"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructiona...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:ie9hjv$r1...@digitalmars.com... >> What about Hotmail, Yahoo, MobileMe, etc? > > I haven't used most of them for a long time. Gmail gets most > my ranting because its the one I've used most recently. (And > I remember my password to it so I could sign in and re-check > my statements before posting too.) > > If I were writing a webmail program, here's how I'd do it though: > > 1) Start with a regular HTML view. A simple table of from/date/ > subject, and a compose button. The messages are standard links, so opening > in a > new window works as expected. > > The compose screen is a very basic form. The website should be > perfectly usable in the Lynx browser. > > 2) Beef up the html. Ensure things like accesskeys and tabindexes are set, > so > keyboard control works at least somewhat well. > > 3) Go back and start adding stuff on to it with scripts. The gmail polling > for new > message notification is pretty useful, so add that. Having auto-completion > of your > friends' email addresses is a nice thing gmail does too. I might add a > document > keypress handler to add hotkeys, since I'm not really happy with browser > implementations of accesskeys (alt+shift+letter in firefox - did they not > realize > the whole point was to be /accessible/? I can't get my fingers to contort > that way > without hunt+pecking with both hands! But my old konqueror is much > better - hit > control to toggle them on and off - and that's what I use, so meh.) > > 4) The scripts might fetch the message after the one you click on as well, > just > ajax getting the next document in line then doing nothing with the result. > My > server code would be configured to send the proper cache headers, meaning > when you > click the link to actually view it, it is pre-loaded in the cache, and > thus loads > instantly. A lot of websites do it for images, why not documents too? This > would > keep the user visible latency to a minimum while browsing messages. > > > That's about it. It wouldn't be as good as a real application, but it'd be > good > enough as webmail with or without scripting.
You've just described what I call "The *right* way to make a website".
