Brian Candler writes:

> On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 09:27:00AM +0000, Paul L. Allen wrote:
> > Not only that, most of the new
> > functionality, which is in demand, is missing from your implementation.
> 
> When you say something like that, perhaps you could reference an
> explicit list of those things which you think are missing?

They are listed in the horrible readme (if he thinks that is good web
design then I am worried).  I can see some of our clients with dedicated
mail servers wanting the GPG functionality.  I can see more of our clients
wanting the calendaring stuff, even though the user interface is awkward.
But the biggest demand is the mail filters.

Exchange (spit) allows you to set up rules that filter mails and delivers
selected messages to a sub-folder.  Exchange allows vacation messages (done
sensibly, not the qmailadmin/autoresponder broken way).  People WANT those
things.  They want them a LOT.  They want them enough that if we cannot
offer equivalent functionality they will go to an ISP running Exchange
(spit) servers.  Sqwebmail with maildrop offers equivalent functionality.
Riwos does not.  Yes, the filters are relatively new to Sqwebmail, but
that is no excuse for Riwos not to have them.  You and I might be able
to live without those features, but the people we are trying to sell
accounts to are unwilling to.

> Riwos' combined folder/message view

Dunno about that.  I went to his page, skimmed through it and didn't see
any obvious info about the test account.  But I didn't look very hard after
I read that he was proud of losing a security feature.  Yes, I hate
frames, but Sqwebmail uses them for a reason (there are other solutions
to the security problem but buttons are rather clunky and a JavaScript
solution locks out Lynx).

> and the clean templates without rounded corners are two
> very big improvements IMO.

You, sir, are a techy.  My PHB *loves* the rounded corners.  They are the
sort of touch that give PHBs orgasms.  Our users love them even more.  I
hate anything that slows things down with needless graphics, but I too am
a techy.

> I would drop sounds entirely though; that's just an annoyance and a waste
> of code.

Riwos has sounds?  I am glad I didn't find the test account.  Seriously,
I can see some people liking them.  But they'd have to be something you
could enable or disable as a preference.  And I would still like the
timezone to be a preference rather than a login option.  If you're not
in the server's timezone then selecting your timezone each time you
login is a pain.

The only good thing I saw in the blurb about Riwos was the warning that 
your session was about to expire.  But I would rather Sqwebmail/Riwos had 
some  mechanism of saying "Your session expired while you were creating
that
message, which is reproduced below, login again and I'll send it."  Too
many people (including me) have been bitten by that one. :(  Even though
I have now learned to copy the message if I think my session is about to
expire, too often I forget.

> The amount of customisation which should be possible using *only* CSS is
> huge.

I know.  CSS is under-utilized by most people. :(

> That of course would mean dropping explicit support for non-CSS browsers,
> since sqwebmail purposely mixes CSS and non-CSS attributes to get some
> reasonable rendering on ancient browsers. Personally I would go that 
> route;

I did that for years to ensure compatibility with browsers that are now
ancient.  These days I use just CSS, but try to limit myself to stuff that 
works reasonably sensibly on older browsers.

> the number of users without CSS1-aware browsers must be pretty small by
> now,

Lynx is your friend. :)

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support

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