there was a discussion a while back about a good mail client and I started to write my own not too long ago ... however, I just downloaded the new (new to me, anyway) Opera and was surprised to see that it comes with a mail client! And lo and behold, it's actually a pretty cool client.... I'm only in the first day of use, so I'm still working through some of the kinks, and it definitely makes you think about your mail more like a database than a set of fixed folders, but it turns out that it's a really slick concept.

Anyway, I'll keep people posted on my successes and/or failures with it.

ms

Please do... I'm interested... in fact, downloading now.

here's a screenshot from my environment right now (w/ mozilla-esque skin).

Cool things to note:
mailing lists folder -- i didn't set that up, it dynamically creates that based on email titles

active contacts -- names of people i have emails from in my mail database right now (turns bold with # to tell you how many unread emails you have by that person). if you select the person, it shows you all the emails from him/her

my folders -- you can setup dynamic folders off of different filter/search criteria

received -- shows all unread messages (you can actually toggle different filters for this one -- i have it mapped to just unread)

attachments -- contains all the attachments for all the emails in your database (by file type)

Anyway -- it's just a cool concept... And I'm actually kind of digging that it's integrated in with the browser (it's just a different tab view that you can show or hide at any time) since I have a browser and my email open all day long ...

ms

I know that I for one am enjoying the benefits of Mozilla 1.3's new bayesian mail filtering for spam.

I will have to check out the Opera mail client, though.

I'm pretty excited by the work being done by the Open Source Applications Foundation. I spent a few days consulting with them on their security architecture, and I was really impressed by the people there. If you poke around their Wiki, you can see all the thought that has gone into their design. This is meant to do everything that Outlook + Exchange can do, but without requiring a centrally-maintained server infrastructure.

Of course, like any kitchen-sink project, they'll eventually have to make hard decisions about what they will and won't put into version 1.0. Still, if I were thinking about starting a new mail client from scratch, I'd probably think twice, and maybe consider trying to hack into Mozilla, this OSAF thing, or some other existing project so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think web browsers should stick to web browsing, and email clients should stick to email. I *hate* HTML in my emails, and I rather dislike the concept of having my email be just another tab on the web browser. Browsing the web and communicating via email are just two distinct activities in my mind. I feel I'm in the minority here, but I hope this doesn't become the trend... I hope email clients keep evolving in the face of this trend towards web browsers that do everything.

I used moz mail for a couple days and just wasn't satisfied ... i should have kept notes now because I can't recall what specifically got on my nerves. Part of it is that I just wasn't impressed with moz in general ... I have such high hopes and I so want to use it, but it always lets me down somehow. I get rather annoyed that if i File=>Exit on the email window it would file=>exit my browser windows too -- that was kind of annoying, but a small thing. Performance wise, it seems sluggish ... I guess that's what you get when you design a "UI framework" instead of just making a normal UI for your browser... oh well.

Just my two cents on that one, I'll keep trying back every version though ...

ms

I agree with you, but I have one more reason for keeping them separate. When one crashes, I don't want both to crash. This was more notable with crash-prone Unix Netscape 4.x apps. At the time, I ran two instances of Netscape (ISTR some reason I was forced to use it for mail at the time), one for mail and one for browsing.

Now that Netscape 7 (I don't feel like spending hours trying to get Mozilla to compile under Solaris, and the binaries just don't work for me) seldom crashes, I'm back to using the same binary for both things, but I'm still opposed to it. They should really be two different apps.

Law of Software Envelopment

I looked at this one, but it's not out yet, right? Definitely sounds really promising, and I'm looking forward to what they put out. By the way, they need a graphic designer _bad_.... If you're involved with them, you should really recommend that. Often times, I'm turned off by a lot of open source GUI apps because they look like they were designed by the same crew that did Athena Widgets.

I guess it really depends on how you view the use of your applications ... I personally would like a better integration between my email client and my development environment (and my browser) for things like sending code examples, references to source, etc. It's all sort of where you draw the separation line -- does running in a separate window make them separate apps?

On the crashing point, seems like we should all be against bad software rather than questionable integrations

Personally, I just want to use the best app for the job, and for the next 5 minutes, Opera's looking like it. I'll post tomorrow that something about it infuriated me and I've moved on in my lonely quest to not hate every piece of software.

ms

... so basically what I'm saying is that I think I'm being limited more by my operating system not organizing and providing integration points in applications like I need/want them to be more than that necessarily Opera has "got it wrong". There should be much better defined interfaces for all of these different technologies to plug together to make different apps work the way I want ... Because obviously everyone wants something slightly different and to do this is a single app is always going to make 50% angry and the other 50% thrilled.

Yeah, the OSAF guys know they need to have a kick-butt user interface. Right now, it's mostly mock-ups and experiments. There's only so much influence I can have over there, so I try to focus it on how the low-level guts can be secure. I did point out that it would be cool if they supported something like DateLens.

Anybody try the new Opera mail client (M2) via IMAP?
Im trying to set it up now, and it would appear to not work quite as expected.
I keep dragging messages from my inbox to the folder I want them in, and it just keeps copying the message there instead of deleting it from inbox and moving it permanently.
And the contacts is baffling me. Why does it think I want to keep everybody I've ever sent or recieved an email from as a contact.
Its a little slicker than OE, which Ive been using for IMAP for years, but its a little clunky in some other aspects.
I think OE is a little faster too. Well at least here on my XP machine...

I'm using it for IMAP also ... I must admit I'm still learning my way around, but for me when I drag mail between folders, it seems to work ... one thing you might want to check, are you dragging from your IMAP INBOX to your IMAP destination folder, or from "Received" or "Unread" to that folder? I wonder if that makes a diff? I dragged from INBOX=>destination and it seems to work.

it appears that you CAN delete contacts ... By it's name "Active Contacts", I got the impression that it is somehow different than Contacts -- I assumed active contacts is anyone you are keeping mail around from, maybe?

Odd about speed -- i was thinking it was faster than OE ... My biggest thing is that it doesn't do the infuriating process that OE does for deleting imap messages (the "delete"... purge ... decides to reappear or not go away routine).

I think the root of my problem is that I'm so emotionally defeated by IMAP clients on Windows that if it just doesn't physically harm me then I'm happy ... sort of an alcoholic wife syndrome or something?

I'll keep looking around in the client and see if I can find anymore info ...

ms

I am dragging from my INBOX to the destination folder. It does drag, and it does disappear from the INBOX but only until I click another folder, and then click back. Then all the messages I just removed re-appear. Cant figure out why...

I find OE faster than it only in terms of mail checking. When I open OE it takes a fraction of a second from the time the window is fully opened until it shows me which folders have unread messages and how many. Opera seems to take a couple of seconds before it knows whats out there. Also I've had it fail to connect to my server (which I know is up, 'cause its on the floor here next to me) a couple of times, which seems to confuse it. Not sure why it's doing that.

All in all though its the only client for IMAP other than OE that I've been willing to spend more than five minutes on. So I guess there is something about it that intrigues me.
I'm gonna keep playing with it and see how it comes out...

Hear, hear!

I'm no more a fan of having my web-browser be my email client, than I am in having my text editor be my web-browser. I have no problem sending code snippets and such through email, or any of the other things mentioned. The other thing I like is that I get to choose my text editor. I hated having to use Netscape Mail, because it's a piss-poor text editor -- that's not what it's designed for. When I'm seding email, I wanna use a *real* text editor. Come to think of it, that's one of my biggest issues with all those Integrated Development Environments, too... I hate their editors.

/me steps back from the brink of text-editor holy war.

/me steps back from the brink of text-editor holy war.

That's a very good idea... Text editor holy wars can turn ugly very easily.

I *hate* HTML in my emails

One question I have for the people here. Why do most MCSE certified people feel the need to wave this around so much? I can spot an e-mail from an MCSE tech in my inbox a mile away with the message size. One I got today was 44k and 5 attachments. Aparently he needed to make sure I knew he was MCSE certified with Outlook, since he showed off by using a background, MCSE logo, blue and red ribbon, the company logo (No, I didn't forget who I work for), and some unknown 5th file. All to say his previous message of 40k forgot the link to the MS Technet site about some new dynamic disk problem.

I need to start attaching a large version of the Sair LCP logo to my e-mails to these individuals. I'm thinking 800x600 minimum, to make sure they see it.

</rant>

I really wish people would do the same thing I do any time I use a mail client. Find the plain text send option.

Bwahahahaha! Are you sure that's not supposed to be a "very good idea, mate..."?

I really wish people would do the same thing I do any time I use a mail client. Find the plain text send option.

Preach it, Brother! Then there's the email written by the colour-blind: hot pink text on a slightly less hot pink background. I've had to cut-n-paste email into a text editor, just so I can read it. I really wish email client developers would quit making html the default.

Fortunately, I no longer see the html crap -- my email client filters it through the best dang text browser ever made before I see it. Maybe I should just write a procmail filter to automatically reject html mail with a message asking it to be resent as plain-text...

Am I missing something ?

I'm always on the lookup for a decent Windows IMAP client, so I thought I would give Opera a go.

How do you stop it from fetching the body of every message in every IMAP folder at startup ? It has been chewing away at my IMAP server for half an hour now, getting every single message (and I have an awful lot of messages spread across my two dozen folder). In OE I would be able to tell it which folder to get the bodies for and which to just get the headers.

Because of this is is horribly slower than OE so far. I do hope it's caching these bodies so it doesn't need to do this again !

Hmmm. I have now idea what Opera was doing during that half an hour, because it didn't actually download and message bodies. I can tell this because every message body that I now click on gets downloaded individually.

More importantly, it appears to just as hopeless at threading as all the other clients I have tried. At least it allows you to select which folders are threaded, which not all clients do.

I don't think this will be replacing my use of SquirrelMail any time soon

I gotta say that "links" always impresses me ... everytime i ssh to our server it's always a little treat to see just how good a job they manage to do with nothing but text.

ms

I know that if you go into manage accounts, and view the properties of your IMAP mail account, you can specify wether to download the message bodies or not.
I think it was set to 'not' by default.

Mine did the same thing. It doesnt download bodies, but it does spend a bit of time talking to the server. Ill have to take a look at my IMAP server log and see what its doing.

Not sure how to set it to not check every folder when it looks for new mail. Setting this up would considerably shorten its connection time.
For example, I have no need to check my drafts, and Sent Items folder for new mail every time I check mail. New mail only goes into 1 of 7 folders. Yet, Opera likes to check all 7 just in case.
If anybody figures out how to do that please let me know. I have my OE set this way, and I think thats why it seems faster.

Why do most MCSE certified people feel the need to wave this around so much? I can spot an e-mail from an MCSE tech in my inbox a mile away with the message size.

Probably because they want to prove that they know how to do all the "fancy graphical stuff" in Outlook.

Personally, my respect for a person's technical skills increases if they tell me that they deliberately avoid using Outlook.

And how the hell do you add a TO: field in the sent items folder. It only shows a FROM: field. I know who the messages were from... ME!!! I want to know who I sent them to.

Why do most MCSE certified people feel the need to wave this around so much?

In my experience, it's because their skillset is so poor, and they have such a minimal understanding of how computers work that they're actually impressed that they have this certification, nevermind that it's basically bought.

The exact same phenomenon existed years ago when Novell was king of the hill. All the CNAs liked to make sure you knew that they didn't know a thing. That wasn't true of the CNEs, or it was at least less true, but the same doesn't seem to be accurate of the MCSA/MCSE folks.

Find the plain text send option.

At least most of them now default to replying underneath quoted text, except for what looks like one big one, which I'm assuming is Outlook. Now if we could just force people to edit their quotations.

I have no idea and I'm never likely to find out. The Opera UI is completely baffling. I have managed to hide the pane that showed my mail folder and I can't find out how to show it again (I can hide and show all sorts of panes and sidebars, but I can't find the one with my mail on it).

The ting I hate most is the number of support calls from people that say "My <insert family member or friend> sent me a <picture - joke - or virus ridden exe) and it won't open for me. I grumble about (L)users for a few and then trek down to their office, only to find that some dolt doesn't know how to forward correctly. They often have 10 or so nested .eml attachments, all of which their particular email program can't handle. What's WITH people? Are they just so farking lazy that they can't set the quote inline checkbox? Why would anyone EVER want to nest an email in an email in an email? Not to mention that some of them are 60k, with only 3-4k of actual email and 56-57k of header information? Grr... OK, I feel better now.

Are they just so farking lazy that they can't set the quote inline checkbox?

Well, they just don't know any better. The problem isn't the end-luser, it's the fact that the software comes with "quote as attachment" for its default setting. Grr.

True....