Webmail done right
I recently bought a (gs) shared hosting package at mediatemple.net. I’m not going to talk about their system now, but about their webmail client, which is provided by @Mail, their mail server. The @Mail web interface comes in 4 variations: Simple (which is plain HTML), Simple with AJAX (which is how most other webmail interfaces work today), Advanced for IE6+ (please, don’t ask me to comment on this one) and Advanced for Mozilla.
When I logged in using the Advanced for Mozilla interface I noticed something in the address bar: .webmail/parse.php?file=html/english/xul/xullogin.html&XUL=1. XUL? Wait… I’ve heard this before… A quick lookup at Wikipedia confirmed my thoughts: XUL is the XML User Interface Language, the Language the Firefox layout (i.e. XUL defines where the Home button is) is written in. But what does that mean for a webmail client? The answer is easy: It’s a hell lot faster than HTML + JavaScript, actually it’s running at the native speed of your browser, which is pretty amazing. The XUL interface also takes advantages of features your OS can do for you: The menus and lists are rendered by your OS and even sorting is done at native speed - awesome.
However, it’s still getting better: PGP built-in right into your webmail client! Unfortunately it seems you can’t upload your own key or download your private key after you generated a key using the webmail interface, but I’m sure we’ll see some improvements in the next version(s) of this software.
If you have a Firefox Browser at your hands, make sure to try the @Mail-Demo at http://demo.atmail.com/index.php