How to Build an Email Client

#1

Post by HarpuaCom » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

How to Build an Email Client
levinianconstant.tumblr.com

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#2

Post by jorgenhorstink » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

Just installed the plugin, but it was a bit of a disappointment and I just uninstalled it again. The plugin was able to recognize exactly two brands: Google and Google+. Wut?

I'm sure it takes a lot of time and dedication to developing the plugin, and I enjoyed reading the article, but this is not what I was expecting to see.

What would be useful to me though is a list of the top X e-mail contacts I received e-mail from and sent e-mail to the last Y days. I regularly have contact with several people from the same company/brand, and I always are using the search bar on top like: "John Doe something I remembered from the specific e-mail I'm looking for".

So basically I'm not that interested in mails I received from a brand, but I'm more interested in e-mails I received from a specific person.

Gamification would be awesome candy: statistics and graphs on how fast I'm responding to e-mails I receive, etc.

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#3

Post by wowzer » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

Looks like HN traffic hosed their site...

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#4

Post by Maascamp » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

In terms of managing IMAP connections, async is definitely the way to go. For our product, lightermail.com, I ported Python's imaplib to run on Tornado's ioloop (adding a few features like IDLE support and command pipelining). Not only can you manage a lot of connections with little memory, but you can do some really cool things (like the pipelining of commands mentioned above) that are unavailable to regular synchronous IMAP clients. Plan to open source the implementation when I have a bit more time.

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#5

Post by HarpuaCom » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 4:34 PM UTC

jorgenhorstink wrote: post #2

Just installed the plugin, but it was a bit of a disappointment and I just uninstalled it again. The plugin was able to recognize exactly two brands: Google and Google+. Wut? I'm sure it takes a lot of time and dedication to developing the plugin, and I enjoyed reading the article, but this is not what I was expecting to see. What would be useful to me though is a list of the top X e-mail contacts I received e-mail f…

jorgen - we identify brands for the past 30 days, so if you're an inbox zero person, then you won't have many brands to identify

our first product allowed you to create personal and brand icons - we're not there yet with this one. we hacked it together after going down the stand-alone client path for almost a year

I could write about that experience for days (for all you folks dead set on building a new client)

You can actually use Gmail's native features to hack our product to make it more powerful - i'll be posting about that next week...we also plan to gamify. So much to do, so little time.

Stick with us...

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#6

Post by jeandenis » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

jorgenhorstink wrote: post #2

Just installed the plugin, but it was a bit of a disappointment and I just uninstalled it again. The plugin was able to recognize exactly two brands: Google and Google+. Wut? I'm sure it takes a lot of time and dedication to developing the plugin, and I enjoyed reading the article, but this is not what I was expecting to see. What would be useful to me though is a list of the top X e-mail contacts I received e-mail f…

I actually tried these guys out earlier this year when the main product was a full email-client, but just couldn't make myself move away from gmail. But so far, I am finding myself really liking the new gmail plugin/toolbar. It's recognized about maybe two dozen brands. Will definitely give it a whirl for a few more days.

But I do agree that it would be great if it also worked for personal email contacts + some form of analytics/gamification. And I also wish it allowed me to group brands together (e.g., so that I can read the various sales newsletters I get once a week in a fire-and-forget kind of way as opposed to having them crowd out my inbox).

I do think that there's a ton of room for innovation in the email client. It makes me sad how slow gmail has gotten over time, and I do think there's a ton of room for more automation, assistance, auto-categorization, etc.

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#7

Post by jorgenhorstink » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

HarpuaCom wrote: post #5

jorgenhorstink wrote: post #2

Just installed the plugin, but it was a bit of a disappointment and I just uninstalled it again. The plugin was able to recognize exactly two brands: Google and Google+. Wut? I'm sure it takes a lot of time and dedication to developing the plugin, and I enjoyed reading the article, but this is not what I was expecting to see. What would be useful to me though is a list of the top X e-mail contacts I received e-mail f…

jorgen - we identify brands for the past 30 days, so if you're an inbox zero person, then you won't have many brands to identify our first product allowed you to create personal and brand icons - we're not there yet with this one. we hacked it together after going down the stand-alone client path for almost a year I could write about that experience for days (for all you folks dead set on building a new client) You c…

Thanks for your response. I was just trying to explain why I didn't like it so far, and what I'd love to see. Good to hear you guys are moving forward and implementing new features.

I don't think people would like to create brand icons manually. If I get a lot of e-mails from john.doe@ah.nl, why not running a separate Node.js instance trying to locate the favicon (and using it to display the logo) by trying known locations, or parsing the HTML; http://ah.nl/favicon.ico

The name of the brand might be easy to fetch by doing a WHOIS lookup. Just a thought...

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#8

Post by nicholassmith » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

Very recently I built a little desktop email client. It was...interesting. And hoary. And fraught. Very interesting though, I think everyone should have a crack at writing a basic SMTP library at some stage just so they appreciate the benevolence of anyone happy enough to sit and go through RFC guidelines.

Node seems like a far better choice for the project than Rails, no hate for RoR from me but Node is pretty much designed for the way email needs to operate.

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#9

Post by ChaseB » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

The biggest frustration I have with gmail is multiple account management. This chrome plugin isn't perfect, but works really well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/checker-plus-for-g...

Re: How to Build an Email Client

#10

Post by davidklanac » Tue, Nov 20, 2012, 6:07 PM UTC

nicholassmith wrote: post #8

Very recently I built a little desktop email client. It was...interesting. And hoary. And fraught. Very interesting though, I think everyone should have a crack at writing a basic SMTP library at some stage just so they appreciate the benevolence of anyone happy enough to sit and go through RFC guidelines. Node seems like a far better choice for the project than Rails, no hate for RoR from me but Node is pretty much…

Definitely agree with you that the benevolent few who produce FOSS deserve admiration especially when wrestling with the esoteric aspects of POP, IMAP and SMTP.