

HTTP Access to Email Stores - rvkennedy
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dusseault-httpmail-00

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rvkennedy
We're not talking about webmail here, but direct access by HTTP request,
either from a website or a desktop/mobile client. Some other relevant links
for this:

<http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2010/02/how-to-replace-imap.html>

<http://blog.webhooks.org/2009/02/13/restful-email-over-http/>

HTTP has had about 20 years of use, development, testing - culminating in SPDY
now, which could get even 40% faster in some cases. I'm not sure I can think
of a good reason _not_ to make the switch.

~~~
baudehlo
There's probably more overhead in the request via HTTP than there is via IMAP,
to be honest. I can't see any reason to make this switch other than being able
to support port 80.

~~~
justincormack
The reason is to write standardized webmail applications and other javascript
apps that want to interact with the email universe.

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foobarbazetc
How about we get rid of all the MIME/XML stuff and just represent emails as
JSON objects?

The end.

~~~
rue
JSON is a MIME type.

~~~
ollybee
application/json

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elisee
If we're going to keep moving more and more apps from native to Web-based, I
think we're going to see a lot more of this (standardizing an existing service
to be accessible over HTTP), since WebSockets can't connect to any raw TCP
sockets (and they shouldn't, that would be terrible security-wise) and WebRTC
has the same approach: a protocol of its own with its own handshake & rules.

Better that than have everyone builds its own incompatible HTTP / REST API for
common services.

I do wonder if there's any big companies like Google which have pledged to
support this spec?

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jamesu
Didn't Outlook Express use some sort of DAV HTTP protocol to retrieve email
from Hotmail?

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balakk
Exchange also supports WebDAV - Outlook web access uses(d?) it. In fact, this
became one of the easiest ways of integrating with Exchange server. Now that
Exchange 2007+ has a full web services API, I hear the DAV stuff has been
deprecated.

~~~
yuhong
And I don't think it is in Exchange 2010

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pepijndevos
I'm not familiar with the IETF process, but it says "Expires: April 27, 2009"

With that said, I've been exploring the concept a while back myself. I tend to
think of email as the largest "social" network in the world, and I think it's
good to give it a sexy web face, and then extend it.

<https://github.com/pepijndevos/Wemail>

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cmer
FYI, Context.io does something similar to this. I know a few YC companies use
them.

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obilgic
What is the mark up language used for this plain text file? I really like the
format of these minimalist 1 page documents.

~~~
icebraining
I don't think there's a language, I believe it's just plain-text that gets
marked up by rfcmarkup[1].

[1]: <https://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcmarkup/>

