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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
Some old-timers may remember our first web email interface, Infinite Technology's black, "spidery" commercial webmail interface, removed in March 2005 after vendor support for that product ceased.
Our second-generation web email interface, introduced in 2000, was IMHO webmail, often referred to locally as “green" web email because of its color scheme. For five years IMHO ran alongside black web email, but unfortunately IMHO is no longer broadly-supported and recently it has become increasingly problematic in a variety of ways (including incompatibility with some web browsers such as Mac OS X's Safari).
That brings us to our third-generation web email interface: locally written, open source Alpha Mail, also known as “blue" web email. Alpha Mail was introduced in September 2005 as a new experimental interface, and has been universally well received by users. (You can see some of its special features at http://cc.uoregon.edu/ cnews/winter2006/alphamail.htm )
Effective this summer, with Alpha Mail's 1.0 production release, we're happy to announce that Alpha Mail is now our recommended production web email interface for all UO web email users.
This change will be reflected in the presentation of web email choices on http://email.uoregon.edu/ beginning in summer term. IMHO (green web email) will continue to be available for existing loyal IMHO users, albeit in deprecated status, but all new and existing users should begin using Alpha Mail instead.
In particular, IMHO (green web email) users should understand that IMHO is old, and because it is poorly supported at this point, it's possible that security considerations may eventually arise that require us to abruptly restrict or discontinue access to it. Patches or workarounds for IMHO bugs, such as Safari-related issues, should not be expected.
Therefore, we encourage all web email users to move to Alpha Mail (blue web email) at their earliest convenience.
Q. I use Thunderbird (or Outlook, Eudora, or some other IMAP or POP
email program) on my PC, or Pine at the percent-sign shell prompt. Does this
change affect me?
A. No. This change applies only to UO web email users.
Q. I use Hotmail (or Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or some other third-party
web email service). Does this change affect me?
A. No, this doesn't impact third-party web email accounts.
Q. But I like green web email and want to continue using it!
A. For now, you may. However, you should recognize that it may become
necessary for us to discontinue access to the green web email interface with
little or no advance warning at some point in the future if security problems
require us to do so. We'd urge you to give Alpha Mail a try. We think you'll
really like it.
Q. Does this change affect my email address, or will I lose any mail
if I move from green web email to blue web email?
A. No. Your uoregon.edu
email address stays the same, and all your email will continue to be available.
Q. I'd like to know more about Alpha Mail. Is there formal documentation
for it?
A. Yes. While Alpha Mail is designed to be self-explanatory,
we have a handout available online at http://cc.uoregon.edu/acrobatdocs/alphamail.pdf
Q. I'd like to get a copy of Alpha Mail for installation on some
other system.
A. Please see http://alphamail.uoosl.org/