RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email client

Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by goblin89 on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @12:22AM (#7942221)

I wonder what does RainLoop use as ‘backend’ for communication with mail servers. Are there standalone libraries that fully support, say, Gmail IMAP features? Libraries one can build a mail management GUI on top of.

Last time I updated Apple Mail it included yet a few more fixes specifically for Gmail IMAP support. This makes me think that a compatible enough decent solution requires knocking together something custom at this point.

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by josteink on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @02:42AM (#7942587)

Are there standalone libraries that fully support, say, Gmail IMAP features?

If you have to call them "Gmail IMAP features" they really aren't IMAP at all and it would be better to call them proprietary Google-extensions.

Gmail does not follow standard IMAP, and no standard IMAP client can fully interop with Gmail. That's a decision Google made, and you can't blame anyone else for the consequences of that.

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by kalleboo on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @10:05AM (#7943913)

> no standard IMAP client can fully interop with Gmail

It's my understanding that no standard (as in, RFC standard) IMAP client can interop with pretty much any widely-used IMAP server. This is a topic that comes up whenever IMAP is discussed on HN. All IMAP clients and servers are full of hacks to deal with specific servers or clients.

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by nl on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @03:53AM (#7942721)

It's been a while since I looked at it, but my impression had been that Gmail does follow IMAP, but some features of Gmail aren't represented in IMAP. A simple example is that IMAP expects a message to be in a single folder but Gmail allows you to use multiple labels. I'm pretty sure that this particular issue had no real impact, but there are others that do (difference in handling deleted messages sounds right?) IMAP has no concept of "Archive", which is a key Gmail feature. I think I remember some talk about how Apple deals with that.

I don't think you can blame either Google or Apple or IMAP for this. It's how standards work: good for interop, but don't always deal with innovation well.

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by pjc50 on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @06:14AM (#7943061)

What does the gmail android app do? Does it speak IMAP, IMAP-with-proprietary-extensions, or something else?

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by mike_hearn on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @09:30AM (#7943727)

It uses a custom protocol. IMAP support in Gmail is there only for interop, if you stick to Google's software it's not used at any point.

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Re:RainLoop Webmail: Simple, modern and fast web-based email... by baudehlo on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @10:01AM (#7943881)

Gmail's IMAP extensions follow the IMAP spec for custom extensions (using X- prefixes). They don't really violate the IMAP spec so much as provide access to gmail's custom features through the IMAP protocol.

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