Brian Candler writes: [sound for incoming mail] > It would be hard to arrange anyway - server push? Client auto-refresh > every 60 seconds?
Our standard mod is a meta refresh on the folder list so people can see when stuff arrives. Yes, it also means that it defeats the soft timeout, making it slightly more likely that people walk away, forget to log out, and somebody else reads their mail. However, most of our users actually prefer it that way because they were getting really fed up of having to log back in after inactivity when they were sat at their desk all the time doing other things. I can't think of any *simple* way of stopping a sound playing automatically without using JavaScript, so that would also mean that it would have to be started by the same JavaScript. But that would be necessary anyway so it can also remember the unread message count (so it didn't play each time the page refreshed or each time another mail arrived after the first unread one. Oh, and probably an option for those people who DO want it to play for each new mail even though there is already at least one unread mail. And an option for those who do really want it to sound on every refresh because the window is hidden and they went to the toilet when the mail came in (those people will then be killed shortly thereafter by their cow-orkers in adjacent cubicles, but think of it as evolution in action). Keeping a read message count updated across refreshes is left as an exercise for the reader, but a hint is available in the genesis of this thread. This one is way down my personal wish-list but I do know people who would welcome it. They're the people who have to deal with mail as soon as it arrives while also trying to do other things. Rather than having to bring the mail client window to the top every five or ten minutes, they listen for the beep. Obviously, it would have to be on a per-folder basis for those who filter incoming mail into subfolders automatically and have assign different priorities to different folders. That's feasible in JavaScript on the folder list but would not be remembered across sessions, a rework of the preferences code would be necessary to have it remembered, and I suspect that isn't going to happen. -- Paul Allen Softflare Support
