lewis Eklund butler wrote:
On 25-Jan-2008, at 07:22, chasd wrote:
A mailbox with a large number of messages takes a lot of memory to display and handle. Thunderbird can simply request more memory from your computer. RoundCube depends on the memory on the server, and how much of that the server admin has allowed PHP and the web server to get. Most admins keep a tight reign on the PHP memory allocation because of security issues and the possibility of a runaway process causing a type of Denial Of Service to other users. If you crash your computer because T-Bird demands too much memory, it only impacts you. If your requests on the server through RoundCube cause the server to crash, that impacts many more users.
And yet, Squirrelmail seems to work fine with mailboxes that have over
1000 emails. Not well, but it works.
Ah, yes, sorry chasd, I was going to reply but completely forgot to.
Anyway, Lewis pretty much summarizes what I was going to say. To a user it doesn't matter why it doesn't work; if it suddenly goes blank it's broken. A car made out of paper might have very good reasons for not being able to go >5 m/h; if it suddenly falls apart without warning it's just broken (assuming for now the driver doesn't expect this, which is the case for roundcube and large mail boxes).
Now, a clear warning changes things; "Warning; your e-mail box is growing large, roundcube may stop working soon." and "Warning: roundcube does not handle large mail boxes well with these settings; read this HowTo." inform users and system administrators and don't leave them surprised/iritated when they suddenly can't see anything anymore.
Roundcube has other benefits thunderbird doesn't have (like being accessible everywhere) and uses it, in a way, to advertise. People will feel weird if suddenly something appears to be broken they didn't know about. Especially if it's known but not told.
"Inherently broken" doesn't mean "it doesn't matter", it just means "can't be fixed". And do note that it's not the fact that roundcube doesn't work that I am criticizing, it's the fact that it doesn't tell the user about it. And that "bug" /can/ be fixed.
sorry-for-the-rant-ly-yours, b^4 _______________________________________________ List info: http://lists.roundcube.net/users/