A coworker pointed out the Mozilla Web-Mail project:
The Web-Mail extension creates a platform which other extensions use to integrate web based email accounts into Mozilla Thunderbird. POP is the only protocol supported, this means Thunderbird can only download emails. To send emails use your ISP’s SMTP server, Thunderbird will set the “Return-Path” and “From” email headers using the web account email address, too the recipient the email will appear to have come from the web base account.
Excellent!
It currently handles Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Lycos. I'd expect to see Gmail soon too.
Posted by jzawodn at April 18, 2005 08:04 AM
I wouldn't expect to see Gmail support soon because Gmail supports POP...
What Chris said :) . The details for setting it up are in Gmail's help section.
But it is a very good extension, much more elegant than other POP-Webmail interfaces.
Chris, by "supports" do you mean "provides"?
Yahoo! Mail also provides POP access but that doesn't mean this isn't useful for people...
I think they mean that Google gives you POP access free of charge to your e-mail; meaning that there's no screen-scraping of HTML required for integration between Thunderbird and GMail.
Or am I misunderstanding your question Jeremy?
My question was getting at what Chris was trying to say. I see people use the word "supports" when they often mean something different. It's such a weak word.
Still not following you. GMail "supports" POP, and have extensive documentation on configuring a ton of POP clients to work their service.
What do you think he means by "supports"? :-)
The sending is a problem. It might even be better if Thunderbird didn't set the return path to the webmail address, since doing that will get a lot of people to mark your mail as spam. Many systems assume Yahoo mail can only legitimately come from the Yahoo servers, for example.
I'd guess: POP is not free in yahoo, and is in gmail. The extension thus needs to support yahoo scraping, but doesn't need to scrape gmail. I'd also guess Jeremy would like the extension to auto-configure Thunderbird's pop settings for gmail.
Gmail has a little help file describing how to do it for several popular email clients.
it uses a SSL-enabled version of POP and SMTP.
It is no different to how you would hook up your mail client with your ISP. the only 'down' side is that it rewrites your 'from' header to be your gmail account name.
you also have to option to leave your mail on the server, or pull it down just like a real pop server.. in fact it is a real pop server
Gmail has a little help file describing how to do it for several popular email clients.
it uses a SSL-enabled version of POP and SMTP.
It is no different to how you would hook up your mail client with your ISP. the only 'down' side is that it rewrites your 'from' header to be your gmail account name.
you also have to option to leave your mail on the server, or pull it down just like a real pop server.. in fact it is a real pop server
This feels like just another kludge to me. IMAP solved the whole problem a while back, in that you can have one single synchronised view of your email on any client and through a web-mail interface. If you use a decent email provider, they will provide IMAP access to your email as well as a good web interface, as well as an authenticated SMTP server so you can send email. With this setup, there just is no '..."gap" between Thunderbird and Web Based Email Services', it's all one and the same.
Ok, wouldn't you know it, I run just such a service that includes IMAP for free accounts so people can try it out and see just how much a better way to work it is.
Some explanations of why IMAP is better than POP
http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts/ExternalMail.htm
Sorry if this seems like spamming, but I really do think it is a better way to go, I used to not understand IMAP either, and once my business partner convinced me to change, I could never really go back...
POP access is supposed to a premium feature.As a high-profile Yahoo employee, isn't it weird for you to be linking to this? It's like Sergey Brin pimping Adblock.
Dave, if you think it's weird you haven't been reading my stuff very long. :-)
I tend to err on the side of what makes users happy, not what makes the CEO happy. Those *should* be the same, but I don't stop to ask very often.
I'd like to think that if we make our users happy, the rest will take care of itself.
I posed the whole Yahoo + IMAP question to a Yahoo guy close to the webmail folks. He's told me they probably wouldn't do it because the server bandwidth to support millions of simultaneous Yahoo IMAP connections would be through the roof. Want to correct me if I'm wrong Jeremy?
Thus, alternatives to IMAP come hacks like Web-Mail. I applaud mozdev for tacking the problem, but the free email providers should really provide the service themselves.
