WEBMAIL
by
Sangeeta Aggarwal
Mohan Gummalam
WebMail is a NPAC product.
WebMail is a convenient
way to access email over the internet.
If you are away from your home.. and all you have is a web browser at
hand, then WebMail is
the solution.
There are various mail-toolkits available which allow you access your
email on your local machine, for example PINE, MH, Netscape Mail, elm.
However, at present the email community does not have a way to access
emails on a remote machine, without using the remote machine's
resources viz., via telnet, rlogin etc. In the present scenario, a
user's speed of accessing email is at the mercy of the remote machine.
This tool provides functionality of the optimal features of the above
menitoned mail tools. Thus a user gets the good features from all the
tools combined in one package - the WebMail.
Basic Functionality:
- Read, Modify and Update INBOX.
- Read, and Modify Folders; and save messages into Folders.
- Compose, Forward, and Reply to mail messages.
Extra Features:
- Display of sender's image, and the organization's logo of the currently selected mail.
- Evaluation of the contents of the mail to provide rating (Good, Bad and Ugly).
- Font style and size customization.
- Gallery of icons related to the software industry.
- Audio support.
- Online Help.
Future Support:
- Mime Parsing of the multi-part mime mail messages.
- Database support, to provide keyword search and remove redundancy.
Implementation:
Conforming to the internet standards, this applet
too has been implemented in java.
The WebMail applet contacts Jeeves, a java based server for all purposes. requests, and replies. The methodolgy used to get the incoming mails is contacting the IMAP server which is usually the default "postoffice" in our LAN setup and querying it to get the mails in the "INBOX". The response in the IMAP format from the server is parsed and stored in a custom storage format. This storage format is passed as an object from the Jeeves server to the mail applet.
The mail folders created by the user to sort and store the mails are parsed by a separate mail parser and here too, the response is stored in the same custom storage format. This, again as before, is sent to the mail applet on demand.
References and Technologies used:
- Jeeves
- HTTPD server written entirely in Java and
compliant with the HTTP1.0 protocol. Functionality of Jeeves can be
enhanced by the user by writing new resources (servlets).
- Graphics Java Toolkit (GJT)
- Enhanced over Java's Abstract Window Toolkit (java.awt), supports many jazzy features.
- Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
- Protocol used to get mails on demand from a remote mail server.
- RFC822
- This standard specifies a syntax for text messages that are sent among computer users, within the framework of "electronic mail".
- PINE Is Not Elm (PINE)
- E-Mail toolkit with character based user interface, developed by University of Washington.
System Requirements:
- To run the applet: Any internet browser supporting Java VM, like Netscape 2.0 and above.
- To run a personal server: Any platform which supports Java, like AIX, Solaris, WindowsNT, Windows95.
For Question or Comments, contact sangeeta@npac.syr.edu or gult@top.cis.syr.edu