RoundCube Review

Thu, 12/01/2006 - 21:22 — David Goodwin

RoundCube is a web based email client with added super-duper "AJAX". Here's what I think of it after 10 minutes of use.

It (thankfully) supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite; through the PHP Pear abstraction layer. I chose SQLite for simplicity (and I'm lazy). I'm glad it's not yet-another-mysql-only-webapp.
Double clicking on a mail message to read it is quite annoying.
It has minimal options (good) in the Personal Settings section.
When viewing messages in a folder, multiple message highlighting works quite well, apart from when trying to unselect an already selected message.
I hoped it would preview mail on e.g. hover, or have some other funky gmail-style-conversation features, but I've not found them.
It looks better than Squirrelmail (not too hard!)
The folder listing "just worked", isn't frames based. On selecting a folder, it's contents are loaded via AJAX.
When fetching data via AJAX, there is a nice 'loading' dialog shown at the top of the page which helps make the application appear responsive.
Installation (from CVS) is very easy (cvs co, edit two config files/change about 8 php variables, point web browser in general direction).
There are no dependencies (aside from php-(sqlite|mysql|pgsql) depending on preference, Apache and PHP).
I was unable to use the address book; with a DB related error. I'm using unstable CVS.... so I shouldn't complain.
A quick look at the html source code makes me think the application would be easy to skin and re-theme.

Horde's IMP and Squirrelmail probably win on features; but it looks good and is quick/easy to install (something neither Squirrelmail or Horde can really claim to).

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Comments

Thu, 12/01/2006 - 22:32 — Sionide (not verified)

thanks

Thanks for your review. I wanna try Roundcube out, but alas there's no cpanel plugin for it. Using Horde at the moment

Fri, 13/01/2006 - 15:43 — mrben (not verified)

I've been using Roundcube

I've been using Roundcube for a few weeks now, on the default mailbox over at jedimoose.org. It's pretty nice, although it has a couple more annoyances you didn't list:

1. No signatures implemeneted yet - bah
2. If you select all and then drag them into the trash, although it loads the next page of messages, if you try to select all and drag to the trash it refuses to delete them. You need to click on the folder again, and then reselect and drag - extremely annoying.
3. There isn't a way of emptying your trash simply.
4. Given that one purpose of an Ajax format is to make something 'application-like', not have a right-click menu of options is annoying (although I know some would say that this is wrong).

Sat, 14/01/2006 - 18:36 — Mark (not verified)

Squirellmail's not that bad

Didn't think Squirellmail was that hard to install, especially on debian based systems, (apt-get install squirrelmail then run the setup.pl thingy).

Saying that Squirrelmail is damn ugly and Roundcube is much better looking. I had a fiddle with Roundcube a bit ago and was quite impressed. If it had been around 2 years ago when we were doing the mail project at work, I might have been very tempted to use it.

Mon, 16/01/2006 - 13:53 — David Goodwin

Squirrelmail...

I know Squirrelmail is easy for someone slightly experienced to install; I was trying to look at it with respect of someone who's never installed any web email client before... with hindsight I think Squirrelmail is possibly easier to configure, but RoundCube would be easier for someone to upload via e.g. ftp

David.

Wed, 18/01/2006 - 16:20 — sparkes (not verified)

roundcube

i used roundcube for a while before christmas for me the showstopper is teh lack of search but that was close on the feature list so it might be added now.

mrbens lack of signatures is a ten minute fix in greasemonkey ;-)

Wed, 07/11/2007 - 20:36 — Peter Ryan (not verified)