[Imap-uw] Outlook deadlock

[Andy Lyttle]

The trouble here is that users don't want a "real" IMAP client.  They  
want something that behaves (on the front end) the way they expect -  
something that behaves the way they're used to, or behaves  
intuitively.  They don't care what happens on the back end, as long  
as it doesn't fail.

One of the things this means is, when they delete a message, they  
want it to immediately disappear, but silently be moved to a Trash  
folder that they can sift through later if they change their mind.   
They expect this, because this is what happens when you delete a file  
on Mac OS or Windows (95 and later), and even from the GUI in many  
Linux distributions.  IMAP isn't designed to work this way at all, so  
in order to satisfy the users, clients like Thunderbird have to work  
around IMAP instead of embracing it.

In my experience, Thunderbird and Apple's Mail do a good job at  
this.  I haven't worked with it that much yet, but apparently Outlook  
2007 also behaves reasonably, unlike all previous versions of Outlook  
which are complete crap.

If you have a problem with specific things that Thunderbird does when  
it talks to an IMAP server, I would recommend talking to the Mozilla  
people.  They're on IRC at irc.mozilla.org #thunderbird, and I  
imagine there's probably a mailing list.  If you find behavior that  
you consider to be a bug, search Bugzilla to see if they already know  
about it, and if not, submit a report.  Finally, remember that it is  
an open source project, and you're welcome to look through the code  
yourself.  Start here:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/imap/

Hope this helps. :-)

~ Andy