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Web-Based E-Mail May 29, 2000 By Sean Doherty Web-based e-mail comes close to reaching the goal of a universal mailbox that holds all the information one needs to review yesterday, act on today and plan for tomorrow. Housed on a server connected to the Internet, Web mail can be accessed via a browser from any locale. With Web mail, you no longer need a PC wed to a proprietary e-mail application affixed to a LAN. You can check your e-mail from any computer connected to the Internet. This convenience warrants our first comparative review of Web messaging clients. The convenience of "anytime, anywhere" messaging comes at the expense of the functionality we're accustomed to with LAN-based messaging systems and fat Windows clients. Still in the early stages, Web mail products have room to grow. For example, Web browsers don't yet support the ability to share folders with other users and grant proxy rights to calendars and scheduling functions. Vendors, however, are extending their products' capabilities. Java, JavaScript and WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) are adding muscle to browsers without the bulk. Web clients now support contacts and address books, calendars and scheduling, and public folders and HTML authoring. These and other technologies may extend Web mail to other appliances that connect to the Internet and receive information. One day, e-mail may pop up with our toast in the morning. For now, we reviewed six Web mail packages that could run under Microsoft Corp. Windows 2000 Server/NT 4.0 or Novell NetWare with a Web interface to e-mail (see "How We Tested"). In tests at our Real-World Labs® at Syracuse University, the beta version of Lotus Development Corp. iNotes R5 Web mail (now shipping) captured our Editor's Choice award. Lotus was most notable for providing browsers an offline service with groupware functions that surpass those of runner-up Novell GroupWise 5.5e WebAccess. Although the WebAccess interface caught our attention, it does not share the groupware functions of its 32-bit Windows counterpart, and it didn't win any points by failing to let users administer their own mailboxes. It did muster enough functionality and features to beat Ipswitch Imail Server 6.0 and a beta of Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Outlook for Web Access (OWA), as well as Critical Path InScribe Internet Messaging Server Web Mail and Novell Internet Messaging System (NIMS) 2.1. Netscape Communications Corp. declined to let us test Messaging Server, and CommuniGate Pro Messaging Server was brought to our attention too late to be included. We voted Imail our champion for power users. Imail supplied the most user options and a highly configurable interface design. OWA tied Imail, thanks to its Internet Explorer (IE) 5.x support for drag-and-drop functionality and its intuitive environment, similar to that of the Outlook client for Windows. InScribe and NIMS lacked the functionality and groupware capabilities to vie with the likes of iNotes, OWA and WebAccess. Although last, they were certainly not least in all categories. InScribe, like Imail, provides a highly customizable interface and support for banner advertisements. NIMS provides basic Web mail services and scored well in user-initiated management tasks. Though not on a par with fat clients, each product under test excelled in providing simple mail features. Just like fat clients, our Web browsers were able to read, send and manage mail, and act on multiple messages. And we were impressed with the integrated contacts and address-book features. The lack of support for groupware features disappointed us, however. We had hoped Web mail would bring the singular nature of e-mail closer to the plural nature of groupware. Lotus iNotes and OWA clients can view mail as discussion lists and, along with WebAccess and InScribe, can provide access to public folders. However, sharing folders among Web mail clients still requires administrators to initiate a public space and grant users the appropriate rights. Users cannot share their folders or create folders in the public domain and then limit access by user or group.
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