Anyone familiar with the email spec?

[Kaido]

Is it really that hard to program a good webmail system? Squirrelmail, Horde, NeoMail, etc., all stink. Why hasn't somebody released a Yahoo! Mail or Gmail clone? And, what should I search for to start looking for how email is structured (as far as displaying messages, downloading attachments, etc.). I think it'd be pretty sweet to setup an XML email system with a customizable PHP interface or something, but since I haven't seen anything like that, I'd imagine the difficulty level is up there...

 

[MrChad]

What don't you like about the existing systems? All you really need to understand are the POP/SMTP or IMAP protocols, which are documented fairly well online.

 

[Drakkon]

squirrelmail is fairly similar to gmail....you can create your own css definition and make it looks even closer i think...I think modfying a system like that which is already out there might be your best bet.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: MrChad
What don't you like about the existing systems? All you really need to understand are the POP/SMTP or IMAP protocols, which are documented fairly well online.

Mostly I don't like the interfaces. I like Yahoo and I like Gmail, but my server has Horde, NeoMail, and Squirrelmail. I just want it easy, simple, and nice to look at.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
squirrelmail is fairly similar to gmail....you can create your own css definition and make it looks even closer i think...I think modfying a system like that which is already out there might be your best bet.

I've only done a bit of css. Exactly how customizable is squirrelmail when using css?

 

[Drakkon]

well with css you can redefine how tables looks, how colors and text appear, how input fields appear, css an have a lot of power maybe you cant push it as far to entirely change layout schemes but you can change appearance.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
well with css you can redefine how tables looks, how colors and text appear, how input fields appear, css an have a lot of power maybe you cant push it as far to entirely change layout schemes but you can change appearance.

Hmm. Squirrelmail is my favorite out of all three. It's what I'm currently using for webmail on my own servers. Time to do some cody studying

 

[Armitage]

I wish my ISP would get something better then Endymion MailMan.

It really sucks - I never delete messages from the web interface, because it loses it's mind half the time and you have to log out & log in again toi get it back :|

 

[edmicman]

I agree, and actually have posted requests for something similar in here multiple times. I'm using ilohamail (www.ilohamail.org) right now, which *was* a little simpler and streamlined it seemed, but it seems to be crawling for me lately. It seems like everybody touts squirrelmail and horde, but I don't think even with CSS skinning you can make squirrelmail like gmail. The key to gmail, yahoo, even hotmail is the functionality. You can make squirrelmail look however you want, but you won't have the snappiness of the other services, the javascript/dhtml interactivity, etc. It just seems like the open source webmail clients out there now are rooted in 5 years ago, and nobody is doing anything different or new. Squirrelmail just feels antiquated, even if it *is* robust. I would love to code my own webmail app, but thats a bit out of my scope and knowledge. I just can't believe that there isn't a project out there to make the OSS "gmail" equivalent. But nothing shows up on sourceforge or freshmeat or anything.

Just my $.02.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: edmicman
I agree, and actually have posted requests for something similar in here multiple times. I'm using ilohamail (www.ilohamail.org) right now, which *was* a little simpler and streamlined it seemed, but it seems to be crawling for me lately. It seems like everybody touts squirrelmail and horde, but I don't think even with CSS skinning you can make squirrelmail like gmail. The key to gmail, yahoo, even hotmail is the functionality. You can make squirrelmail look however you want, but you won't have the snappiness of the other services, the javascript/dhtml interactivity, etc. It just seems like the open source webmail clients out there now are rooted in 5 years ago, and nobody is doing anything different or new. Squirrelmail just feels antiquated, even if it *is* robust. I would love to code my own webmail app, but thats a bit out of my scope and knowledge. I just can't believe that there isn't a project out there to make the OSS "gmail" equivalent. But nothing shows up on sourceforge or freshmeat or anything.

Just my $.02.

Yeah, I hear ya. Maybe when I finish my book project I'll have to take on OOS-Gmail

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: edmicman
I agree, and actually have posted requests for something similar in here multiple times. I'm using ilohamail (www.ilohamail.org) right now, which *was* a little simpler and streamlined it seemed, but it seems to be crawling for me lately. It seems like everybody touts squirrelmail and horde, but I don't think even with CSS skinning you can make squirrelmail like gmail. The key to gmail, yahoo, even hotmail is the functionality. You can make squirrelmail look however you want, but you won't have the snappiness of the other services, the javascript/dhtml interactivity, etc. It just seems like the open source webmail clients out there now are rooted in 5 years ago, and nobody is doing anything different or new. Squirrelmail just feels antiquated, even if it *is* robust. I would love to code my own webmail app, but thats a bit out of my scope and knowledge. I just can't believe that there isn't a project out there to make the OSS "gmail" equivalent. But nothing shows up on sourceforge or freshmeat or anything.

Just my $.02.

Yeah, I hear ya. Maybe when I finish my book project I'll have to take on OOS-Gmail

and, ooh - ilohamail looks really good, thanks for the link!

 

[edmicman]

I found out about this a few days ago:

http://roundcube.net/

It sounds like its early in the project, but I installed it on my host space and it seems pretty slick so far. Looks promising!

 

[lozina]

The best place to learn about Internet protocols / Internet related specifications is the RFC archives. Here's one site

for example, here's one describing POP3 protocol

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: edmicman
You can make squirrelmail look however you want, but you won't have the snappiness of the other services, the javascript/dhtml interactivity, etc. It just seems like the open source webmail clients out there now are rooted in 5 years ago, and nobody is doing anything different or new. Squirrelmail just feels antiquated, even if it *is* robust.

the open source aps are only 1.5 years behind. Before gmail, the other services were just barely beginning to play around with javascript and dhtml. 3 years ago, I much prefered Horde on my university's server to Yahoo and Hotmail. Now, the commercial apps have caught up and passed the OS ones, but that didn't use to be the case.

I'm sure squirrelmail will improve as quickly as Yahoo if you donate as much money as Yahoo is putting into their mail service.

 

[rmrf]

http://openwebmail.org/

 

[imported_Rampage]

Originally posted by: Armitage
I wish my ISP would get something better then Endymion MailMan.

It really sucks - I never delete messages from the web interface, because it loses it's mind half the time and you have to log out & log in again toi get it back :|

My university uses MailMan.. it works just fine. Its not full featured, but it works fine for me at least.
I'm not the ultimate defender of MailMan.. but if I was setting up email service of my own.. I'd be happy with providing that to people. Gmail and hotmail are available to them still if they dont like it.

I use my university email and my gmail. Both email services serve their purpose fine by my standards. I dont expect a Gmail-type service for basic college email.

My ISP email (Mediacom) is pretty nice though, has an address book ect.

 

[rmrf]

Originally posted by: edmicman
I found out about this a few days ago:

http://roundcube.net/

It sounds like its early in the project, but I installed it on my host space and it seems pretty slick so far. Looks promising!

I am trying to use postfix with roundcube, but I keep getting 'Connection Failed: 554 : Relay access denied' when I try to send mail. I can log into my accounts just fine, read mail that has been sent to me, and configure settings, but I cannot send mail. It's not a big problem as I and my users can still get our mail via squirrelmail, but I've been looking for an alternative interface for some time, and this one seems like an excellent replacement. Is there something wrong with my postfix configs that squirrelmail is gentle with, and roundcube breaks, or is roundcube only set up to use sendmail?

EDIT: OK, I got it figured out. I didn't have mynetworks set correctly, so now that I got that right, it sends mail just fine. However, the mail that I send doesn't show up in the 'Sent' folder. Is this a bug, or do I need to manually set it to put a copy of the email there?