Friday, January 24, 2003
@Mail Improves the Pocket PC Email Experience
Posted by Perry Reed in "SOFTWARE" @ 03:00 PM
Ok, I admit it. I'm an email junkie. I'm on more email lists than I can think of and between work and personal email I receive several hundred messages a day. I would love to be able to read them and manage them on my Pocket PC, but the brain-dead Inbox application just doesn't cut it. Enter @Mail, the new Inbox replacement application from Web Information Solutions, Inc. (WebIS), the folks who brought us the excellent Pocket Informant. This application is strong for a 1.0 release, but not without issues - read on to find out what they are.
@Mail 1.0, from the folks who created Pocket Informant, has most of the missing features left out of Inbox. It's not quite perfect yet (what application is?), but the folks at WebIS have a strong record of quality products with Pocket Informant, and this new application has plenty of potential.
Can I finally read HTML messages?
Yes, you can. With some caveats. The HTML feature works only with POP3/IMAP message services, not ActiveSync. That's not WebIS's fault, it's a limitation of ActiveSync itself. WebIS is planning on replacing the built-in mail transport services with their own in order to get passed the limitations they force, but that won't be until sometime after version 1.0. But, while the ability to read HTML messages is probably the single best advantage @Mail has over Inbox, it's not the only one.
Figure 1: HTML message in @Mail.
Better views of your mail
@Mail also provides much better ways to view your messages. The primary screen on which to view your mail is the Folders view. This tree-view lists each of your mail services and all the folders within. Also, note the links at the top of the list for Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks. If you have Pocket Informant installed, clicking these will open it to the corresponding screen within.
Figure 2: Folder view.
The next big improvement over Inbox is the Mail List views. This screen lists the content of a particular mail folder and has two versions. The summary view shows each email on it's own shaded area with the subject, sender, date, and size. The list view shows all of those plus icons to show the message's status and attachments. The primary difference is the list view shows each on one line and you need to scroll horizontally to see everything. Also, it is possible to select multiple messages (for deleting SPAM, for instance) only in the summary view.
Figure 2: Mail list - summary view.
Figure 2: Mail list - list view.
Additionally, @Mail provides a couple of specialized view of your mail, including a nifty one that shows all of your unread mail -- no matter which folder or which service it came from! This is a very nice way to keep track of the messages still waiting for you to get to. And with as much email as I get, it's necessary!
Figure 2: All unread email.
Finally, @Mail has made good use of the Pocket PCs directional-pad for navigating the application. Pressing the right and left directions will move between the Folders, Mail List, and Mail Item views. Pressing the up and down directions will scroll among the messages in the Mail List and within text messages themselves (but not within HTML messages). Most applications seem to ignore the d-pad, so I'm pleased to see it used well here.
Gotchas
I tested the Release Candidate of @Mail 1.0, so the code I used wasn't perfect. I have some very large email folders and sometimes @Mail choked on them. At one point, I tried emptying my Deleted Items folder which had over 2000 messages in it. @Mail did it... eventually. But while testing the application, I performed more soft resets in a couple of days than I had the previous month. That said, I'm very confident that problems I found will be worked out, and I base that confidence on my experience with Pocket Informant, which in my opinion, is one of the best applications out there for Pocket PCs.
As I mentioned before there are also some limitations caused by the use of the built-in mail transport services. WebIS hope to resolve these by creating their own transport services at some point in the future.
Still, though, there are other limitations of the application, at least one of which is very nearly a deal breaker:
The software can be purchased for $24.95 (affiliate link). Existing Pocket Informant users can get a $5 discount code by visiting this page on the Pocket Informant website.
Conclusions
@Mail is a 1.0 release, somewhat limited in feature-set, and not without its problems. That said, however, it's a great deal better than Inbox in most regards and a very worthy companion to the excellent Pocket Informant. Plus, with this good start, it can only get better, and I can't wait to see future releases. But don't wait for them! If you do a lot of email, @Mail will definitely make your life easier.
@Mail 1.0, from the folks who created Pocket Informant, has most of the missing features left out of Inbox. It's not quite perfect yet (what application is?), but the folks at WebIS have a strong record of quality products with Pocket Informant, and this new application has plenty of potential.
Can I finally read HTML messages?
Yes, you can. With some caveats. The HTML feature works only with POP3/IMAP message services, not ActiveSync. That's not WebIS's fault, it's a limitation of ActiveSync itself. WebIS is planning on replacing the built-in mail transport services with their own in order to get passed the limitations they force, but that won't be until sometime after version 1.0. But, while the ability to read HTML messages is probably the single best advantage @Mail has over Inbox, it's not the only one.
Figure 1: HTML message in @Mail.
Better views of your mail
@Mail also provides much better ways to view your messages. The primary screen on which to view your mail is the Folders view. This tree-view lists each of your mail services and all the folders within. Also, note the links at the top of the list for Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks. If you have Pocket Informant installed, clicking these will open it to the corresponding screen within.
Figure 2: Folder view.
The next big improvement over Inbox is the Mail List views. This screen lists the content of a particular mail folder and has two versions. The summary view shows each email on it's own shaded area with the subject, sender, date, and size. The list view shows all of those plus icons to show the message's status and attachments. The primary difference is the list view shows each on one line and you need to scroll horizontally to see everything. Also, it is possible to select multiple messages (for deleting SPAM, for instance) only in the summary view.
Figure 2: Mail list - summary view.
Figure 2: Mail list - list view.
Additionally, @Mail provides a couple of specialized view of your mail, including a nifty one that shows all of your unread mail -- no matter which folder or which service it came from! This is a very nice way to keep track of the messages still waiting for you to get to. And with as much email as I get, it's necessary!
Figure 2: All unread email.
Finally, @Mail has made good use of the Pocket PCs directional-pad for navigating the application. Pressing the right and left directions will move between the Folders, Mail List, and Mail Item views. Pressing the up and down directions will scroll among the messages in the Mail List and within text messages themselves (but not within HTML messages). Most applications seem to ignore the d-pad, so I'm pleased to see it used well here.
Gotchas
I tested the Release Candidate of @Mail 1.0, so the code I used wasn't perfect. I have some very large email folders and sometimes @Mail choked on them. At one point, I tried emptying my Deleted Items folder which had over 2000 messages in it. @Mail did it... eventually. But while testing the application, I performed more soft resets in a couple of days than I had the previous month. That said, I'm very confident that problems I found will be worked out, and I base that confidence on my experience with Pocket Informant, which in my opinion, is one of the best applications out there for Pocket PCs.
As I mentioned before there are also some limitations caused by the use of the built-in mail transport services. WebIS hope to resolve these by creating their own transport services at some point in the future.
Still, though, there are other limitations of the application, at least one of which is very nearly a deal breaker:
- There is no way to move or copy messages from one folder to another! Not including this feature was, in my view, a horrible mistake. I simply can't properly manage my email without being able to sort it into folders. That said, there is a workaround, though it's unwieldy. Since @Mail and Inbox share the same message stores, you can close @Mail and open Inbox and move your messages around in Inbox. Then close it and reopen @Mail and your messages will be properly stored.
- When reading a message, if you delete it, you cannot automatically have the next or previous item opened. This is another bad omission. Each time you delete a message, you're taken back to the Mail list view where you must click on the next message you wish to read. Even Inbox is better than this!
- As I mentioned before, you cannot read messages in your ActiceSync service in HTML format. But this isn't WebIS's fault, so I can't really hold it against them.
- You cannot compose or reply messages in HTML format. Plain text is the only format supported, at least in this version. They do plan on adding this feature soon, however.
- Lastly, and this is nitpicking a bit, @Mail doesn't always handle HTML links very well. If the message contains a URL that isn't formatted with the HTML link tags (< A > link </ A >), @Mail doesn't recognize it as a clickable link. And sometimes, when clicking on a link, the new page is opened right there within @Mail instead of in Internet Explorer. But there are no back buttons or any other navigation controls, so the only way to get back to your message is to go back to the Mail List view and re-open it.
The software can be purchased for $24.95 (affiliate link). Existing Pocket Informant users can get a $5 discount code by visiting this page on the Pocket Informant website.
Conclusions
@Mail is a 1.0 release, somewhat limited in feature-set, and not without its problems. That said, however, it's a great deal better than Inbox in most regards and a very worthy companion to the excellent Pocket Informant. Plus, with this good start, it can only get better, and I can't wait to see future releases. But don't wait for them! If you do a lot of email, @Mail will definitely make your life easier.
