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By Joe St Sauver (joe@oregon.uoregon.edu)
How'd you like to access your mail from almost any machine, anywhere, with no special setup beyond a web browser?
WebMail is one of several new electronic mail products that provides this service, and it's now being offered to University of Oregon users who have accounts on DARKWING and OREGON. (Note: Until Computing Center staff has more opportunity to evaluate the network traffic load, WebMail will not be available for GLADSTONE users.)
Although WebMail runs on a Windows NT system, it allows pass-through web access to IMAP mail servers on virtually any other type of machine. Because WebMail uses only HTML to communicate with the browser, it works with the widest possible variety of browsers (including the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape) and is not susceptible to Java bugs and incompatibilities.
To begin using WebMail, open your web browser and go to http://webmail.uoregon.edu (regular mode) or https://webmail.uoregon.edu (secure mode).
Type in your username and password and choose a server. You should then see a screen displaying your Inbox. VMS (OREGON) users may proceed at this point, setting the "Options" as they please, but to avoid problems with their host folders, UNIX (DARKWING) users need to follow the steps outlined below.
Special instructions for DARKWING users: If you use DARKWING, the first time you run WebMail you must choose Options and set the IMAP4 Folder Prefix to mail/ in order to see your host folders properly. You may want to fiddle with the other options as well. Then log out, and log back in again to activate the folder prefix.
Another minor annoyance for DARKWING users is that on UNIX hosts, Outbox is immediately created at first log-in and is then recreated under mail/ after you set the folder prefix, resulting in two "Outboxes" being listed in the mailboxlist file. However, this glitch doesn't prevent the program from functioning properly, and you can delete the first bogus empty Outbox if it bothers you.
For more information on using WebMail, check out its online help resource, or see http://www-vms.uoregon.edu/www/webmail.html
Watch system notices for additional information that may become available on WebMail as time goes on.
We're interested in hearing about your WebMail experience, either positive or negative. Direct your questions, problems, and comments to our consulting staff (346-1758, consult@oregon.uoregon.edu).