Web based POP3 client

[Jay]

I'm not asking for any code (although it would be nice if
someone got a sample).

But how would i design a web based POP3 client? I want the
users to be able to access the emails from Outlook, and
the web based email client. What i'm not sure how to
design is where to store the emails for the web based
client. Should i operate on the mailroot folder directly,
or create another folder on the server (or another
server), where the emails are copied to when they arrive
(or when the user use the web based client). If i store
them in another place, i can let the users store the
emails in different folders and sort them, but on the
other side, i end up by using twice as much disk space.
This is what concerns me, is this really the way you do
this?

How is Exchange solving this? But I suppose that is
something completely different, and this is only a POP3
server (and SMTP server). Anyone that has created
something like this and can give me some advices where i
should store the emails?

Thanks!!

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Jay,

The outlook web access application only allows views on the emails that
are currently stored on Exchange. If the user has the option to deliver the
emails to their personal folders, then the email is pulled off the exchange
server and onto their local drives.

I think that this is the best you can do if you are going to provide
web-based access to your email (then again, you might want to consider the
aforementioned Outlook Web Access client). If people keep their email on
the server, then they will have the same access as when they access it
through the web.

I don't think that your web based client should act any different. To
be honest, I don't think that POP3 is the protocol that is suited for
web-based access, because it entails the download of the email messages, and
you would have to store them somewhere, possibly fragmenting the user's
email (some emails here, some emails there, etc, etc).

Hope this helps.

 

[Ivar]

Hi,

I can offer only IMAP based webmail example, it's much better than pop3
based.
(Most servers support IMAP)

See www.lumisoft.ee (MailServer project - all source code is included)

 

[Jay]

Hi,

Thanks!

I wonder if it will be much easier to write a complete
server instead of trying to deal with this. As you say,
POP3 is not suited for this.