I appreciate your suggestion with regards to IMAP; however, using IMAP would
require an email client capable of IMAP. This also implies the use of an
email client alltogether. With a web based email system, the user doesn't even
need an email client. The advantage of not needing an email client is
simplicity and flexability - you can go anywhere in the world and access the
Internet with a plain-ol web browser and access your email - you don't need to
know anything except: the URL for the email server, your user name, and your
password. With the IMAP approach, you would need:
1) An email client
2) An email client that understands IMAP
3) Knowledge on how to setup the email client
This is going to be used for my boss which travels a lot and needs to access
email - both new email and previously read email. He doesn't always have access
to a PC but usually can borrow one from someone.
-Rod
On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> That's why I asked about IMAP. One of its features is flexibility about
> downloading. To quote from the basic description of IMAP at www.imap.org:
>
> "IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of
> accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a
> (possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email
> program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example,
> email stored
> on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a
> workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without
> the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers."
>
> You probably want to look into it.
>
> At 12:15 AM 2/7/99 -0500, Rod Gotty wrote:
> >Ray:
> >
> >I'm not looking for POP3 or IMAP support - I know that Netscape and IE have
> mail
> >support built in. The problem with POP3 (and perhaps IMAP, I'm not familiar
> >with it) is that the mail client downloads the email to the user's local
> machine
> >and they read it from there. If the user travels, they will have to somehow
> >access that machine to access mail that has already been read.
> >
> >With a browser based email system, all the user needs is a regular web
> browser -
> >nothing special - no support for Java or anything else. The mail is presented
> >to the user by way of HTML web pages - the mail stays at the Linux server - the
> >user only reads it through the browser, via HTML pages. This way, the user can
> >move from one machine to another and still access their mail - old or new, by
> >pointing their web browser to (hopefully my Linux machine) and access it
> through
> >the browser.
>
> ------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
> Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
> 762 Garland Drive
> Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603
> 650.321.3561 voice 650.322.1209 fax [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
