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Open Source AJAX Webmail

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Oct 13, 2005 09:12 AM
from the future-of-web-design dept.
PHP Programming
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."
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  • Foldername length patch. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suso (153703) * on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:13AM (#13781395) Homepage Journal
    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/ [suso.org]

    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 [suso.org].

    • Re:Foldername length patch. (Score:5, Informative)

      by mottie (807927) on Thursday October 13 2005, @10:00AM (#13781784)
      I have just installed it for the first time, but it appears that the caching portion is completely optional.
       
      // enable caching of messages and mailbox data in the local database.
      // this is recommended if the IMAP server does not run on the same machine

      $rcmail_config['enable_caching'] = FALSE;

      • Re:Buggy (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        In the demo, if you click on a message in the inbox it gets selected. How TF do you read it?

        Double click.

        It's not so much buggy as it needs some serious HCI help. Web applications should NEVER require double clicks, and even in regular applications they should be used only in very specific circumstances.

        On the bright side, the application is very pretty. (Which is more than can be said for other OSS Webmail like SquirrelMail.)

  • Zimbra (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cally (10873) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:19AM (#13781432) Homepage
    There's also the Zimbra [zimbra.com] product, which is open source. It's on my list to eval - the Flash demo (see the webpage) looks pretty slick.

    Ajax is the first genuinely new thing I can think of this century.

    • Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together. (wikipedia.org)
    • except that is just another fancy name for a bundle of not so recent technologies
        • no-one was really using it until Google Maps first came along
          Not true at all. A lot of people were using it. However, it didn't land on a lot of developers radar until Google started using it for projects like Maps, GMail, and Google Suggest. For a majority of developers that was their first exposure to it and that's when it hit the mainstream.

        • Re:Zimbra (Score:5, Informative)

          by Thundersnatch (671481) on Thursday October 13 2005, @12:40PM (#13783023) Journal

          Microsoft Outlook Web Access, included with Exchange Server, is widely recognized [wikipedia.org] to be the first real AJAX application. The 2000 version was the first browser app I every used that made me say "wow, how the hell did they do that?". No Java applet or ActiveX, but it felt like a real, usable desktop application. Context menus and everything, with few full-page refreshes.

          Google has done quite a bit to elevate the profile of AJAX with the Slashdot crowd, but other people were definitely "really using it" long before Google.

    • "Ajax is the first genuinely new thing I can think of this century."

      Wow, that's a hell of a thinking block... I've managed to have several new ideas since 1999. :)



      "Quick, better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches, slowly crushed to death--helpless against the hulls in the bloody press--by far inferior men!"

      Telamonian Ajax, The Iliad, Homer
        • Actually, a new century starts every instant in time.

          And "since 1999" refers to 2000 to the present, not 1999 to the present.

          I'm fully aware that the first century did not start in year 0, but use of 1999 rather than 2000 creates a better mental separation from the present, which is better for comedic purposes.

    • Re:Zimbra (Score:5, Informative)

      by fak3r (917687) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:32AM (#13781537) Homepage
      Zimbra is pretty much full featured, and does allot more (AJAX wise and otherwise) than Roundcube. Give it a look too. Having said that, Roundcube is basically one person, and it's a very impressive project in that regards; nice clean UI, and a somewhat new way to deal with 'webmail'. I see Zimbra as being a great comapany (all stuff is 'ZPL' btw) but Roundcube should attract some devs now, and I expect it to be a real nice 'light' solution for us home mailserver folks.

    • Re:Zimbra (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wornstrom (920197) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:39AM (#13781607)
      I would recommend that you use a system that has some horsepower. I installed Zimbra on a p4 3.0 Ghz HT 1GB ram box (my workstation), and experienced some heavy load. Not only that but it takes the liberty of rewriting your firewall ruleset, so I wouldn't use an existing system without being prepared for service / connectivity interruptions (linux gateway/firewalls). Sure, it is still in beta, so I will give it that excuse, I couldn't imagine releasing the horde on it for production use yet. If this one doesn't require all sorts of backends, I might give it a try.

    • Re:Zimbra (Score:3, Interesting)

      by porneL (674499)
      Ajax is the first genuinely new thing I can think of this century.
      AJAX is not a new thing. It's new name for technologies of last century. Read Hixie's post [hixie.ch] about how old and inappropriately named AJAX is.

  • not a business startup (Score:3, Informative)

    by jbellis (142590) <{moc.rednelbeganrac} {ta} {nahtanoj}> on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:19AM (#13781441) Homepage
    When you stay "startup," it makes people think they're trying to start a business around this. They're not, at least not from what I read. It's just one guy's project on sourceforge.
  • The big question is: Does it run on Lynx and Links?
    • Actually that is a good question. AJAX is great but it needs to gracefully fall back to solid useable HTML for clients that can't handle javascript or whatever.

        • There is no reason for any app developer to not use javascript to his heart's content.

          Ultra-light hand held clients.
          Like a lot of other people, I do use my Palm to surf the web.
          Some browser for Palm don't have all the bells and whistle like full Javascript etc.

          For some application, like E-Mails, there's (thankfully) still alternate ways to use content that are handheld friendly : E-Mail POP/IMAP software.
          But there other application that are only accessible from the website, like train timetables. And if the

        • Ever read this [w3.org] thingy? Or any of the other publications from this w3c thing?
          They pay a lot of attention to ensuring things keep working, and dgrade in a nice gracefull way instead of just borking.

          And yes, in 2005 there are still quite a few relevant browsers that do not support JS, and which would be extremely usable with a webmail application still. This concerns virtually all browsers on handheld devices.

        • Javascript is an accepted WWW standard. There is no reason for any app developer to not use javascript to his heart's content.

          That's ridiculous. JavaScript may be a standard, but that doesn't mean that you should expect every user's browser to support it. How about blind people using screen-reader? How about search engines? Don't you want them to be able to read your page? (Well, perhaps not if it's personal email sitting behind a login screen.)

          And may I remind you that the whole basis of AJAX - XMLHttpRe [wikipedia.org]

  • One comment and slashdotted! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sootman (158191) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:20AM (#13781449) Journal
    A new record?

    Free, open-source AJAX webmail--it seems we've discovered the secret formula to get slashdotters to read articles!

    • Re:One comment and slashdotted! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sootman (158191) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:27AM (#13781494) Journal
      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%'`
      • And, of course, the one time I don't preview is the one time I have a '<' for slashdot to swallow--there's supposed to be one in 'and date<20041230'
      • This is where having an understand of where IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 are very helpful. MySQL is only used for storing preferences and very limited amounts of data relating to user specific settings in RoundCube. The actual mail retrieval and sotrage is all handled via IMAP. This means that this program is really nothing more a stand alone mail client, only as a web application. SMTP pushes mail around. It is then stored somewhere. On Unix type systems that is typically maildir or the mbox format. Then IMAP and
  • Unfortunatly, I can not try the demo because the mac specific Mozilla browser - Camino- is not supported. I may be able to spoof my browser and access the mail client without any problems but isnt that what we are trying to get away from?

  • Irony (Score:5, Funny)

    by karvind (833059) <karvind.gmail@com> on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:24AM (#13781482) Journal
    Does anyone else find it ironic ? The contact email address is : roundcube@AJAXgmail.comREMOVEAJAX
  • 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.

  • AJAX Security [cgisecurity.com]
    • First of all, I don't see much security-related content on that site. Second, the issues that are raised all seem to be issues in non-AJAX web development as well.

      For example, in AJAX Considered Harmful [intertwingly.net], using HTTP GETs to change state is a well-known no-no. (Google Accelerator recently broke some sites that violate this principle, but it's been known since at least HTTP 1.0 times that infrastructure would break sites that were coded incorrectly.) But XMLHttpRequest supports POSTs (and PUT, and probably all

  • Call me old fashioned... (Score:5, Funny)

    by WhoDey (629879) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:35AM (#13781568) Homepage
    ...but am I the only one who still prefers pine? [washington.edu]

  • Installed! Looks nice thus far... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nuxx (10153) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:40AM (#13781618) Homepage
    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 [squirrelmail.org] 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.

    • Re:Installed! Looks nice thus far... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rabel (531545) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:46AM (#13781669)
      I haven't yet installed it, but it sure looks slick. Damn, and the installation requirements are just this simple. 1. Decompress and put this folder somewhere inside your document root 2. Make shure that the following directories are writable by the webserver - /temp - /logs 3. Create a new database and a database user for RoundCube 4. Create database tables using the queries in file 'SQL/*.initial.sql' 5. Modify the files in config/* to suit your local environment 6. Done!

  • AJA not AJAX (Score:4, Informative)

    by minddog (460206) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:55AM (#13781738) Journal
    Whats commonly confused in the community, if there is no client-side xsl transformations using the browser, their is still interface load. This is not a true AJAX imap client, it is an AJA, and the xml is rendered server-side to xhtml standards.

    If you are interested in a pure implementation that has been around longer thats true ajax, check out http://www.communik8r.org/ [communik8r.org]

  • List of AJAX Webmail clients? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nate Fox (1271) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:57AM (#13781759)
    Anyone got a somewhat comprehensive list of AJAX Webmail packages? Doesnt have to be only OSS.

  • Too Many Users! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cbovasso (608431) on Thursday October 13 2005, @10:23AM (#13781976)
    From the Demo:

    Too many users!
    Please check back later!



    I love how simple it is to navigate! The features leave something to be desired though. Hey check me out, I just wrote a CNet review!

  • Kerio's had this for a while now... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jerkychew (80913) on Thursday October 13 2005, @11:05AM (#13782245) Homepage
    Kerio MailServer [kerio.com] is a nice Exchange replacement that runs on Linux and Mac OS X. It has a really nice AJAX webmail app that is a feasible replacement for a desktop app. It's not free, but it is cheap, and it's not Exchange :-)

  • Nice to see (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ndansmith (582590) on Thursday October 13 2005, @11:32AM (#13782446)
    This makes me wonder (quite on the other side of the coin) if Google will ever sell a stipped down version of Gmail for deployment on private systems. I know I would love to secure a gmail-type AJAX mail client. Luckily now it looks like that will happen for free before too long. Still, I think there is a lot of money to be made for Gogle if they sell the software.

    • Re:AJAX is a retarded term (Score:4, Informative)

      by MankyD (567984) on Thursday October 13 2005, @09:30AM (#13781531) Homepage
      "AJAX" is a retarded and non-sensical name made up by a consulting company who wanted to make themselves sound important. I can't believe you people are falling for it.
      And what would your rather we call it? And what magical consulting company is this? If they've done such a good job making themselves sound important then certainly you must be able to come up with their name off the top of your head. (oh wait, you didn't include their name in your post :P)

      No one is "falling" for anything. It's a name that works for a useful technology.
      • Adaptive Path, I believe. Agreed, it's not a bad name, but it still needs a link... (this article is of the usual unhelpful Slashdot variety)
        • How about "Javascript", since that's all it is?
          It's technology that already had a name and doesn't need a new one.

          And why not call P2P FTP cause thats what it is...
          And IM is just email...
          And cars are really just horseless carriages...

          Now speakin of horses, get off the high one you are on and move on.
          If you don't like ajax go ahead and call it Javascript XMLHttpRequest objects or whatever floats your large water displacing transportation vessel (Boat for those that can stand short easy to use references to n
    • If you want to be more specific --Adaptive Path, specifically by Jesse James Garrett:

      http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/ar chives/000385.php [adaptivepath.com]
      (it's not worth linking to, and giving them hits for it, though)

      And I agree -- the term right up there with 'blog' as terms that need to go. (the only good thing about the term 'blog' is that it's close to 'bog [peak.org]', which seems to suggest the contents of them)
    • I have to agree. It took about 3 minutes to get up and running after the download on my linux box. Those just starting out will probably need a bit more time. A setup program would be in order, either via browser or just on the command-line.

      Definitely more eye candy than SquirrelMail - www.squirrelmail.org - (which hasn't had a real update in how long?), but the initial hit on the IMAP server did go quite slowly. I'm running UW IMAP and it looks like the RoundCube backend doesn't know enough (not a dig at a
    • Gmail has everyone beaten with its conversation grouping feature.

      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.

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