Sneak Preview: New Webmail
We’re pleased to announce that our new Webmail pages are available for public “beta testing”. The new Webmail system is a modified version of the popular SquirrelMail software, which has many features the older system lacks.
In particular, you’ll find:
- A flexible search feature that lets you search through subjects, senders, and more.
- The ability to optionally view “unsafe” images in HTML messages.
- Preferences that permanently remember things such as your time zone and date format.
- An easier-to-use address book.
- Optional threaded message display.
- Message filters (sorting incoming mail into certain folders) and highlighting.
- Automatic conversion of many foreign-language character sets to UTF-8 display, making it easier to read messages written in other languages.
- And much more…
The new Webmail pages are only available at this special URL for now:
https://webmail-test.tigertech.net/
It’s marked as a “beta test version” because although we’ve tested it heavily in-house, we don’t like to call anything “fully tested” until it’s been used extensively by real people. We encourage our bolder customers to give it a try and let us know about any problems you encounter.
Over the next month or so, we’ll make the new Webmail system more and more visible, eventually phasing out the old system.
on Monday, October 22, 2007 at 12:45 pm (Pacific) chuck wrote:
hurray! I’ve been wanting this kind of search functionality since forever. thanks…
on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 1:01 pm (Pacific) drew wrote:
Excellent news! I wrote to TigerTech last month with a wish list for new Web mail functionality… thanks for the work!
on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 3:04 pm (Pacific) Anthony wrote:
Excellent news. I’ll test extensively. thanks for the update guys.
on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 3:30 pm (Pacific) David L. Simmons wrote:
I like the new look – but the menu items to the left “INBOX”, Drafts”, “Sent” and “Trash” – are just text links. BOOOORRRRRIIIINNNNGGG!
At least give us some snappy little icons instead – or maybe the option to change the font?
DLS
on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 10:05 am (Pacific) Cara wrote:
I really like the new search feature. I too have needed something like it for a long time.
on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 1:34 pm (Pacific) Suzanne wrote:
This new functionality and webmail if fantastic. I spend a lot of time in school and check my mail on my laptop. It is wonderful that I can now see the pictures in html format and do not have to wait until I get home to review emails.
I especially like that the page is interactive and indicates new emails without having to “refresh” the page. This is a time saver.
Good job…Thank you!
Suzanne
on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 10:02 am (Pacific) 40mph DaN wrote:
Yes, yes, YES! Love it – Loads much faster – Navigates much easier in every possible way – It has a search engine!
In the last month, I’ve been on the verge of switching to Google’s mail, but now my problems are solved.
Excellent work.
on Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 11:25 am (Pacific) Frederick Peter Pogorzelski wrote:
I found the search function very useful for doing research work on Biblical articles. I just scanned a multitude of short e-mail articles on the Daily Gospel
from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for the search word “Moses.” I found several relevant articles that will help
me in writing new articles of my own – this saves me a lot of time, and more important, allows me to find pertinent information that I otherwise never would have found. This is a very useful tool. Thank You! Thank You!
on Monday, October 29, 2007 at 3:40 pm (Pacific) Leisa wrote:
So far, so good, after the address book glitch. There are so many features here I’ve been waiting for forever — optional images in html, don’t have to see unread mail in the trash, nested folders. One question: does the trash still empty itself after a period of time? I haven’t found anything in the settings to address that, and it seems like my trash folder is just accumulating.
on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 4:09 pm (Pacific) Ralph wrote:
I like the way it returns to the folder when a mail is deleted rather than automatically displaying the next message.
The HTML rendering is much better as well.
on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 11:05 am (Pacific) Nathan wrote:
I love the new beta version! Please make this Permanent.
on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 3:21 pm (Pacific) Pascal wrote:
Excellent. So much improved.
However, in the preferences, I would prefer to have in the “Cursor Position When Replying” the choice to “Focus in Body: Above Original Message”. Who replies below the original message? I believe it’s more common for the reply text to be above the old messages rather than below, so I’m surprised that this is not an option.
on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 4:23 pm (Pacific) Robert Mathews (Chief Tiger) wrote:
Just wanted to address a couple of questions that people asked in comments:
Leisa wrote “does the trash still empty itself after a period of time? I haven’t found anything in the settings to address that, and it seems like my trash folder is just accumulating.”
This was a missing feature in the early test versions, but now the trash will automatically empty itself after a period of time (30 days by default, but you can change that in “Preferences” -> “Folder Preferences”, at the bottom of the screen).
And Pascal wrote “I would prefer to have in the ‘Cursor Position When Replying’ the choice to ‘Focus in Body: Above Original Message'”.
Unfortunately, all the Webmail code does is tell the browser to focus on one particular text field — it’s up to the browser to decide where to put the cursor in that field if it contains text. Some browsers put it at the beginning, and some put it at the end. This makes that option not very useful on some browsers, unfortunately. Perhaps the way that all works will be improved in SquirrelMail in the future.