Roundcube: friendlier webmail
I generally run screaming from web applications, open source or not, that seem to refuse to spend time on simple aesthetics. I’m not even talking usability here, I just like the thing to be pretty. Webmail is one of those areas where many of the user interfaces leave much to be desired. While Gmail is passable (mostly because of the wonderful functionality) it really is quite the beast especially if you compare it to it’s calendaring cousin (which is quite nice!). Zimbra seems to have a lot of play in blogosphere but I personally find it lacking. There is open webmail as well but why use icons that look like something out of Windows 3.1 Borland C++ icon land? And, of course, the reason I’m even talking about this is because SquirrelMail got hit with the ugly stick.
As a solution to the default webmail interface that dreamhost offers, I’ve installed roundcube. After looking at some detailed set up instructions (thanks, Paul!), I was able to set it up without a problem on my shared dreamhost account as an alternative for getting at mail via the web should the need arise. There seems to be a few caveats (for some reason, moving mail to trash seems to hang), but for just reading and responding to mail it works just fine. Now all I need to do is figure out how to get it to use SSL. It’s still in development but seems stable enough…and most important of all, it’s pretty.