
Mailinator has a new design - aaronbrethorst
http://mailinator.com/?new
======
nikcub
Argh! noticed that all my links and bookmarklets 404! so that is what it was.

I had a bookmarklet that would generate an email, insert it into the current
form and then open a window to mailinator so I can retrieve the confirmation
email.

I also had other bookmarkets and links that I used for other things (I am much
better at writing software for my own tasks than I am at publishing it)

If you used it in the same way I did, the old URL:

    
    
       /maildir.jsp?email={{ email }}
    

is now

    
    
        /inbox.jsp?to={{ email }}
    

there is no excuse to break URL's, you never know how people are using your
product. Not everybody goes to the homepage, fills out a form and presses
submit. The entire web can be used as an informal API.

Edit: I can confirm what Amadou says in reply, you can't directly access the
mail page anymore. Even after updating URL's it still won't load, it is
relying on a token. The way I used the app is now useless.

I don't think the answer to controlling abuse is killing your app for a lot of
users

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I think this would be considered 'by design'.

[http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2013/05/mailinator-is-for-
huma...](http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2013/05/mailinator-is-for-humans.html)

~~~
ExpiredLink
> _A site redesign is in the works (I love it, you 'll hate it_

Yes! Yet another uninspiring Bootstrap-ed site.

~~~
nacs
Yes! Yet another person complaining about Bootstrap being uninspired.

With sites like Mailinator, I'm looking to get a task done and doing it
quickly. If it lets me achieve my goal efficiently, I don't care if the
aesthetics weren't designed from scratch with 100% hand written CSS or if
someone is using stock glyphicons instead of hand drawn artwork by Mr.Ultra-
Famous Designer.

~~~
ExpiredLink
> Yet another person complaining about Bootstrap being uninspired.

Quite the contrary. Not Bootstrap is "uninspired" but its users. The old
Mailinator had a characteristic, easily identifiable look and feel. Sites like
the new Mailinator are a dime a dozen. A typical case of "disimprovement".

------
boyter
The best thing about mailinator other then the service is the blog posts.
There is some seriously interesting hacker reading in there such as,

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/how-mailinator-
com...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/how-mailinator-compresses-
email-by-90.html)

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/notes-from-
program...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/notes-from-programming-
leap-to.html)

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/how-i-sped-up-
my-s...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/how-i-sped-up-my-server-by-
factor-of-6.html)

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2007/01/architecture-of-
ma...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com.au/2007/01/architecture-of-
mailinator.html)

I think most have hit the front page of HN before but its worth including here
for those who have not read them.

~~~
modoc
Paul Tyma is a very very smart guy! And super nice! I met him when was at
Hacker School several years ago.

------
icebraining
Apparently it's just one part of a bigger plan, that includes adding paid
tiers: [http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2013/05/mailinator-is-for-
huma...](http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2013/05/mailinator-is-for-humans.html)

Personally, I just have to thank the creator for a great service that I used
all the time (until I got my own domain). And for his technical blog posts:
[http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2007/01/architecture-of-
mailin...](http://mailinator.blogspot.pt/2007/01/architecture-of-
mailinator.html)

------
gnosis
Here are some other throwaway email address providers that might work as
alternatives to mailinator.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

If anyone has any experience with any of these and could comment on how they
compare to mailinator, that would be very useful.

[1] -
[http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html](http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html)

[2] - [https://anonbox.net/](https://anonbox.net/)

[3] -
[http://anonymouse.org/anonemail.html](http://anonymouse.org/anonemail.html)

[4] - [http://trash-mail.com/](http://trash-mail.com/)

[5] - [http://www.dispostable.com/](http://www.dispostable.com/)

[6] - [https://www.silentsender.com/](https://www.silentsender.com/)

~~~
modoc
10MinuteMail.com is my site, so I recommend it:) It's a bit more secure, in
that there are no shared inboxes, each address is 100% private.

~~~
ExpiredLink
Some of your translations are confusing.

~~~
modoc
They are all provided by users, so I take what I can get:) I'm happy to make
updates if you provide a better translation!

------
pravda
I liked the old site better. Gratuitous AJAX annoys me.

Heck, (just about) all AJAX annoys me. And what's wrong with black text? we
all gotta be gray now?

The new site is all "look how clever we are - stuff moves and bounces!" The
old site didn't call attention to itself.

------
cantrevealname
I never understand why most sites that demand sign-up verification emails
don't block Mailinator even though Mailinator is obviously well-known among
web developers.

It's almost as if there's an unspoken agreement among the cognoscenti that if
you're smart enough to use Mailinator, you get a free pass -- we won't force
you to hand over a valid email address.

~~~
ronaldx
I don't understand what benefit a site gains from blocking Mailinator?

~~~
gjm11
1\. Some users may provide a real email address instead of a throwaway
Mailinator one. The owner of the site can then send email to that address
(which might get read and result in money being spent) or sell the email
address to some third party.

Now, someone who would prefer to give you a Mailinator email address probably
isn't likely to buy whatever you're spamming them with, so the benefit is
probably pretty small. But it might be nonzero. (And if you're selling your
mailing list to advertisers, of course they won't know how many of the
addresses are for people who will ignore their spam.)

2\. Requiring a real email address (that takes some effort to acquire) makes
the cost of abuse slightly higher. So if you're offering a service people
might want to abuse, you may reduce the frequency of abuse a bit by forbidding
throwaway email addresses.

~~~
ronaldx
I did understand point 1: but this type of block would illustrate that a
primary concern is the ability to abuse my personal e-mail address. Assuming a
company doesn't have that intent, I don't think they should send that signal.

Point 2 regarding abuse in the other direction is more interesting, and a fair
point, thanks.

------
bsimpson
Nice home page (way less ugly than the old one).

Looks like it's based on Angular. Notice how the template code ({{email.from}}
and {{email.subject}})flashes before the data models load on the inbox page.

~~~
diggan
Nice looking but the code is shit. They're using Angular but they're not doing
angular stuff. They are basically using the controllers and doing jQuery shit
in it. Unbelievable.

Sourcecode for the inbox:
[https://gist.github.com/VictorBjelkholm/6191838](https://gist.github.com/VictorBjelkholm/6191838)

~~~
babby
Quite believable. The Angular Way™ is unintuitive to the uninitiated.

------
swinglock
"The inbox you checked last time: " must be stored and retrieved by IP. It
gave me someone else's inbox from behind a business NAT.

------
timerickson
Black text on a vibrant green background is not very readable, unfortunately.

~~~
androidb
My point too, the text is very unreadable. On the homepage they have the green
background and white text with some effects, you barely can read it before
your eyes start to hurt.

------
ssafejava
It's a nice redesign, starting out. I especially like the cloud design up top.
I'd just like to throw forward a few comments on it. Please take this as
constructive, not as mean criticism.

* Design:

Unfortunately, it reeks of hip design gone too far - green text on a green
background, grey text on a grey background, and amateurish construction.
Removing the text-shadow alone from the alert boxes makes a big difference in
readability.

* Structure:

The angularJS parts have already been addressed in another comment, but the
most bizarre part is that there is minimal minification (.min.js versions of
jquery & bootstrap, that's it - comments are still intact), no concatenation,
and no gzip compression whatsoever.

I think it's easy to forget that jQuery alone is 90KB, bootstrap JS is 30KB,
and bootstrap's CSS is ~125KB alone. The site is pretty simple; it could
easily be trimmed down into something much faster. The use of jQuery is
questionable, the use of bootstrap even more so considering how simple the
layout is.

The pubsub module that pushes new inbox data is pretty great though.

* Content:

The content pages look great. The little transitions are nice. I like the new
copy as well; it helps cement the point that this is not a serious security
product and it should not be considered as such.

Overall, while it's a nice change, it may be a bit more flash than users are
actually looking for. The massive assets package makes the actual email page
_huge_ \- jQuery, Bootstrap, and Angular, just for such a simple page?
Combined with web fonts, the total payload is well north of a half meg. Intro
transition animations serve to make the perceived time to displayed content
even longer.

A second pass with a proficient JS developer and a keen eye for readability
would do a lot for this site.

------
blackdogie
The mini scroll down on pages like this
[http://mailinator.com/faq.html](http://mailinator.com/faq.html) are like the
2013 version of blink. Overall a nice clean design. The footer is unreadable
though.

~~~
user24
> The mini scroll down

Oh god that is soooo cooool! It's nothing like blink. If anything it's like a
powerpoint slide transition, only much much subtler. I really like it.

------
mcrider
Great redesign! I've used mailinator for years but honestly the quality of the
old site made it seem almost like a shady operation, like they might mine
incoming emails for personal data or passwords. This looks much more
professional.

------
nostromo
I love their privacy policy on the FAQ:

> Mailinator's Privacy Policy: THERE IS NO PRIVACY

~~~
nikcub
That might be amusing, but having my IP address shared with third parties or
knowing which jurisdiction the service operates under are serious matters for
a lot of users.

Especially the type of users a service like Mailinator attracts.

~~~
nostromo
Oh yeah, definitely don't trust them for anything sensitive at all. From their
old FAQ:

> Q: So if the government issued a subpeona to Mailinator to divulge emails or
> logs, you'd rat me out?

> A: Holy crap, yes. I'm not going to jail for you, I have a boyish face and
> very (very) supple skin.

> At this point, Mailinator cooperates with law enforcement when reasonable to
> do so and at this point has received friendly subpeonas, emails, or calls
> from the FBI, IRS, Justice department, LAPD, and Scotland Yard.

~~~
nikcub
Funny because the attraction of the old Mailinator was that they couldn't co-
operate, by design - since it was an in-memory mail store with no logs.

Mailinator is just like a thousand other temp email services now. Not as
interesting.

Killing a good service for everybody is a lame way of shutting down abuse.

------
Trufa
Renders terribly on mobile, chrome on android device, nexus 4

------
paromi
I have created a similar site [http://www.tempsky.com](http://www.tempsky.com)
Tried to make it simple and easy to use

------
lamby
... but does it convert better?

------
gopher
and it's broken on mobile. (Android)

------
yapsody
nice design.. looks good.. colors, graphics are also good.. nice work

------
madaxe
Total train wreck in mobile - chrome, iOS. Someone needs to work on their QA!

