which is more than can be said for other OSS Webmail like SquirrelMail.)
Ultra-light hand held clients.
Like a lot of other people, I do use my Palm to surf the web.
Some browser for Palm don't have all the bells and whistle like full Javascript etc.
For some application, like E-Mails, there's (thankfully) still alternate ways to use content that are handheld friendly : E-Mail POP/IMAP software.
But there other application that are only accessible from the website, like train timetables. And if the website is "Best viewed with Explorer, Optimized for 1024x768", or only tested against mainstrem browsers (FireFox, Safari, IE), you're out-of-luck when you need to quickly check when you next train arrives. (I have luck, our nationnal train company has a light-browser friendly website).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's ridiculous. JavaScript may be a standard, but that doesn't mean that you should expect every user's browser to support it. How about blind people using screen-reader? How about search engines? Don't you want them to be able to read your page? (Well, perhaps not if it's personal email sitting behind a login screen.)
And may I remind you that the whole basis of AJAX - XMLHttpRequest - is NOT a standard. Don't you want your site to work on all the new cell phones coming out that a lot of people will soon be using to browse the web and read email? How about hand-held devices?
Gracefully degrading is a best practice for a lot of good reasons. And frankly, it's not that difficult, if you apply the principles of unobtrusive JavaScript.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
another thing it's missing is alt tags. it has a bunch of pretty buttons at the bottom of the screen, but i have no idea what any of them do. i'm guessing one of them is the logout button (as i can't seem to find one) but i have no idea.
This makes me wonder (quite on the other side of the coin) if Google will ever sell a stipped down version of Gmail for deployment on private systems. I know I would love to secure a gmail-type AJAX mail client. Luckily now it looks like that will happen for free before too long. Still, I think there is a lot of money to be made for Gogle if they sell the software.
It's more than that. Outlook Web Access was the whole reason Microsoft developed the XMLHTTP object.
Actually, XMLHTTP in IE is implemented using ActiveX but it doesn't have to be (Mozilla's equivalent XMLHttpRequest is a run-of-the-mill JavaScript object).