My Email Will Not Be Web-Based | Jackson Miller

My Email Will Not Be Web-Based

Marcus posted about
Zimbra today. It is a cool project and really demonstrates that people are pushing the limits of what can be done in web applications. However, there is no way I am going to start using web-based email. There are some things I just don’t want to be web-based, and communication programs top the list. I like thick-client email, aggregation, and messaging applications.

This is the second period in time where I find myself in the minority about webmail. I was glad to see Dan Gillmore’s post today. I tend to agree with what he says:

No way this happens in five years. Ten is a possibility.

But local data and applications won’t go away entirely. The cloud is a fine place to put stuff, but not the stuff I’m working on right now, in some cases, or the stuff I want to keep private.

You want a good reason to keep email / blog / IM / etc on my local computer? Spotlight on the Mac. And if it is not spotlight then it is grep. And if it is not grep then it is tar. And if it is not tar then it is diskcopy. And if it is not diskcopy then it is delete. I want my data in more ways then web-based can give me yet.

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This entry was written by Jackson Miller, posted on September 29, 2005 at 3:49 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

12 Comments

Marcus Whitney

Posted September 29, 2005 at 4:19 pm | Permalink

Here’s my situation.

Jessica has personal email on a server we have. She wants to access that email during the day, however she can’t install any desktop client she wants on her employer’s computer. What would you suggest for her?
Jackson

Posted September 29, 2005 at 4:23 pm | Permalink

Yeah, that wasn’t directed at you, I was just giving you a link for raising it up today. Like I said, it looks like a cool project.

I won’t be using webmail anytime soon, but then again, I won’t be using a computer that I can’t install software on anytime soon.
Marcus Whitney

Posted September 29, 2005 at 4:28 pm | Permalink

yup, that’s the problem. I appreciate the link… I was honestly wondering if you had a thought on that. I’d rather not install webmail, mostly because the install of any groupware is such a huge PITA. But I don’t know what else to do, besiddes buy her a sidekick
Chris Wage

Posted September 29, 2005 at 8:52 pm | Permalink

I agree with your sentiment but not your conclusion..

I think a lot of these web-based apps can co-exist with an e-mail environment you can still get your hands on.

I mean, zimbra from what I can tell just uses IMAP anyway, so in theory it could talk to your IMAP server but still allow you to use whatever else you wanted as well. (My personal beef with Zimbra is that it appears they expect you to install Zimbra and all its components in one fell swoop — MTA, IMAP server, etc. — and they are using standard software, which is great, but there’s no real documentation/support for the scenario where I already *have* postfix, courier-imap, etc setup, and I just want their web component. Not that I can’t poke through their tarball and snag what I need, but it’s still annoying.)

I think the flaw, at least from what I’ve seen, with this Zimbra app in particular as a solution is that it’s a little too resource intensive in trying to do GUI things that web browsers just aren’t capable of doing. It’s firefox-specific, which is not cool, and even Firefox was chugging trying to render all the fancy GUI stuff. Web-based stuff is great and improving as a replacement for the local software app in general, but there are some things it’s just not up to doing (yet), I think. Then again, maybe the flaw is just that Zimbra is trying too hard to emulate the look-and-feel of a desktop app when they really shouldn’t.

But we’ve been demoing other similarly themed apps, like one called Centraview which is designed to be groupware + business operations (CRM, etc), and it has an interface that is pretty nice. It’s not perfect, but the idea is. Having e-mail centralized on a server is a no-brainer for us — having it accessible via IMAP to web clients as well as local software clients is the route we’ll probably go. This gives you a maximum of flexibility.

Marcus, as for your situation — check out squirrelmail. It’s probably not as tough to set up as you think, if you just want barebones webmail for her. It’s what Amanda and I use on our personal server as well..
Jackson

Posted September 29, 2005 at 10:02 pm | Permalink

I guess neither one of you are talking about using webmail as a primary means. I am all for having webmail access as a supplement (I have Horde Imp on my server).

So, do you guys agree with Dan Gillmore that it will probably be more than 5 years before web-based clients will be able to replace the thick-client apps we are using now?
Marcus Whitney

Posted September 30, 2005 at 12:22 am | Permalink

Hmm. Maybe never. But then again maybe less than 5 years. Personally, I think because Thunderbird is built on Chrome, CSS and XUL, it’s a lot closer to a web based app then most people recognize.

As far as a web app only working on Firefox…. I think this is the one app that you could safely install on any computer, even an employers, without much backlash. I don’t give a crap about IE. I can convince anyone, even my very non-techy folks to install Firefox by just scaring them with IE virus horror stories. I’ve done it.

Looking at Firefox (Gecko) as a platform, it’s young but pretty stable and fairly mature. The memory handling leaves a bit to be desired. But I think that AJAX and XUL can really make web based apps a strong alternative to desktop apps in the near future.

I think that the one limitation will be integration with the OS. We’ll see how that goes. That little Google Talk client has already made Gmail much more usable for me. So maybe it’s a combination of small desktop apps with robust web apps that tie it all together?
Chris Wage

Posted September 30, 2005 at 7:43 am | Permalink

Yeah, I don’t know about 5 years — less or more, it’s hard to say. I’d have to think about what exactly I thought the deficiencies of web-based apps are to begin with before I started to estimate how long they could be resolved.

Marcus, your point about XUL/CSS is a good one, although that code is running in a security realm (the local machine) that your average web-based app wouldn’t have access to, which is something you tough on as well, talking about integration with the OS.

I think this may in the end be the biggest hurdle — Something like a web browser, which is essentially a client-side piece designed to display any information from the Internet in a standard way will by definition be very difficult to give access to local resources in a secure way (look at the sheer number of IE vulnerabilities that exist because of flaws in ActiveX or Javascript doing this badly).
Jackson

Posted September 30, 2005 at 8:31 am | Permalink

Have you ever used the old JInitiator? It was a browser based Java client that would allow hosted thick-client applications to run remotely. It took a while to boot up, but it is basically a precursor to what you are talking about.
Aaron Wormus

Posted September 30, 2005 at 9:13 am | Permalink

It’s not about what you use, it’s about how you use it. I had a clients client call me the other day saying that one of my mail confirmation procedures didn’t work with his 6 year old version of Eudora. I suggested that he might want to upgrade to a more recent release or use one of the many other good mail clients available, and he insisted that no other mail client did what Eurdora did.

I know people who have learned to work with Gmail and thanks to applications like Google Desktop have closed the loop between what is Local and what is Server.

Now web based mail systems may not be replacing what you think is your unique specialized desktop mail application suite, but when it really comes down to it, it is just what you are used to… There are a LOT of people who have already transitioned and are loving it.

Get with the program, or you’re going to be the odd-ball who insists that his situation /setup is unique and can’t afford to move ahead with technology.
Marcus Whitney

Posted September 30, 2005 at 7:08 pm | Permalink

huh?
Frank

Posted October 1, 2005 at 7:33 am | Permalink

“It’s firefox-specific, which is not cool…”

That’s not true from what I’ve seen — it also runs in IE, and Zimbra says so on their site. What do you see that suggests it’s Firefox-specific?

“….zimbra from what I can tell just uses IMAP anyway, so in theory it could talk to your IMAP server but still allow you to use whatever else you wanted as well….”

Having tried Zimbra I can say that it’s not “in theory” that you can use an IMAP client — but indeed you can use an IMAP client and the Zimbra web client interchangeably. Since all actions, whether from an IMAP client or the Zimbra client, get synched back the Zimbra server, you can use either one you want at any given moment.
Zimbra - Blog

Posted October 5, 2005 at 5:25 pm | Permalink

We’ve been reading what folks are saying about Zimbra. In the forums, news, blogs, and even Slashdot. The biggest mis-conception about Zimbra is that we’re just a flashy AJAX client for reading email. While that’s true that we’ve got a…

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This is my (Jackson Miller) personal weblog. I have been posting here with varying levels of consistency and authority since 2001. I live in Nashville, TN.
By day I work as a Business Intelligence consultant working with notable clients including several household names. By night I am a husband and a father of 4 boys. Since 2003 I have been a partner in L2M LLC which currently owns two Plato's Closet retail franchises in the Middle Tennessee area (Cool Springs and Murfreesboro). Eventually I will launch statzen, a content analytics tool for bloggers.
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