SquirrelMail article [was Re: [CLUE-Talk] [marsee@oreilly.com: Newsletter from the O'Reilly UG Program, November 6]]

[David Anselmi]

Dave Price wrote:
[...]

> ***SquirrelMail, a Web-based Mail Server
> As remote computing increases in popularity, it's becoming harder for
> regular users to send email. While running mail servers from customer
> laptops is one solution, a good web mail package may be even easier. In
> this article, Glenn Graham thinks SquirrelMail may be your best
> choice.
> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/10/24/squirrelmail.html

This struck me as odd.  Running mail servers from customer laptops? 
What are they smokin'?

 From the start of the article:

"As people (and laptops) become increasingly mobile, email solutions 
have become more demanding. Road warriors are tired of spending hours in 
hotel rooms configuring their email software.

Last year while traveling through Southern California, I stayed at a 
hotel that offered high-speed access. I connected my laptop to their 
network, attempted to send a message, and found my home (SMTP) settings 
wouldn't work. Next I tried changing my setting to the hotel's network, 
however it wouldn't accept outgoing connections. Luckily I had root 
access to my home system and was able to configure it to accept my SMTP 
request. What would an average user have done that, though?

Enter Webmail..."

Jeeze.  An average user would RAS in to their office network and use 
Outlook just like they always do.  An average Linux user would probably 
do the same (call it VPN rather than RAS).  This guy, he has remote root 
to his mail server.  Why didn't he just use ssh to port forward pop3 and 
smtp to his server?  That's what I do, what do you do?

I suppose I should say that I dislike the web as an email interface because:

- you can't see your message list and a message at the same time (do 
they call that preview mode in Mozilla?) so you can't easily read and 
navigate

- several webmail programs I've used with https have absolute http links 
to images, so you get a dialog about "this page contains secure and 
insecure content" (every #@$% page)

- they are slow, especially for large mailboxes (my CLUE folder has 
9500+ messages)

Certainly these are fixable, I guess the places I've used webmail it's a 
fallback for pop3 or imap.

If you're interested in the article because you're looking for a webmail 
program, read the comments at the end.  This one:

http://www.onlamp.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/11029

from a squirrelmail developer has some good info, and there are some 
alternatives suggested.

Seems quiet on the lists lately, so you get to listen to me rant ;-)

Dave