Could somebody from Sonic please respond to my post?Ben wrote:Could you please explain why you're eliminating the older webmail interfaces that some of us know and have grown to love? Are they insecure and not easy to make secure? Do they require a significant amount of maintenance/support? Any good reason they couldn't just be moved off of the webmail page and onto their own legacy webmail page? (with a link in tiny print at the bottom of the webmail page?) I really don't understand the one-size-fits-some philosophy Sonic seems to have embraced lately. I can understand wanting to limit the number of choices to a reasonable level but why eliminate choice altogether? Why alienate your loyal customers?thulsa_doom wrote:Yes. We intend to reduce our current offering of five webmail interfaces (six if you count the newly-announced one) to one.aman wrote: Does that mean you are deleting *squirrelmail* too?
New sonic.net webmail application
General discussions and other topics.
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I am hoping that the reason that no one from sonic.net has responded to Guest Ben's plea for a response to his query asking why we cannot keep at least one other application -- hopefully Squirrelmail -- is because you are rethinking this latest move in light of the very unhappy customers from whom you are hearing. jeanieg
For me really it boils down to trying to find a delicate way of saying that Squirrelmail is old and ugly and embarrassing in 2013. We wanted to replace it eight years ago and a small but vocal minority vigorously objected. We conceded, and now we have seven distinct webmail interfaces to maintain and support (Squirrelmail, Nutsmail, four flavors of Atmail, and now Wundermail).jeanieg wrote:I am hoping that the reason that no one from sonic.net has responded to Guest Ben's plea for a response to his query asking why we cannot keep at least one other application -- hopefully Squirrelmail -- is because you are rethinking this latest move in light of the very unhappy customers from whom you are hearing. jeanieg
As for rethinking things, we do that almost continuously around here. We requested feedback on the new interface because we want to take your input under consideration.
John Fitzgerald
Sonic Technical Support
Sonic Technical Support
Nutsmail is just Squirrelmail with a different skin. Functionality should be equivalent. People who are used to Atmail shouldn't have problem with Wundermail (is this its real name?). I feel a good compromise would be to move forward with Squirrelmail and the new version.thulsa_doom wrote:For me really it boils down to trying to find a delicate way of saying that Squirrelmail is old and ugly and embarrassing in 2013. We wanted to replace it eight years ago and a small but vocal minority vigorously objected. We conceded, and now we have seven distinct webmail interfaces to maintain and support (Squirrelmail, Nutsmail, four flavors of Atmail, and now Wundermail).
While Squirrelmail may look long in the tooth, some customers seem quite attached to it. I listen to old songs, too and generally ignore new ones. If support is a problem, just move its SLA to a best-effort basis, with the caveat that its feature set would be frozen.
God(win) I hope so!Guest wrote:(is this its real name?).
Sorry Alam, it's actually a forked version of Roundcube that we hope doesn't veer too far off of the upstream repositories.
As to "SLA of best-effort basis" -- that really isn't an option. We could make no attempt to fix usability issues or provide support for it, but would still have to maintain the systems and servers that it runs on, track and resolve security issues, respond to other abuse issues, apply upgrades and so on.
As to "SLA of best-effort basis" -- that really isn't an option. We could make no attempt to fix usability issues or provide support for it, but would still have to maintain the systems and servers that it runs on, track and resolve security issues, respond to other abuse issues, apply upgrades and so on.
Kelsey Cummings
System Architect, Sonic.net, Inc.
System Architect, Sonic.net, Inc.
@ thulsa_doom (John Fitzgerald):
John: "For me really it boils down to trying to find a delicate way of saying that Squirrelmail is old and ugly and embarrassing in 2013."
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. SquirrelMail's simple elegance -- text only -- is beyond the understanding of youngish geeks who are also unable to appreciate a beautifully designed book. The Ancient Greeks had a term for something like the looks of SquirrelMail: "Noble simplicity."
John: "We wanted to replace it eight years ago and a small but vocal minority vigorously objected."
This small but vocal minority is still alive and growing, being dismayed, devastated or disgusted by Sonic.net's brutality of forcing one man's "baby" (Wundermail) onto them.
John: "We conceded, and now we have seven distinct webmail interfaces to maintain and support (Squirrelmail, Nutsmail, four flavors of Atmail,
and now Wundermail)."
I'm unaware that more than a couple of customers asked you to create Nutsmail and four (!) flavors of Atmail. Kill these five unnecessary webmail interfaces but keep wonderful, simple, elegant SquirrelMail alive as the *alternative* to (ptui!) Wundermail. Is that too much to ask -- two flavors?
Those who don't want to look at the "old, ugly and embarrassing" SquirrelMail don't have to.
Reinhold {Rey} Aman{
John: "For me really it boils down to trying to find a delicate way of saying that Squirrelmail is old and ugly and embarrassing in 2013."
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. SquirrelMail's simple elegance -- text only -- is beyond the understanding of youngish geeks who are also unable to appreciate a beautifully designed book. The Ancient Greeks had a term for something like the looks of SquirrelMail: "Noble simplicity."
John: "We wanted to replace it eight years ago and a small but vocal minority vigorously objected."
This small but vocal minority is still alive and growing, being dismayed, devastated or disgusted by Sonic.net's brutality of forcing one man's "baby" (Wundermail) onto them.
John: "We conceded, and now we have seven distinct webmail interfaces to maintain and support (Squirrelmail, Nutsmail, four flavors of Atmail,
and now Wundermail)."
I'm unaware that more than a couple of customers asked you to create Nutsmail and four (!) flavors of Atmail. Kill these five unnecessary webmail interfaces but keep wonderful, simple, elegant SquirrelMail alive as the *alternative* to (ptui!) Wundermail. Is that too much to ask -- two flavors?
Those who don't want to look at the "old, ugly and embarrassing" SquirrelMail don't have to.
Reinhold {Rey} Aman{
It's quite a conundrum. Wouldn't removing Nutsmail and Atmail with its 7 versions alone would go a long way to reduce redundancy unless Squirrelmail's infrastructure is archaic and error-prone?kgc wrote:As to "SLA of best-effort basis" -- that really isn't an option. We could make no attempt to fix usability issues or provide support for it, but would still have to maintain the systems and servers that it runs on, track and resolve security issues, respond to other abuse issues, apply upgrades and so on.
I posted this way back on 'page 3' of this thread and never got a reply. So, once again, will I need tocsardas wrote:My Sonic email access of choice is via PUTTY SSH and then Pine. This is via bolt.sonic.net port 22. Will this method still be available after this 'upgrade'?
I rarely access my Sonic email via the web as I find those types of interfaces generally clunky and overly complicated at best. I have all the functionality I need with PUTTY and Pine.
Paul
make ANY changes to the way I currently access my email from anywhere I happen to be in the world.
That being an SSH connect using PUTTY SSH to bolt.sonic.net and then I invoke Pine to read my
email. I have several years worth of saved mail there as I travel often and need to refer back
to old emails. It is very, very rarely that I would have the need to check my email via the web.
One aspect of doing so that I just saw in a recent post where the user was advised to
'upgrade your browser to the latest version.....' I abhor sites that force a user into running
the so called 'latest and greatest' aberration of some software weenies 'lets add THIS
new bells & whistles feature, just because we can'.
I only upgrade when something is broken. I don't NEED or want a bunch of 'bells & whistles'
or endless 'options'. I need functionality, plain, and simple!
So, will shell access to my email still be unchanged?
Paul
I just read this whole thread. Long!!
Sonic, if you can get the new version to work with iPad I will be okay with it. But control-clicking and mouseovers are not available on my touch screen. The reason I like to use Sonic mail first before I use my iPad mail client is I like to clean up my incoming mail and remove all spam before I use the email client. First I review spam and delete it. That works great on iPad. Then I get onto Sonic "atmail" using Basic browser setting, and I can use checkboxes to select and remove any remaining spam that got through the spam filters. There is always some spam that made it through. Very convenient and useable on iPad! Love it!
The new beta version is almost unusable on iPad, and it's definitely a step backward having to select spam messages and delete them one-by-one. I can't scroll or shrink the page. Greatly reduced functionality on a touch screen! Have you tried it?
Like I said, if you can get the new beta version to work with an iPad touch screen, I'm fine with it. Or if you can offer a mobile app or mobile website for mail, that might work. But, whoops! That would be offering more than one mail interface, and you've already made clear that cutting down to ONE interface is the most important goal no matter what, right? And thank you. I love Sonic, all except for this new clunky mail interface.
Sonic, if you can get the new version to work with iPad I will be okay with it. But control-clicking and mouseovers are not available on my touch screen. The reason I like to use Sonic mail first before I use my iPad mail client is I like to clean up my incoming mail and remove all spam before I use the email client. First I review spam and delete it. That works great on iPad. Then I get onto Sonic "atmail" using Basic browser setting, and I can use checkboxes to select and remove any remaining spam that got through the spam filters. There is always some spam that made it through. Very convenient and useable on iPad! Love it!
The new beta version is almost unusable on iPad, and it's definitely a step backward having to select spam messages and delete them one-by-one. I can't scroll or shrink the page. Greatly reduced functionality on a touch screen! Have you tried it?
Like I said, if you can get the new beta version to work with an iPad touch screen, I'm fine with it. Or if you can offer a mobile app or mobile website for mail, that might work. But, whoops! That would be offering more than one mail interface, and you've already made clear that cutting down to ONE interface is the most important goal no matter what, right? And thank you. I love Sonic, all except for this new clunky mail interface.
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