On 22 Dec 2003 10:37:13 -0600
Chuck Hays <lists at chuckhays.net> wrote:

> Does anyone here have any recommendations as to the best web mail
> package?  Advantages?  Disadvantages?

I've been using Squirrelmail for the last 2 years.  It's OK.

What I like:  Lots of plugins, if you need it chances are someone has developed a plugin for it.  Suports IMAP pretty well.  PhP based.  MySQL can be used as a backend for storing user prefs and addresses.  They also have a friendly and helpful ML for support.  It's also free and open source.

What I don't like: Some plugins don't play well together, I've noticed some strange things.  Some plugins aren't actively developed or maintained.  Over 1 year ago someone told me they had a solution for the Autocomplete (Uses JavaScript to auto complete email addresses from your address book as you type their email or name in the compose field, ala Groupwise) that worked on Gecko browsers, the current plugin only works for IE.  Still hasn't been integrated into the plugin (it's just Javascript, you'd think Gecko would support this easily).  Plugin maintenance is an absolute nightmare.  Many developers do not follow the established standard, sometimes they post an announcement on the SM Plugins ML, many times they don't.  Someone wrote a plugin update plugin which was designed to sync plugins with the latest releases or at least tell you which plugins were out of date, but that didn't take off.  Doesn't work well with safe_mode enabled, mostly because of poorly written plugins.  I also have trouble with PhP sessions.  Sometimes when my wife logs into her account on one computer and I log into my account on another computer things act "funny".  Might be a configuration problem with PhP and nothing to do with Squirrelmail though...  

Also seems that ever since they started the 1.4.2 branch that the development has slowed down.  This can be viewed as either a good or a bad thing.

If you are interested, I can set you up with a demo account.  Contact me offlist.  I've stopped using Squirrelmail because I REALLY wanted a threaded MUA for all the ML stuff I get (like TCLUG, TCPHP, qmail, etc) and SquirrelMail does not have a plugin for email threads which makes following an ML thread a real headache, so I use Slypheed-Claws for the most part, which is pretty good and works on both Linux and M$.  (Anyone know of a better portable threaded email client?)

Here's my collection of webmail related links (note, some of these are not free/Open Source):

http://atmail.com/index.ehtml  (Perl webmail client)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/phpwebmail/ (PhPWebMail)
http://jwma.sourceforge.net/ (Java Webmail)
http://main.linuxfocus.org/~guido/ (lfw lightweight webmail)
http://openbottle.sourceforge.net/ (OpenBottle anti-spam and webmail)
http://openwebmail.org/ (openwebmail)
http://www.b1g.info/ (PhP Mysql webmail)
http://www.binary-pulse.org/projects/ids/66/ (Another php webmail)
http://www.cascadesoft.com/products/w3mail/1.0/ (Webmail Server Application)
http://www.horde.org/ (Horde products including IMP webmail)
http://www.nulllogic.com/webmail/ (Null Webmail - Small C-based quick webmail)

Josh

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