Paul Roub : blahg

A while back, I complained about the sorry state of IMAP mail clients.

Somewhere in the comments, I eventually noted that Mozilla Thunderbird had improved to the point where I was pretty happy about it.

I would be remiss not to make more noise about the fact that Thunderbird has since improved in all sorts of ways, not all of them obvious. Some of the smallest changes are the most satisfying.

Sure, it reads RSS now, but I like Bloglines for that.

What I like is the little day-to-day things, which I haven't mentioned because you tend not to notice stuff that just works right.

Such as:

• It's really, really stable. Even when left open for days at a time hitting three different IMAP accounts with large archives and complex hierarchies.
• It highlights new messages in any folder (crucial, since I do my filtering server-side); not by popping open to the actual folder with new messages, but rather by highlighting the closest visible parent folder. So I know I have new stuff down somewhere in my IE View project folders, but if that's not what I'm working on right now, I don't get screen clutter and a needlessly-expanded tree.
• Did I mention it's really stable? Sorry, but I came from Outlook's IMAP support, and stability is such a strange new world.
• It's fast. Again, you tend to not notice the lack of annoying delays. Again, not like Outlook.
• The default security setup is just about where I want it; secure, but not preventing me from seeing "dangerous" attachments (like forwarded emails) even if I insist. (I'm looking at you, Outlook Express)
• It's quite tweakable -- one tweak I consider essential would be adding user_pref("mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new", true); to user.js

Anyway, just wanted to make sure that my daily happiness and satisfaction in using Thunderbird didn't blind me to just how novel that situation is.

Posted by Paul Roub at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of all things, looks like Outlook Express might accomplish some of what I need. That is, it does seem to open up folders with new messages. And the "download all messages" setting gives me a reasonable offline view. Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of holes, as well:

Major Issues

• Inability to create folders-within-folders. OE just doesn't get it. It will read subfolders created by some other means, so I can always work around this. Annoying to lose the ability to create subfolders on the fly, though.
• Slow. Very. Notorious for opening and closing connections in a very un-IMAP way.

Minor Issues

• No new-mail notification on items in subfolders. Or at least, no reliable notification. No worse than the rest, here.
• No disconnected-mode support. Not a unique problem, by any means.

On balance, not clear that just opening folders outweighs the inconveniences. It's just a bit better than Outlook, and if things are that close, why not stick to the same program that houses my address book and calendar?

Posted by Paul Roub at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Looking for a serious Windows IMAP client that doesn't drive me nuts.

Actually, cross-platform would be even better. My gut feeling is that I'll end up hacking on Mozilla Mail (a.k.a. Thunderbird) to meet my needs, and hopefully someone else's.

Meantime, Eudora misses out on all sorts of things (auto-save to a remote Sent Items folder, for one); Mulberry's interface is... interesting, plus it's folder-list display doesn't work for me at all; Outlook 2K isn't actually half bad, but it's offline support is mediocre at best.

And none of them works well in my world -- where categorization / sorting happens on the server side, not at the client. That is, by the time the client sees a new email, it's no longer in the Inbox. It's in a folder.

I'd like that folder to be opened and highlighted, just as it would be if Outlook (e.g.) had routed it there all on its own. I'd like a standard new-mail notification. That's all, really. OK, I'd also like full-blown disconnected-mode support, but one step at a time.

Anyone know of a client that does this right now?

Update, 2004/10/12: Thunderbird has come a long way. Search is over, I think.

Posted by Paul Roub at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1)