[H]EMI_426
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2001
- Messages
- 3,965
So, I have a FreeBSD box that hosts my domain. There's about forty people that use the machine for various things. One of the services provided is mail, and for the users that travel a lot there's webmail via squirrelmail if they don't have any other means of access.
Why does webmail suck so much? I had a hell of a time getting Squirrelmail working properly again after updating PHP4 (via ports) last night, simply cause of problems with php4, the OpenSSL php4 module, the imap php4 module, Squirrelmail not playing nice with the OpenSSL php4 module and insisting on php4 being built with OpenSSL support built in to the base php4 binary, etc. It took four rebuilds of php4 (and the modues) along with three rebuilds of squirrelmail before it was all sorted out.
I generally dislike php4 on principle. I did web programming with php4 for a while, so it's not a dislike of the language itself, it's a dislike of the process of having to update it more often than I update the kernel/world on my FreeBSD box. I almost want to set an "uptime between php4 rebuilds" clock somewhere.
Anyway, back to my original rant...After fighting with (and defeating) squirrelmail for about forty-five minutes I decided to look around for other webmail systems. I found several that were interesting, but they all sucked in some form or amother. Some required php4 again, which means they probably wouldn't be much better. Some are just functionally slower than squirrelmail. Some require stupid extras like MySQL. Some of them do insanely stupid things, like not using IMAP and just giving you access to the raw spool files, which isn't a smart idea on a machine that may actually try to write to those files while you're reading from them without respecting locks.
So...There wasn't much point to this post besides expressing my general frustration towards webmail clients in general. Squirrelmail is about the best of a bad lot...Kind of like getting to pick your method of execution: you're still dead when it's all over.
What I would like to see from a good webmail client:
That's really about it. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it?
Why does webmail suck so much? I had a hell of a time getting Squirrelmail working properly again after updating PHP4 (via ports) last night, simply cause of problems with php4, the OpenSSL php4 module, the imap php4 module, Squirrelmail not playing nice with the OpenSSL php4 module and insisting on php4 being built with OpenSSL support built in to the base php4 binary, etc. It took four rebuilds of php4 (and the modues) along with three rebuilds of squirrelmail before it was all sorted out.
I generally dislike php4 on principle. I did web programming with php4 for a while, so it's not a dislike of the language itself, it's a dislike of the process of having to update it more often than I update the kernel/world on my FreeBSD box. I almost want to set an "uptime between php4 rebuilds" clock somewhere.
Anyway, back to my original rant...After fighting with (and defeating) squirrelmail for about forty-five minutes I decided to look around for other webmail systems. I found several that were interesting, but they all sucked in some form or amother. Some required php4 again, which means they probably wouldn't be much better. Some are just functionally slower than squirrelmail. Some require stupid extras like MySQL. Some of them do insanely stupid things, like not using IMAP and just giving you access to the raw spool files, which isn't a smart idea on a machine that may actually try to write to those files while you're reading from them without respecting locks.
So...There wasn't much point to this post besides expressing my general frustration towards webmail clients in general. Squirrelmail is about the best of a bad lot...Kind of like getting to pick your method of execution: you're still dead when it's all over.
What I would like to see from a good webmail client:
- Fast. I know it's handling everything on the same machine, but it shouldn't churn like squirrelmail/horde/etc. do
- Uses IMAP. No raw spool access.
- Supports SSL and TLS. Not everyone's going to be running it on the same machine the mail server lives on, and even if you do run it plaintext it should not allow plain or login-type auth over plaintext connections.
- Written in something besides a scripting language. I'm tired of dealing with php4. Perl isn't quite so bad from an admin point of view, but I'd rather see something solid in C or the like. Hell, even an interpreted language that doesn't have exploit-of-the-week syndrome would work...Ruby on Rails?
- Good interface. Squirrelmail's interface, besides being fairly boring and ugly, isn't too awful from an end-user point of view. Someone could do something similar and make it look nice. Oh, and for the love of God, do not use a stop sign for your "exit" function (yes, that means you, Roundcube).
- Good functionality in addition to e-mail. LDAP address lookup, an addressbook-type system, mailbox management, etc.
That's really about it. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it?