Re: Describe your Dream WebMail App

[davorg]

• Proper handling (and generation) of threading headers like "References" and "In-Reply-To". And, hence, a threaded view of my mail.
• The ability to just display the text/plain version of the mail. Just about every webmail I've used insists on trying to render the HTML version - and I don't want to see that.
• Virtual folders. The ability to put a mail into multiple folders. Maybe this can be achieved using tags (a bit like how Gmail does it).
• Multiple identities. I send mail that needs to appear to come from many different email addresses. Each different identity needs to potentially have different settings for From:, Reply-To:, SMTP server and signature (and probably other things). Identity should be able to be set automatically according to various attributes of the mail that I'm replying to (from:, to:, the current mailbox, etc) but I need to be able to override it when I'm composing the mail.

I guess I'm really looking for a web-based version of mutt :)

Oh, and in my opinion, Mail::Box is looking a bit old and over-complex. If I was you I'd look at the modules from the Perl Email Project.

[herveus]

Howdy!

Yeah. Me too.

Gmail is not hideous, but it doesn't thread properly, and it doesn't let me control the font used for displaying messages, nor does it let me suppress display of non-text parts.

...so, yeah, I guess I'd be looking for a web-based version of mutt as well. Start with mutt and webify it!

[jdrago_999]

A lot of replies talking about mutt. Unfortunately I've never used mutt.

This is probably a bad sign for anyone who needs the kinds of features mutt sounds capable of.

I now realize that the kind of tools we as developers require are much different than the kinds of tools CRM application users typically need. There the focus tends to be on making things really simple so even the dimmest bulb can manage sending and receiving email.

I suppose I'll start out with the basics (send/receive email, folders, attachments, search) and work up to more interesting things (multiple identities and SMTP servers, JAMES-esque "Maillets" and programmable templates with mail-merge.

This thing won't be replacing mutt anytime soon :)

[herveus]

Howdy!

The biggest thing I like about mutt is the way it can organize messages in threads, in the same way a competent news reader can organize messages. Gmail groups things in "conversations", but it seems to use only the subject line, so it fragments threads into multiple bits. Further, it loses the tree structure of threads in its presentation. Mutt will show the tree structure, so I have a fighting chance of knowing which message someone responded to.

I'm too lazy (and have too many other things on my plate at present) to tackle the problem myself, so I just keep using mutt and whine about it from time to time.

Good luck with your project.