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I may not have the pedigree that Rich likes to remind us of, but I've been working at ATS long enough. The first webmail client was TWIG, I worked on the project. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best available at the time. It's hard to find something that everyone will like, because it's very easy for some people to sit back and snipe and complain. It's harder for them to put forward suggestions to improve the product/project.
After TWIG was Courrier's webmail client.
Chuck was involved with the terminal based email system, remember CE? When we first talked about a webmail client, I put together a prototype that was a parody of the terminal based system (javascript for keyboard navigation). For some reason that didn't get adopted.
Richard Wiggins wrote:
Hotmail was born circa 1997. MSU's first Webmail client was born near that time circa 1998, written by a brilliant student, Charles Henrich, under tutelage of Chuck Severance. Both had UIs superior to the current mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu>. It's 2009.
/rich
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Hoort, Brian <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Why is it that all of a sudden web-interfaces to email are expected
to be
"professional"? I would argue that email web interfaces are still
maturing
(Outlook Web App 2010 is really, really close to the real thing; the
rest
aren't even close). If you want a professional interface, use an email
client, as Mr. Schrock suggests. MSU's email service experienced from a
client is quite good. I suspect that the web interface will improve
over
time.
Brian Hoort
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On
Behalf Of Gary Schrock
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 1:14 PMeasily get from the mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu/> page to aTo: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] A note about MSU's first e-mail system, circa
1983 --
and in 2009
While I won't argue with you on the whole forwarding email being a pain
to find in the current MSU system (I've had that same problem many a
time, and get completely frustrated by it myself), the whole
amature/professional part I think is entirely in the eye of the
beholder.
As an example, I'm not convinced I'd consider gmail a "professional"
email service. I don't consider a service that locks you into a method
of displaying your emails that's completely different than what you can
get in basically every other email client/service anywhere to be
professional. Locking you into the conversation method of sorting email
is to me a sign of an incomplete, immature product. To me, google is
only usable through using a client, because the web based browser of
theirs is complete junk IMHO. (And I recognize that many people don't
have that same opinion.) Google's also had some reliability problems
lately (both being down, and at least some circumstances where email was
being delivered to the wrong recipients). The whole deliver email to a
wrong recipient is something that anyone using it for to do
correspondence having to do with grants should really think about,
because it could easily be an issue.
Now, is MSU's system professional? Maybe, but it definitely has its own
flaws, and quite frankly, I'm not overly convinced that some of its more
recent changes haven't been steps backwards instead of forwards. (The
whole filters only run when you log into the web based part of the email
is one of those things that I think was an odd decision, and causes some
of my users problems). I also have some users that seem to get an
inordinate amount of spam through the MSU system that I'm surprised its
not stopping, and can't help but wonder if that's related to the whole
filter issue.
MSU's help for their email systems also seems to have taken a step back.
Before they did the last conversion, it used to be you could pretty
<http://msu.edu/>
page that gives you
information about setting up clients to check mail. Now it seems you
have to jump through a couple of pages, and search your way through the
FAQ to get to that point.
Of course, personally, my solution was to run my own :). Largely
because back in the 90's, I found MSU's system to be so unreliable, that
the people I worked for just couldn't trust it to do its job properly.
I will admit that MSU's system has been a lot more reliable these days
than it used to be.
Gary
Richard Wiggins wrote:
> A couple things happened at the same time in the last couple of
days. I
> desperately needed to communicate with MSU HR using an msu.edu
> <http://msu.edu <http://msu.edu/>> address, and WIlliam Safire died.> mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu/> <http://mail.msu.edu
>
> Increasingly MSU treats e-mail as official. It's really
important to be
> able to forward your MSU e-mail to a professional service, as
opposed to
<http://mail.msu.edu/>>. Since mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu/>
> <http://mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu/>> is amateur, MSU> the new mail.msu.edu <http://mail.msu.edu/> <http://mail.msu.edu
needs to make it easy to forward
> to a professional service.
>
> I literally spent an hour trying to figure out how to set
forwarding in
<http://mail.msu.edu/>> interface. I may not be the
> sharpest knife in the drawer, but I could not discern how to
accomplish
> a simple task that MSU requires thousands to complete.
>
> When I wrote MSU's first e-mail system in 1983, it was state of the
> art. That's because there was no art. It was primitive. We had no
> clue. That was 1983. It is 2009. We should be smarter now. I
wasn't
> around when MSU chose its current e-mail system. But to bury a vital
> function such as forwarding -- which is now an essential thinig,
> which MSU demands -- under an obscure tab labeled "MSU Prefs"--
this is
> not just primitive. It is incompetent.
>
> It also took more than 24 hours for my former colleagues at ATS
to cough
> up simple information vital to me -- how do I set forwarding in this
> poor interface. We were better at FAQs in 1957 than we are in 2009.
> My colleagues are good people but the standard of service is poor.
> Questions should be answered in minutes, not days. And if the
primary
> campus e-mail service hides forwarding under a label of "MSU Prefs"
> given a ribbon bar of normal options for the app, there is a problem.
>
>
http://wigblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/when-william-safire-quoted-me-on-e-mail.
html
<http://wigblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/when-william-safire-quoted-me-on-e-mail.html>