On 24 May 2011, at 2:18, Emory Lundberg wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 06:49:10PM -0400, Mike Alexander wrote: > >> That's one of the real advantages of IMAP, you can look at a message >> without downloading the attachments, HTML parts, etc. Caching >> everything sort of defeats that, especially if you use more than one >> machine to view EMail.
Well, one of the main features of MailMate is that it is an IMAP client which is fully functional when being offline. > Especially on a notebook or mobile device. In particular, I prefer an offline IMAP client on a notebook. It has plenty of space and I often find myself in situations where I'm not online when using a notebook. Variants of IMAP client behavior required to satisfy everybody(?): 1) Offline IMAP (MailMate). 2) Offline IMAP with shared local storage. 3) Online IMAP with no long-term storage/cache. And I also get requests for making it easy to store messages locally only, either to save space on the server or because the server is distrusted for storage (but not for transmission). Essentially using IMAP for POP3-like behavior. The main advantages of 2) and 3) are faster initial synchronization and smaller local storage space required. To be honest, there are many other optimizations of MailMate I would prioritize higher than these. I know it may be a deal-breaker for some users. (I do know that some users need solution 3 due to company policy.) I do understand the virtues of online IMAP clients, but MailMate is designed to be an offline IMAP client. Given time, some online-like behavior may be added (such as not downloading attachments), but it is non-trivial and it requires use of IMAP functionality which I have so far avoided in order to not having to deal with even more server-bugs. -- Benny
