Topic: Slighty OT - IMAP Clients

[Derek L]

Hello,

I'm looking for some suggestions on IMAP clients. (SME 6.0 server). The majority of my users have their own computer and use Lookout Express or Lookout as their IMAP email clients. (A little ugly, but functional). A smaller group of users share several "public" computers. They use Calypso (POP3) as their email client. IMP and SquirrelMail are used by everyone, according to preference, from home. What I need is an IMAP client to replace Calyspo, (and maybe even Lookout). It needs to have all of these features:

1. Mutli-user - i.e. users can access their email from any of the shared computers with all profile settings stored centrally and with a simple login prompt
2. Global address book, preferably the SME LDAP addressbook, with type-ahead function in the "To:" field
3. Full IMAP4 folder support for folders/sub-folders etc...
4. Drag and drop to/from folders

Several IMAP clients can do all this when installed locally, (Mozilla, Thunderbird, etc...), but storing profiles centrally with a convenient login prompt seems impossible. Calypso is missing full IMAP4 folder support but does everything else. The closest candidate I've found is Pegasus, but it is a butt-ugly UI, (I know my users will hate it), and it is limited to an 8 character login name. IMP and Squirrelmail just don't meet all the useability requirements.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Derek

[pete]

Wow you have tough requirements - and i owuld love to know of a client that provides all those features.

Seems to me the IMAP applications provide stuff like type ahead and drag n drop - but the web clients are better with regards to profiles?

Maybe if you can justify it, you might have to dev something yourselves, maybe java web app?

I also need to supply a client to users in labs and remote access, so if you find a web client that does all thise things, PLEASE post back here...

[Derek L]

I've made a bit of progress with this.

Using one machine, I can create Thunderbird profiles on a network share. Then I can copy the registry.dat file from the Application Data/Thunderbird folder on that machine to the other machines. Then Thunderbird can be launched using the network profiles with the command "c:\thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p <profile_name> on each machine

Now that leaves 2 issues:

1. Keeping registry.dat up-to-date on each machine when users are added/removed. Possibly could be included in the logon script. Or maybe a batch file?
2. Making login prompt. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm a vbscript/ASP guy. Can a PHP or Perl dynamic webpage call the command line above with the appropriate profile name chosen from a drop-down list?

Will be attempting this. Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards,

Derek

[cliff]

Take a look at Pegasus.  I think it will do everything you mentioned.

http://www.pmail.com/

[Derek L]

As I mentioned in my post, I'm aware that Pegasus will work, but it is just too clunky for my users. (Really bad GUI and username can only be 8 characters. Also, it doesn't cache IMAP folders, it downloads all the messages each time you click on a folder. This can be really inconvenient if there are a ton of messages in a folder).

For anyone who is interested, Thunderbird can be modified to work in a multi-user networked fashion. My solution was to make a little VB6 login form that passes the username entered to the "thunderbird.exe -p <username>" command. It also copies a centrally stored "registry.dat" file to the local Application Data folder. So each time the Login Form is run, it updates the local copy of the profile information to match the centrally stored profiles, and then launches Thunderbird with the appropriate user's profile.

I'll be testing this with actual users shortly. If anyone wants any more info, I'd be happy to provide it.

dloewen@ckua.org

Regards,

Derek

[pete]

Love to see a howto on this...

[del]

Hi Derek,
I am not sure if this will help, http://www.verysimple.com/products.php/organizer.html
it is free and maybe it will do what you want or give you a base to build on.
Regards,
Del
 

[Derek L]

Thanks del. I'll check it out.

Pete, a howto might be tricky since I fudged together a VB6 form that is specific to our setup here, but let me see if I can come with something.

[pete]

Dont spend too much time, i only wanted it to keep for own knowledge, i wont actually need it any time soon.

thanks anayway - might be a nice contribution to the community if your app can be used by anyone?

[Derek L]

I've cobbled together a Howto for this. I hope it will be useful for somebody:

http://www.ckua.com/tbird_howto.htm

[rickjones]

I've recently started using Mulberry, which will do just about everything IMAP-related, and probably meets all your requirements.

However, it's not free (but not expensive), I don't know if that's an issue.

Possible drawback is it might be a bit over-complex for some users, there are a huge number of options and tweaks if you want to use them.

[guest]

I've cobbled together a Howto for this. I hope it will be useful for somebody:

http://www.ckua.com/tbird_howto.htm

I like the Thunderbird application, it "looks and feels" good.
In the past we use webmail only, and feel more sucure using it than MS products. Is it a perception that IMAP/Webmail is safer?
My needs are to:
-Have robust IMAP support for day to day "in office" mail. (Drag and drop, forward multiple e-mails etc)
-Shared Contacts
-Then does it make sense that a person would use "Webmail" when not in office, for emerg only?

Have used Twiggi etc, love all of it's features/modules etc. Biggest drawback is not being able to export, and hard to transfer/move to another server, or restore after a server rebuild, and inability to do multiple forwards.

[Brenno]

I'd like to ressurect this thread on good IMAP clients.  Having just installed a new SME server here at work and gone through the enormous hassle of moving everybody's email from their Lookout or Lookout Express local folders onto the server, I'm very concerned that Lookout/LOE isn't up to the job of dealing with IMAP.

I share Derek's wish list with respect to a client - it has to work, first and foremost, but it also has to have a standard feature set and still be easy to use.  It also has to be able to run on Windoze 95 (yes, we still use that here..) I'm going to force all out-of-office users to Webmail for simplicity's sake, but for my users in the office, Outlook and OE just aren't working right.

I have a laundry list of problems and I'm hoping that a better client will solve them.