Why Bother?
I assume you mean why bother writing yet another incomplete email client in a language not especially suited to
it?
Because I felt like it.
Because it seemed like a good way to learn both java and email protocols.
And becauseI got sick of telnetting mailboxes for clueless email lusers.
So why not use the JavaMail classes?
Because when I started I hadn't heard of them(thats how much I know about java).
And because I wanted to understand how to write an email client, not just write one.
So what makes this Veep thing special?
That's a very good question and I'm glad you asked me that.
When I set out to create Veep I wanted to make an email client that was reliable and efficient, but that would also
be easy to use for complete beginners. Having worked for some time doing tech support for email clients I had a fair
idea what the biggest problems were that faced every day users of email, and how I wanted to address them.
- Massive Mail - Veep is designed for use with Pop3 mailboxes on a 56k dial-up connection, and the
number one problem with such set-ups is massive(1MB+) mails sent by spammers or lusers on nice fat pipes that the
domestic user just can't download. A related but slightly different problem occurs in Outlook and Outlook Express
where the message cannot be downloaded by the client because of its format. At present no mail client offers any
solution to this - if mails cannot be downloaded the mailbox is blocked and the luser must contact their ISP to have
the offending mail removed. In my experience anything up to 25% of calls to an ISP helpdesk can be related to
unblocking mailboxes.
In Veep I've implemented the retreival of mail in such a way as to hopefully eliminate this problem. When Veep contacts the POP server for the list of messages on the account it also retreives the size and sender of each message, which information is then displayed to the luser. The luser then has the option of downloading, deleting, downloading AND deleting or ignoring each message. This freedom of choice should make it much easier for lusers to control their own mailboxes, and so reduce the workload on the poor saps on the helldesk. - Multiple Accounts - A common situation on domestic machines is either for a loser to have several email
accounts, or for several lusers to be sharing the same machine. This can cause immense confusion when inexperienced
lusers try and cope with the concept of an email client retrieving mail from TWO OR MORE ACCOUNTS AT THE SAME
TIME!
Although some mail clients(notably Eudora) do address this problem in Veep I want to make the seperation of accounts as explicit as possible, to the point of possibly including something like the Netscape User Profile Manager, so that it is clearly apparent to even the worst AOL refugee how the different accounts are organised.