previous |
start
Digression: Web-based Email Clients
A significant trend in email usage in recent years has been the
emergence of "Web-based" email systems (of which
the most significant is probably hotmail.com). In
these systems, the mail is delivered to an SMTP mailbox, as usual.
However, the user agent function is provided by a Web server and
CGI (see later) combination running on the same system as the
mailbox is located. The great attraction is that the user can
access their mailbox from any Web browser and any location.
The system diagram looks like:
The main disadvantage of these systems, compared to POP (and IMAP)
based email clients, is their slower performance, and more limited
functionality. There are also privacy and/or security
considerations, since the user's mailbox is stored on a remote
system where the attitudes, ethics and competence of the system
manager are unknown.
The tutorial for this lecture is Tutorial
#05.
[Previous Lecture] [Lecture Index] [Next Lecture]
Copyright © 2001 by
Philip Scott, La Trobe
University.
previous |
start