Chasing the Minotaur: a new email client

[sbisson]

I've been on a quest for many years: for the perfect email client. Recently I've settled on using Mozilla as my main email tool - but that entails having the bloat of the rest of the browser, when I'd rather be using Phoenix or IE, or Safari or Camino.

But it looks like the wait may soon be over, at least according a post on the Mozilla blog, Blogzilla - Minotaur is approaching it's first public alpha release. A seperate email client, based on Mozilla's mail code, it's intended to be cross platform and with a consistant mail focused UI.

I'm looking forward to it.

Comments

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Fair points, tho' it doesn't address the bandwidth/responsiveness question. But [a] they've got to offer POP3 as well and [b] persuade users to change to IMAP.

Re:

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

IMAP is fine over 56K. One key feature of a good client is a local cache...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Imap per se is; I've used it. But I did specify WRT to large attachments...

And now we're moving from "IMAP-compatible client" to "good IMAP client with caching." Just watch those goalposts go! :¬)

Re:

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, they move pretty fast. Supersonic goalposts...

But I'm unsure why you raise the attachments issue - one of the advantages of IMAP is the ability to see that there are attachments present before downloading... so allowing you to download attachment-laden messages when convenient.

Unlike sitting there wondering why a POP3 download was taking ages.

[lproven.livejournal.com]

This is true, but it switches the onus of understanding back to the user again, which is a bad thing. We're trying to make these machines easier and simpler!

Getting Joe Q User to understand local vs. remote storage and what an attachment is, distinct from the message itself, is - let's just say "not a desirable task".

Re:

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I think you're slightly under-estimating end users here - and the evolution of ISP technologies.

For one thing, web mail services like Hotmail are already showing people that their mail can be left on servers, and that attachments can be downloaded at leisure.

[lproven.livejournal.com]

This is true, in part - but I have users who have great difficulty in mastering such things, too.