Webmail: The new WING

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Webmail The new WING

• Tony Brett
• Oxford University Computing Services

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Agenda

• History
• Why the change?
• What the users wanted the competition
• Early mock-ups and the final result
• What it runs on
• Major changes
• Gotchas
• Future Developments
• Resources
• Questions

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History

• Herald came into existence in 1998
• WING Web IMAP News Gateway
• Never intended to be used as heavily as it is
  now. Meant as a backup, with most people using
  IMAP clients with a few POP3
• WING predates ethernet in all student rooms

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Why the Change?

• WING considered outdated
• Clumsy interface
• Hard to act on multiple messages
• Volume of E-mail, especially SPAM has increased
  dramatically
• Better tools needed to handle this
• Needed a more intuitive and modern feel to web
  interface
• Chose an interim fix rather than a complete
  rewrite

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What the users wanted

• Consistent visual appearance
• Easier message selection and sorting
• Operations on multiple messages
• Word wrap on read and compose
• More powerful search tools
• More flexible filtering
• Improved attachment/browser handling
• Easier-to-use address book
• Including import from WING

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The Competition
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Some early mock-ups
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The final result
Move around the folder
Where you are in the folder
Folder heirarchy
Sort columns
Folder name
Message select checkboxes
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What it runs on

• 8 PCs running Debian Stable (Woody)
• 2.66Ghz P4
• 1GB RAM each
• Load-balanced cluster
• Apache mod_perl
• 800 concurrent users as of 11am today, have seen
  10,000 different people already!
• WING ran (runs) on 8 Machines, PII 350 512MB RAM

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Major Changes (1)

• Consistent and clearer visual appearance
• Checkbox selection of messages
• Operate on multiple messages
• Sorting in the folder view
• Wrapping read and compose
• Filtering
• Blacklist Whitelist
• Junk-mail spam assassin threshold
• Trash (do not deliver) spam assasin threshold
• SSL-only. Globalsign certificate
• webmail.ox.ac.uk and .herald.ox.ac.uk so
  browsers shouldnt moan now

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Major Changes (2)

• No longer supporting the SPAM filtering on
  X-Oxmail-Warning header.
• SPAM scores give user much more control
• Attachments work better for users
• Weve worked round the IE bug that causes
  corrupted filenames and 1 on the end of
  extensions
• Manage and Options screens merged and made
  consistent
• Status Page
• Bar display for mailbox usage
• Last login details
• Completion date
• Context-sensitive help

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Gotchas

• Netscape 4
• Lynx
• Auto-forward forwards after the filters now.
• WING sent everything
• Vacation, forward and filtering have no effect on
  WING once theyve been modified on Webmail
• WING address book migration
• Finding the button!
• Multiple WING address books
• Groups

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Future Developments

• Remote access to address book (LDAP) by mail
  clients
• Import from other address book formats
• Flexible server-side filtering
• Rewrite in XML
• Forward with attachment

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Resources

• https//webmail.ox.ac.uk/
• http//www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/email/webmail/
• http//web-imap.sourceforge.net/
• http//www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/smtp/scores.txt/