~robcee/ more than just sandwiches

Reinventing the Mail Client

Some Sunday ruminating…

• Found on Slashdot: Gabor’s Blog: How Researchers are Reinventing the Mail Client,
• Then repeated and expanded upon in http://www.hawkwings.net/.

Every so often, someone comes around with a brilliant idea about how to improve the email experience. The results of this brainstorming never seem to trickle down to any email clients. I would guess that it’s because the actual benefit of them is questionable or they would be too difficult to use or even implement.

A task-based reader seems like a good idea and fits with how we all use email in our day jobs. Email from some people (or frequently from systems) is more likely to be related to a task. Being able to flag it as an item of interest, possibly with a category would allow the reader to more easily bucket their work. Items in threads of categorized work or tasks would give a timeline for that task. We have all these pieces already, but no-one has bothered to tie them together in a way that doesn’t involve lots of clicking and menu operations.

Prioritizing these items would be a useful next step. Associating them with some sort of top-level task viewer would be even nicer — possibly in a calendaring application and maybe with some pretty charts and graphs. This seems like more than a simple “tagging” system but a mechanism to actually track work and examine progress.

I think I’m one of the few people who still believe in an application client for mail and news. As more and more of my colleagues move to web-based systems, I’m wondering if the Email “app” is doomed? I still think there’s a place for “fat” email clients. The ability for an application to provide rich user experiences and perform complex manipulations on data shouldn’t be overlooked.

PS, Congratulations to Italy on their World Cup Victory!

The ability for Web apps to provide rich user experiences and perform complex manipulations on data shouldn’t be overlooked either . In fact, it may well be that Google’s datacenters are better at complex data analysis than a bunch of PCs on their own.

The other issue with fat clients for non-corporate users is where do you store the mail? It’s hard to find free, high-quality IMAP or Exchange mail service, but relying on the PC hard disk to store email is in most cases a very bad idea.

hey roc. Thanks for the comment.

You can see why I feel like I’m in the minority for client-based email apps.

First, I agree. Providing a rich user experience on the web is what the Mozilla Project is all about. Make no mistake. But the kinds of analysis required of a user’s inbox, or multiple inboxes is not the kind of thing you really need a server farm to accomplish. An individual’s machine is more than powerful enough to correlate and manipulate the 10s of thousands of messages a power user might amass.

Especially with a bit of back-end smarts to help out (although by saying that, I’m weakening my argument). I’m a big fan of procmailrc for categorizing and spamprobe for junk mail filtering.

“Where do you store the mail?” is a good question. I’m lucky enough to have access to a decent IMAP store. Several, even. They’re not that hard to come by although for some reason, they haven’t been widely adopted. Same goes for Exchange servers where, I guess the cost of software and hosting might be a limiting factor.

Do you feel better keeping track of your own email or letting some faceless 3rd party system do it? I have a decent backup policy so I’m not too worried about data loss. I am worried about privacy though.

I don’t have a decent backup policy. I suspect 95+% of home users don’t.

I understand why some people won’t trust their email to a Web service. I also think that trusting Google with one’s email is completely reasonable for most people.