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brainchild2b · Aug 21, 2003, 06:01 AM

Leave Message on Server, But Remove Junkmail from server

Many of us check emails in 2 places, thus we have leave email on server for XXX period of time checked when using POP. It would be fantastic to have an option "delete junkmail from server" This way I could use mail.app to filter all my emails even if I'm checking it somewhere else like a webmail client or at a windows work machine.

Think about it.

mrfrost · Aug 21, 2003, 06:36 AM

Not a bad idea but as long as the junk filter isn't 100 percent accurate then I'd rather not have it delete mail for me.

kennedy · Aug 21, 2003, 07:26 AM

Or more generally, it would be cool to have a special Mail filter flag that says "leave on server while I'm out"... plus a toggle button that says whether you are currently "in" or "out".

In that way, junk mail won't get deleted... it'll just get moved off the server and handled normally (put in junk folder or whatever your preference). But further, the mail from non-critical mailing lists can be flowed down into their folders, and so on... such that the only stuff being left on the server while you are out is the priority stuff that you want to see on your PDA or phone. The rest you can handle when you get back to the computer.

Further improving it, each filter would not only have the extra "leave on server while I'm out" flag, it could also have "leave on server while I'm out, if HTML" or "..., if larger than 20K" or "..., if not junk" or ... and so on.

Such functionality is the ONLY way I'd ever be able to use Palm Mail effectively... I get waayyyy too much junk mail.

Moose · Aug 21, 2003, 07:27 AM

Use IMAP.

If your provider has enough room for you to keep your mail on the server, then they have enough room to offer you IMAP.

There is no excuse for providers not to be using IMAP, and Mail.app's IMAP support is excellent.

kennedy · Aug 21, 2003, 07:47 AM

Originally posted by Moose:
Use IMAP.

I think you're missing the point of the suggestion... its not really an issue of POP vs IMAP... we do NOT want to leave all our mail out there... or none of it... or even some of it. Rather, we want to leave some of it out there "while we're out" and then "when we're in" we want to process the rest of it.

I guess we can get close manually. Use IMAP and setup your filters for the "while you're out" case. Then have some additional filters that you run manually when you get in... But does Mail support that? Eudora supports "manual only" filters, but I don't recall if Mail does.

Then we need to make it really easy to invoke that... like whenever I bring Mail to the front, I first want it to process the mail on the server. Applescript? I'm thinking of setting up my PowerMate to be the "bring up mail" button... I could drive it off that. Anyway...

Ideas on how to do this?

brainchild2b · Aug 21, 2003, 10:14 AM

That an I hate IMAP. IMAP is slow, and polls the server to often, it's just feels like I'm stuck in the back of a short yellow bus all day with imap.

We need IMAP and POP3 to have kids together, then maybe it would be done right.

gorgonzola · Aug 21, 2003, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by Moose:
Use IMAP.

If your provider has enough room for you to keep your mail on the server, then they have enough room to offer you IMAP.

There is no excuse for providers not to be using IMAP, and Mail.app's IMAP support is excellent.

Yes there is. First of all, they generally DON'T have enough space for everyone to keep a complete email archive on the server, and secondly, IMAP is way more intensive on the server. It requires considerably more server resources to run (both in pure processing power/RAM as well as disk space), which is why few providers offer it. Even if they do offer some limited disk space for you to store some email on the server, the processing power thing hasn't been addressed.

The only IMAP account I have stores email for the last two weeks or so. Some people get so much email that storing that much for millions of users is just impractical a lot of the time.

I find IMAP accounts a little strange in Mail...but I don't want to derail the thread further.

As someone else said, it's a good idea, but only if you're 100% sure that stuff flagged as Junk is indeed Junk.

brainchild2b · Aug 21, 2003, 01:17 PM

imap is just a hog, I work for a webhosting company so I have a dedicated server just for my personal site and email. Even then I still hate imap. Also it's scary to know all your emails are existing somewhere and could be gone. POP is just nicer to leave on the server. So I'm with POP till something better comes along.

Brass · Aug 21, 2003, 08:08 PM

Mail.app should be able to do what Mail Syphon does (available for OS X, by the way).

Ie, give you the opportunity to view the headers of the email (eg, From, Subject) without downloading it, and then the option to select and delete some without downloading them. As well as the option of downloading selected messages.

This really should be an option in any POP client, and would provide the best of both worlds between POP and IMAP (almost). It is supported by the POP protocol (as demonstrated in Mail Syphon), but unfortunately, few email clients do it.

besson3c · Aug 21, 2003, 10:35 PM

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
[B]Yes there is. First of all, they generally DON'T have enough space for everyone to keep a complete email archive on the server, and secondly, IMAP is way more intensive on the server. It requires considerably more server resources to run (both in pure processing power/RAM as well as disk space), which is why few providers offer it. Even if they do offer some limited disk space for you to store some email on the server, the processing power thing hasn't been addressed.

I've heard the opposite, that POP uses more server resources than IMAP since the bandwidth and I/O is required to download *all* of your messages at once rather than just the headers piecemeal.

Besides, secure POP seems to be a less common combination than SSL IMAP.

besson3c · Aug 21, 2003, 10:37 PM

Originally posted by brainchild2b:
imap is just a hog, I work for a webhosting company so I have a dedicated server just for my personal site and email. Even then I still hate imap. Also it's scary to know all your emails are existing somewhere and could be gone. POP is just nicer to leave on the server. So I'm with POP till something better comes along.

How is it nicer to use POP to keep messages on the server (I'm assuming you mean download and keep a copy on the server?) than IMAP if you don't feel comfortable with your email existing somewhere else?

IMAP is ideal for people that need to check their mail on multiple machines, and for Windows users who have their hard drives thrashed by virii...

besson3c · Aug 21, 2003, 10:39 PM

Originally posted by Brass:
Mail.app should be able to do what Mail Syphon does (available for OS X, by the way).

Ie, give you the opportunity to view the headers of the email (eg, From, Subject) without downloading it, and then the option to select and delete some without downloading them. As well as the option of downloading selected messages.

This really should be an option in any POP client, and would provide the best of both worlds between POP and IMAP (almost). It is supported by the POP protocol (as demonstrated in Mail Syphon), but unfortunately, few email clients do it.

To me, the messages that end up taking a long time to render are complicated html messages, or messages with inline images. Wouldn't it just be easier to disable the display of images (and have a button to download the hidden pictures?)

Mail in Panther does this with messages that are flagged as Junk.