Anyone fancy writing an Outlook Clone in Flash?

[crisward]

I have a small business, and we currently use Outlook. We would like to share diaries and see our diary etc when away from the office.

The only way we can do this is with one of those expensive exchange servers.

I have looked into some PHP groupware programs to stick on our linux server, but all their frontends are done in HTML so are a bit of a pain to use.

Have any of you tried creating a outlook type program in flash. Or perhaps you have created some of its components, ie a diary, a calender, a notepad. I think with a bit of collaboration it could be possible to build a LAMP ( Linux Apache MySQL PHP ) groupware program. With flash interface components it could be a pleasure to use. It wouldn't require installing ( just point at your intranet server ). If it was developed with plugins in mind we could make it extendable.

What does everyone think? I think its about time I gave something back to GPL...


Cris.

[random_fool]

Few thoughts....

1) It's a lot of work. A LOT. Things like squirrelmail and phpGroupware have been around a long time, and the fact that they're still not at the same level as Outlook's web client isn't to be ignored.

2) It's doable. I'm not a flash person myself, but the backend in PHP would be relatively straightforward, as long as you don't want it to interoperate with Exchange (which uses RPC and undocumented protocols). Pure PHP/IMAP/SQL backend would be doable in 80 hours, or so.

3) The GPL is a towering pantload. As a license, it's a crock. It basically says: "Here's my code, I'm giving it away. But I'm not really giving it away, I'm making it available for people only if they want to help me write it. So go ahead and use it, but if you change it, I get to see those changes too!". If you want to give code away, use the BSD license (which says "Here's my code. Do whatever you want with it, just don't claim it as yours, and don't hold me responsible if someone dies because of it.").

[audas]

Yeah I'm thinking about doing something similar pretty soon to get around the restrictions on The three network in Australia so that I can access email on my phone. But doing it over a server for normal internet would be easy as. Not sure what chrisward was thinking but anyway. Diary and calendar, addresses / contacts, would all be straight forward as well. PHP,MySql,Apache. (Dont tell me we are going to have to do it in XML).

[Jaffasoft]

Why not use Yahoo's online Dairy its got calender(calender alerts ect) email address and contacts lists information details and Notepad. You could use that as a diary. yahoo's done all the work and set it up for you to use it straight away. it's online and convienient you know its always going to be there because yahoo's a big company and will be around for a long time. They have done all the hard work plus there is extra services to sign up for if you feel you need to pay for some of them.
Just sign up for a yahoo email and all of you in the business could use in confidentialy between each of you and all have the same password to the same thing. You may not want to use its email. So it would be just there and use it for the calender , notpade , storing information.
If you work it with Yahoo Messanger you get calender reminders alerts ect. I use it all the time it never scews up anything.

[the sherrif]

if i wanted to create a simple email client in flash, i would go about the following:

- create a java connection/communication router (i think thats my own terminology i just made up) : you connect to the java server, tell it which pop3 server to connect to, and then it establishes a connection with the pop3 server. the java server than acts as a middle link, routing all the data to and from the client. (this is all because flash cant connect to a normal pop3 port, because its under 1024, and flash canot establish a raw socket, which i think is really poor).

- create the flash client. if youve learnt how to send and recieve emails via telnet.exe, then this would be really easy to do.

i cant see a way of sending and recieving attachments with a flash client, it just doesnt have that IO capability.

[nocrapchurch]

I agree with everyone that has said this is a huge task, but it would definitely be interesting.

crisward, what is the status of the project at the moment?

Scott

[crisward]

I haven't touched the project yet.

I think the 1st step would be a diary, and perhaps a flash front end for squirrel mail or something.

If I start anything I'll perhaps bung it on source forge or something.

If anyone has any components they want to offer toward a foundation they will be more than welcome.

Cris

[Vincent26381]

Sorry for bumping this way up.

Starting to make it with SWiSH max. (yeah sorry, no Flash)
It is actually pretty doable. From Hotscripts I downloaded Cowmail, a free and straight-forward PHP mail script (it's ugly too)

Modifying it a bit to work with SWiSH max and added a PHP class to convert the xml-like tags outlook and a bunch of others use. Baiscly it gets converted to plain text.

Attachments can't be send just yet (going to be a pop-up for attchments), recieving works fine (showing paperclip). I haven't got a button for downloading attachments because there can be more then one.

You can check it yourself if you login with your pop mailbox username and password.


(If you then send a message to demo@avviso.nl you should recieve it in the webmail within seconds)

http://www.avviso.nl/webmail

Vincent