Slashdot Mirror
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."
For anyone who wants this fix, I made a q&d change to the folder listing code so that it truncates long folder names in the middle so that they don't run over and screw up your display. I submitted this patch to the author a month ago, but it hasn't made it into the trunk yet I guess.
http://suso.suso.org/programs/roundcube/
Roundcube is pretty neat, but it still has some bugs. The IMAP client caches everything so that it is faster on subsequent tries, but on large mailboxes it can be a real pain the first time. It makes for a good program to hack on though. Its just what I've been looking for to replace squirrelmail on suso.org.
Ajax is the first genuinely new thing I can think of this century.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Ack! The one time I'm around early enough to make a comment like that and it turns out it's not down. (Or if it was, they recovered quickly.) In any case, it looks great. And being MySQL-based, the big missing feature--search--should be pretty easy to add. In fact, all I've ever wanted was an SQL query window I can run against my email--`select * from inbox where (sender='mom' or sender='dad') and date>20041225 and date20041230 and subject like '%party%'`
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This really looks cool, but is it as extensible as Squirrelmail?
We have found that we can extend Squirrelmail to present a very lite webmail presence, yet keep the functionality simple so that basic features will still work in a syncronized fashion with a heavy remote client (IMAPS).
Roundcube still needs some kind of anti-spam integration and automated signup routines, but we will certainly keep an eye on it.
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Company"
communik8r beat yahoo, hotmail and roundcube with the idea. Sadly it looks like it has stalled. It shows a lot of promise when I played with it, but it was way too unstable for production.
I just installed it, and it seems pretty slick thus far. I think they still have a few things to add beyond search, namely:
- Server-side sorting so that all messages don't need to be downloaded in order to view, say, the 15 newest.
- Special folder support, such as Junk, Sent, Trash, etc. Currently send mail just goes off into the ether.
Other than that, I'm pretty impressed. I personally currently use Squirrelmail for my webmail needs, but it feels a bit clunky. If they can meet Squirrelmail's features (at a minimum) I can see this being used all over the place. I find the use of a DB for things like user/session/whatever management to be a bit odd, but at least actual files don't have to be used then.
Went ahead and tried it out, it's not bad looking at all. Has a way to go to replace some of the other webmail clients I've used (currently using squirrelmail on my server. Nice, simple, straightforward) but the install was quick and easy and it does look pretty. Might could use a howto on the mysql part for newbs, but I didn't have any trouble and I'm still pretty new to mysql myself. Does seem a bit slow on low-bandwidth servers like mine, but might be my fault.
Definitely keeping an eye on this, though. I'd not mind a friendlier webmail interface.
Anyone got a somewhat comprehensive list of AJAX Webmail packages? Doesnt have to be only OSS.
They are used in very specific circumstances in regular application email. it's called "opening the email". sounds alot like what this web app does.
This is blatently incorrect. Most regular email apps "open the email" when you click on it. i.e. The email is shown in a preview pane. Double-clicking has a very different effect of opening the email in a new window. Since this program does not open the email in a new window when double-clicked, its implementation is wrong.
And to define wrong, I mean: inconsistent with the rest of the applications and unintuitive to a new user. "Wrong" may also be construed to mean a failure to meet HCI guidelines. The seventh guideline from this page, for example, states that you should not, "Invent new UI conventions [for AJAX applications]."
I've never understood what the big deal is about conversation grouping was and why other mail clients found it so difficult to implement. Conversation grouping is one of the easiest things to implement and it should be considered a bare minimum for mail clients. We're talking a few hundred lines of code at most to implement the feature. Why is it so hard? Yahoo? Hotmail? Yep, I'm talking to you.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"