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Group: netwin.surgemail
Subject: Re: [SurgeMail List] SurgeWeb Reply-To??
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:24:44 -0600
Thanks for bringing this one up yes, dealing with multiple accounts from within surgeweb is one thing I have been pondering occasionally over the last year, and keep putting in the low priority and "hard" basket. I guess the critical question is what do the the majority of people actually "really need" in a web email client, and so far that is what I have focussed on - ie a single account. I know ofcourse you can setup multiple accounts as multiple "identities" in most desktop clients but I did not realise that thunderbird easily allowed you to set the reply-to header. I've just had a bit of a play with it... Here are some of the thoughts I have had for what we "might" want to support in surgeweb: 1) Leave as is, which is effectively requires you to login to "one account" and have "one from address" - much like a single account setup in outlook express / thunderbird. Possibly with an easier accessible way of manually editing the "from address" field. As it stands changing the "Reply name / address" will currently affect the "From header" and "Return-Path" so effectively "needs to be a real account on the server" you are sending from. This is the behaviour you will find for most individual identities in a desktop email client. I think the "leave as is" is not really an option long term and probably one the following should be implemented at some stage although, I'm not sure which are really necessary (I want to keep complexity & dependencies to a minimum; and performance to a maximum) - and I still have a lot of higher priority items to implement. I am a long time developer under windows, but personally I have recently started running multiple instances of surgeweb - one per real account using Fluid under osx. These are permanently running (with automatic reconnect if session terminates for some reason) and have an always up-to-date unread message indicator in the dock for each separate account and I find it actually works really rather nicely... 2) Support for true multiple accounts like "a desktop clients". This adds significant complexity and adds a performance overhead, which I'm not sure I am convinced is worth the gain. If this was to be done I think setting up the interface similar to the way the Postbox application does would be the tidiest way to go in surgeweb (from a practical and performance point of view) and for you to effectively be dealing with one account at a time - possibly with new message indicators in the clickable list of all accounts which would always be displayed. When composing in this scenario, you would have to be presented with a dropdown effectively allow you to select one of several real accounts when composing messages. This might be sort of nice but I think is too complex for a web email client... 3) Automatically adding your surgemail user.cgi defined account aliases to the from as a dropdown when composing messages. This is what webmail currently does and if you send using one of these it will update the "From header" with the alias address but these remain as the address of the primary surgemail account "Return-Path" / "Sender" and there is no Reply-to added. All aliases all refer to one actual email account so there woudl be no need to fetch / gather mail from several accounts. Anyway and I'm not sure how convinced I am of the usefulness of this. 4) Allow your account to be used as a central point for collecting email from several (possibly non local) other accounts and sending out email as if they are coming from these other accounts. This is the approach gmail uses and I actually quite like. It basically allows you to verify arbitrary addresses by sending an email to them which requires you to click a link or something, which then sets up additional "identities" to be able to send as using your gmail account. If you send from these alternative identities your mail will be sent with "From" as your alternative identity and the "Return-Path" and "Sender" as your gmail account. This would nicely combine with mail getting redirected to this account (or fetched) and automatic selection of identity based on who the address was sent to, again this is how gmail works. I would be most in favour of this option in surgeweb however I'm not sure whether there are any ramifications in terms of your mail being identified as spam in this case (opinions here?), and if the recipient of your message looks at the headers they would be able to see your primary account information. When composing you would get a dropdown of all these identities (possibly also the surgemail aliases if that was seen as important...) 5) Explicitly allow the "Reply-To" to be set. I'm not a heavy user of the "Reply-To" header and don't really see the point in using it over or instead of the above mechanisms. But maybe I am missing something... Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions or input on what you would like to see in surgeweb in your ideal world I would like to hear from you :-) Marijn On Wednesday 27/01/2010 at 3:23 am, Webmaster@1usa.com wrote: > We still use Outlook Express here. Outlook Express can log in to > multiple email accounts - with the proper authentication. All of the > emails come into one In-Box. As we reply, we can choose which > identity to send from... and it defaults to the email address that the > email came To. > g_from_exact is preserved. > > Marijn : I guess his question is How to setup Surgeweb to display > multiple accounts in one mailbox. Surgeweb would then act like > Outlook Express, and it would eliminate the need to Fwd emails from > one account to another. > > BarryZ > > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: <nospam@eton.ca> > To: <surgemail-list@netwinsite.com> > Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 6:02 AM > Subject: Re: [SurgeMail List] SurgeWeb Reply-To?? > > >> >> I want to be able to set the Reply-To, much in the same way that I can >> set CC and BCC. In fact, in clients like Thunderbird, there is a >> drop-down beside each address field that lets you choose To, Reply-to, >> CC, or BCC. Even better, Thunderbird allows me to have several >> identities associated with one real email account and I can select the >> sending identity on a per email basis. If SurgeWeb could do that, it >> would be ideal for my purposes. >> >> But if I understand you correctly, there is no way I can set the >> Reply-To from the GUI. I think it would be a valuable feature, and it >> is not a path for abuse since the From and Return-path are not >> affected by Reply-to. >> >> Neil >> >> >>> >>> >>> --- Original message --- >>> Subject: Re: [SurgeMail List] SurgeWeb Reply-To?? >>> From: Surgemail Support (Marijn) <surgemail-support@netwinsite.com> >>> To: <surgemail-list@netwinsite.com> >>> Date: Tuesday, 26/01/2010 10:50 AM >>> >>> Is it the reply-to or from address (with associated return-path >>> header) that you are wanting to set? >>> >>> The fully specified from address can be specified in your surgeweb >>> "options - reply name and address" as an arbitrary address sendable >>> though your server. This is disabled by default but this is enabled >>> manually by adding the following to your account's surgeweb >>> "_user.dat" file >>> allowed_from * >>> >>> Doing so will allow you to use reply preferences along the lines of: >>> pref_reply Surgemail Support (Marijn) >>> <surgemail-support@netwinsite.com> >>> either settable using the surgeweb interface or by editing _user.dat >>> directly. This will effectively give you the same control as a normal >>> mail client. >>> >>> The from address used to be manually changeable on a per message basis >>> but that was locked down to prevent abuse. I think I implemented the >>> lockdown in away to easily disable and have the from address editable >>> but I would have to look at the source code in more detail tomorrow. >>> >>> Or am I missing something on what you want to achieve? >>> >>> Marijn >>> >>> >>> >>> On Tuesday 26/01/2010 at 12:37 am, nospam@eton.ca wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> Is there any way to set the SurgeWeb Reply-To: field on either a >>>> per-message or permanent basis? >>>> >>>> I have many addresses aliased to this one, and I want to send mail >>>> with the reply-to set appropriately. >>>> >>>> Neil Herber >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> >> >