Netscape browsers 4.xx is a bug-ridden steaming pile of poopoo. I had its
process grow to 800 MB on a Sun Enterprise server almost bringing it down
once. Now that there are more alternatives for *nix, I don't use it unless I
have to. Opera is the browser I'd like to recommend to anyone looking for
alternatives. I have yet to use a better browser than Opera. Fast, flexible,
convenient and has great CSS support, the way Netscape browsers should've
been designed. Yes it's commercial, but it's not that expensive and they
have a version that's free with banner ads. The only downside is the current
lack of Java (Java script works) support, but guess how much of that I am
missing.
As for the I/O between Sqwebmail and a web server, it's better to have
message display limit set low for quicker response. IMHO piped I/O and CGI
is not scalable, neither is multi-process model of Sqwebmail and Apache, but
this model provides for a lot of flexibility.
What I sort-of don't like about Sqwebmail is that it's a one big executable
for the most part. The size on my system for an older version is around 300K
stripped. Don't get me wrong this is awesome software with great admin
features, I just see the executable grow rather large with new versions.
fork() is very expensive, and the larger the executable the more IMHO
expensive it is.
What I'd love to see in the future is something like Sqwebmail, but with a
web server built-in and multi-threaded using an easy, scalable threading
library like http://oss.sgi.com/projects/state-threads or pthrlib from
annexia.org. In-memory template and authentication cache? Drool. But I
doubt anyone will write something like this under GPL unless you're yahoo or
AOL.
--
Dan
Three days of testing can save 10
minutes reading manuals.
