PHP webmail software like gmail?

[edmicman]

Right now I use Ilohamail on my host to access IMAP mail, for myself and a few friends. I like Iloha a lot, at least better than squirrelmail and the like. Anyway, I was thinking....it would be awesome to install a webmail IMAP interface that was as clean, functional, and quick as Google's gmail. So, is there anything like that out there? Would a PHP/mySQL combo be able to recreate that type of interface? I think that'd be awesome. gmail is great, but I think it would be even cooler to be able to offer such a great interface for my own hosted email. I was hoping maybe someone out there knew of some project or something in the same realm. And if there isn't already something like that, what are the odds that it could be done? Thanks for any ideas or advice!

 

[Drakkon]

squirrelmail is my fav

 

[Nothinman]

Squirrelmail is ugly, IMP is much better looking.

 

[edmicman]

bah, I didn't like either of those, hence IlohaMail (which I think is much cleaner, faster, etc.) that the others out there. But anyway....a bump for my original question. Is there anything out there that's gmail-like? Or what are the odds of starting up a project to do something like that? How do you start up a project on something like sourceforge? I could help some, but is there a good place to find people that might be interested in an OSS thing like that? Any other thoughts?

 

[kamper]

You could do something like gmail with php and whatever but alot of what makes gmail fancy is javascript. I read an article a while ago about all the new fancy interfaces for web mail services. Some are done with ajax (like google) and some are done with flash. I think that most of what I read about was proprietary though. I'm not sure if anyone has tackled making something similar yet for distribution (either open source or for profit) but I'm sure if there's enough call for it it will happen eventually.

 

[edmicman]

Hmmmmm, how does something like hivemail fit in with all of those? I still think it would be neat to code a gmail like interface to use with IMAP. I think I've got a bit of javascript learning to do, though. I think it would be a lot nicer than a lot of the things offered out there now, though. Where can I find more info about this "ajax" thing?

 

[Liviathan]

I've been using squirelmail, but after seeing IMP and ilohamail, I may make a change.

 

[Chebago]

I was given a demonstration from a company called canyonbridge that has an interface that resembles Outlook, but it is done over the web. I think gmail would rock if it did something like that. You can be the software was proprietary, and evidently patented. The guy said they did almost the entire thing using javascript with an xml backend. Pretty cool stuff...

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Hotscripts.com and resourceindex.com should have what you're looking for

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: edmicman
Where can I find more info about this "ajax" thing?

Google should suffice. I believe the term was only coined a few months ago. It basically consists of using javascript to send requests to the server without refreshing the main view, then receiving the response as xml and updating the page. But there was a lot of hoopla about how google had gone out and hired all the best javascript people that they could find to make this happen so it's not something that you can just do after learning basic javascript.

 

[Liviathan]

Anyone know or have any themes for ilohamail?

Also anyone got Horde to work?

 

[Codewiz]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: edmicman
Where can I find more info about this "ajax" thing?

Google should suffice. I believe the term was only coined a few months ago. It basically consists of using javascript to send requests to the server without refreshing the main view, then receiving the response as xml and updating the page. But there was a lot of hoopla about how google had gone out and hired all the best javascript people that they could find to make this happen so it's not something that you can just do after learning basic javascript.

Funny thing is that company called Hyperwave has been doing this for YEARS.

They have a portal system that is completely javascript. You browse a directory, it uses javascript to grab the relavent data from the server and display it without refreshing the whole page.

The problem is scalability. When you transmit large data this way, it is extremely slow initially.

 

[edmicman]

Originally posted by: Liviathan
Anyone know or have any themes for ilohamail?

Also anyone got Horde to work?

I think the new (unstable/dev) version of Ilohamail has themes support....I haven't seen anything yet in the way of published themes, though. A sharp one would be very cool, though! I still want a clean, fast, PRETTY webmail client a la gmail, but one that would work for IMAP. Man, why can't they license their software?