New sonic.net webmail application

[thomre]

SquirrelMail serves my need for simplicity in a web-based client that does not require me to download emails onto my own hard drive.

HTML email is far from what I need!

* What is the cost of leaving SquirrelMail available?

* What would be the cost if you announced No SquirrelMail support whatsoever? ("Use at your own risk.")

* How many of your users would use SquirrelMail if it were kept available?

* How many users would be willing to pay a premium for using SquirrelMail?

"Like it or lump it" was not sonic.net's customer service orientation until now; what has changed? Can we talk?

Thank you.

[Guest]

If one wants to use seriously low bandwidth, the best way to cope is to use ssh to the shell machine, and there use pine/mutt/elm/... to read the e-mails.

That could be good. But earlier in this forum, iirc some asked about help from Sonic in learning to use those -- and the reply was definitely No -- those would still work, but Sonic would provide no instruction for them.

I wouldn't mind doing homework elsewhere about elm/pine in general, but not if there would be special things about how to do them on Sonic with no Sonic support.

[wildfolk]

<said in a whisper>... but SquirrelMail ain't that great. It isn't worth the vitriol I've been reading in this forum. Now I'll be instantly branded as a nazi marching in goose step with the sonic dev team. So go ahead and flame 'cuz it honestly ain't worth the blood pressure rise everyone is going thru. The new client does what squirrelmail does and adds the UI features common in today's email clients. You think everyone would see this as a net gain.

I get the port 22 in a shell for the Pine die hard. Not for me but they are taking it upon themselves. And there is complete support for POP and IMAP clients of any flavor on any OS. Why doesn't aman take all the energy used in drawing hitler comparisons and host his own squirrelmail server for the diehards to use? Hook it up to port 22 like the Pine folks. It must be easy to host a mail server, as many on this forum seem to believe.

And no, I am not a shill for sonic.net. I access sonic mail with Outlook on a PC, and the native clients on iOS (phone and tablet), as well as the crappy existing webmail interface when need be. To show you how crazy I really am, I'm gonna hook up sonic mail to Office 365 Outlook. Complete heresy to a SquirrelMail diehard, but I suppose that means I'm real squirrely...

Okay, great for you. Now try doing what you're doing on an old computer running windows XP in the hinterlands with a slow dial-up connection. Your blood pressure would rise too, if you were in our shoes.

A little compassion for those of us who can't afford new, beautiful, expensive systems would be nice for a change.

[jhs]

I'm a Sonic customer, and I was a software developer for over 40 years, starting back in the mainframe days of 1970. Those "facts" about programmers were ridiculous oversimplifications, like any stereotype. "All of this group think this way!" As with ANY profession, or with any "type of people", the *fact* is there is a wide spectrum of personalities. Each person is an individual.

[wcoole]

I found it to be intolerably slow. I went to view a message and gave up on it after several minutes. I was reasonably happy with the old nutsmail, despite its flaws. Please don't turn it off until AFTER you have a satisfactory replacement turned on and with adequate server capacity available.

[thulsa_doom]

When I forward an email to another account, it comes out as text only. Any photo or other graphics elements, color, etc. are missing in the forwarded message. Is it me? Or can this be fixed? Thanks. ~Arla

You can specify HTML formatting by going to Settings->Preferences->Composing Messages and setting "Compose HTML messages" to "Always."

If you get a message and webmail wants your permission to display images, make sure you do this before forwarding. Otherwise the images get replaced (in the forward) with the placeholder image.

[thulsa_doom]

If you prefer to not have the preview pane taking up space on your screen, on the right-hand side (above the preview pane itself) there is a button that looks like a downward-facing triangle. Click that and the preview pane will collapse to the bottom of the window, freeing up a bunch of space for listing individual messages.

If I do this, will it be permanent, or will I have to do this EVERY FREAKING TIME I open the program? There are some spam e-mails I don't even want to open, because in opening they could infect my system, and at present the "preview box" opens whatever happens to be selected, whether I want it or not.

Collapsing the preview pane persists from one session to the next, and between devices.

If you change the height of the preview pane or the width of the folders listing, this will persist between sessions on the same browser, but not between different browsers and devices (It looks like that's kept in a cookie with a one-year expiration date).

[lwalsh]

Never use these forums. Hope my reply winds up in the right place.

I'm a dial-up sonic user since 1996, happily using dial-up friendly Squirrel for years, currently using Firefox. I have concerns about the beta.

- Is there a way to select messages to (delete, mark, move to new folder, view source, etc.) without actually opening them?

Squirrel has check boxes that let me do that. When I select an email in the beta, it automatically opens the message in the bottom pane. This slows navigation way down for dial-up users. It's also not very secure because I'm forced to open suspicious emails when I merely want to select them for deletion.

- I dislike having the inbox screen cut in half. I want to see the full screen of email messages in my inbox. Is there are way to list inbox contents full screen without the bottom pane displaying?

- Is there a way to get rid of the bottom pane all together and have messaged displayed (full screen) only when clicked? Not just shrink the bottom window/pane out of view, but make it go completely away?
With the beta, it wastes scarce bandwidth and slows inbox navigation because its automatically displaying email contents.

- Is there an Archive button that lets me create a zip file on my hard drive like Squirrel?

[lwalsh]

Just read the above messages from thulsa_doom and John Fitzgerald. That downward-facing triangle did the trick. Thank you!

A text display next to the triangle (that you don't have to drag the mouse over to see) saying "Show/Hide Preview Pain" would help newbies like me alot.

If there is an Archive feature that downloads selected messages into a zip file, I'm on my way.

[pagan]

I vote for retaining all existing email clients, especially the current webmail application.

I agree with all the other criticism. Useability and convenience are very important in such a heavily used application category and I believe that Roundcube doesn't pay as much attention to these functions as most users have come to expect.

I believe Roundcube is open source and free to Sonic. Unfortunately, those people that rely on webmail end up paying the price of useability and convenience each and every time we use it. What is free to Sonic isn't free to users. Understanding this equation is one of the stellar accomplishments of Sonic and they know that user satisfaction is their real stock in trade.

Please do not eliminate the current webmail product. Although it has its problems, the amount of hacking it would take to make it work should be weighed against the amount of hacking it will take to get Roundcube to be truly useful.

- Pagan

ADDITIONAL EDIT:

I just tried to use webmail-beta again. In the middle of writing a response I put the laptop to sleep while getting a coffee refill (sacred act) and when I resumed my session had been logged out. This never happens with the current webmail product or even this forum that also just went through a sleep and restarted without a logout.

It gets worse. The message I was responding to will not open in the current production webmail but other messages will open. Then I went to the beta product where the message did open and forwarded it to myself, then logged off and logged back onto the old webmail where I found the messsage I had forwarded but it also would not open in the current production webmail product. So at this point that message is toast unless I can get it using a POP or IMAP client which I am hesitant to do.

Using Ubuntu 9.10 and FF 17 but again, everything else will go through a sleep and maintain an active login state.

Best,
Pagan