Before going into designing and implementing details, here are some background information.

Java2Script (J2S) Pacemaker provides an Eclipse Java to JavaScript compiler plugin and an implementation of JavaScript version of Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) with other common utilities, such as java.lang.* and java.util.*. You can convert your SWT-base Rich Client Platform (RCP) into Rich Internet Application (RIA) by Java2Script Pacemaker.

JavaMail is a Java API used to receive and send email via SMTP,POP3 and IMAP. JavaMail is built into the Java EE platform, but also provides an optional package for use in Java SE.

SWT is an open source widget toolkit for Java designed to provide efficient, portable access to the user-interface facilities of the operating systems on which it is implemented.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java. Other than a few native libraries, everything is Java source that can be built on any supported platform with the included GWT Ant build files.

Why implementing another Gmail-alike web mail client?

When GWT is released, lots of developers ask whether GWT will be used in Google’s major products, like Gmail, Google Reader or other products. Yeas went by, but there is still no Gmail powered by GWT. So using Java-to-JavaScript technology to build another Gmail web client should be fun for technical geeks. I choose Java2Script to build this web mail client, hoping it would help improving Java2Script toolkit.

I like Gmail UI, but I can not use its UI for other mail providers, like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. So I believe WeMail will help users doing their email jobs like receiving, composing and replying emails, in Gmail-alike UI for all mail providers. And it will sure increase their daily email processing efficiency.

And there are lots of companies that might block web access to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or other mail providers. In these cases, a web mail client for general POP/IMAP & SMTP will help those users accessing emails even behind firewalls.

So I finally made up my mind to build it. And it was my two weeks’ fun.

Dang, dang, dang! Here it comes WeMail – Web Mail Client for Gmail/Hotmail/Live Mail/Yahoo! Mail/AOL Mail.

Configureing mail servers and login:

WeMail main window, listing emails:

Viewing an email:

Composing an email:

How is this Gmail alike web mail client being implemented?

I use WindowsBuilder Pro (formerly known as SWTDesigner) to design all the UI elements. Here are screenshots of its UI components being designed:

Overview of WeMail in designer:

Designing top menu bar:

Designing logo and search bar:

Designing left side widget:

Designing email selector bar:

Designing email message header:

Designing email message viewer:

Designing email composer:

Designing footer panel:

Designing login window:

Designing mail server configuring window:

Designing and adjust user interfaces causes lots of time.

And what about the receiving and sending emails? I use JavaMail to do email jobs. Between SWT UI and JavaMail, Java2Script’s Simple RPC technology is used. Those mail jobs are separated into following RPCs:
1. CheckMails
2. DiscardEmails
3. FetchMailContent
4. ListFolderMails
5. MarkMailAsRead
6. SaveDraft
7. SendMail

UI events will trigger those RPCs being called in separate threads and UI will be updates after their jobs are done.After RPCs get woven into UI elements. It is ready to be run as a native Java desktop application. So it is:

Running, debugging, testing, bug-fixing, all take times. But up until now, all I do is native Java developments. No HTML, no JavaScript technologies is needed.

After the Java desktop version of WeMail is OK, it will be ready for being converted in an AJAX based web browser application. That is the Java2Script job (I am not going into Java2Script details, more information can be found on Java2Script at Sourceforge.net.): Install Java2Script Eclipse plugin and convert existed project into a Java2Script project. All those *.java files will be compiled int JavaScript automatically. Then pack all necessary files into a Servlet *.war file and deploy it into Java Servlet container server like Tomcat. And work is done. WeMail is available at http://webuzz.im/mail/ .

So it is my WeMail’s development log. Having fun.

Yahoo! Mail provides only web access for free users and does not provide free POP3 services. You need to buy Yahoo! Mail Plus to have POP support. Not long before, Yahoo! Mail provided IMAP services for Zoho Web Mail. It means that IMAP support is free for any Yahoo! Mail users, no Yahoo! Mail Plus is needed. But Yahoo! Mail’s IMAP services is not a totally standard IMAP service. You need send some special tokens before you login. So a customized Thunderbird is need to Yahoo! IMAP support.

JavaMail provides a convenient way to connect mail servers by POP/IMAP/SMTP and others. Here is a “how-to” of making a little modification of JavaMail library to support Yahoo! Mail’s IMAP service.

1. Download sources of JavaMail
2. Modify com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore.login(IMAPProtocol, String, String) from a private method into a protected method, because we need to override it for Yahoo! IMAP.
3. Replace the compiled IMAPStore*.class files in JavaMail’s binary library file mail.jar.
4. Write two classes:

public class YahooIMAPStore extends IMAPStore {

	public YahooIMAPStore(Session session, URLName url) {
		super(session, url);
	}

	@Override
	protected void login(IMAPProtocol p, String u, String pw)
			throws ProtocolException {
		Response[] r = p.command("ID (\"GUID\" \"1\")", null);
		p.notifyResponseHandlers(r);

		super.login(p, u, pw);
	}
}

public class YahooIMAPSSLStore extends IMAPSSLStore {

	public YahooIMAPSSLStore(Session session, URLName url) {
		super(session, url);
	}

	@Override
	protected void login(IMAPProtocol p, String u, String pw)
			throws ProtocolException {
		Response[] r = p.command("ID (\"GUID\" \"1\")", null);
		p.notifyResponseHandlers(r);

		super.login(p, u, pw);
	}
}

5. Modify JavaMail related codes to use overrided YahooIMAPStore:

if ("yahoo.com".equals(domain)
		|| "ymail.com".equals(domain)
		|| "rocketmail.cn".equals(domain)) {
	if (protocol == null) {
		protocol = "imaps";
		host = "imap.next.mail.yahoo.com";
		port = 993;

		protocol = "imap";
		host = "imap.mail.yahoo.com";
		port = 143;
	}
	if (sendProtocol == null) {
		sendProtocol = "smtps";
		sendHost = "smtp.mail.yahoo.com";
		sendPort = 587;
	}
}
...
if (host.indexOf(".yahoo.com") != -1) {
	props.setProperty("mail.imap.class", "im.webuzz.mail.YahooIMAPStore");
	props.setProperty("mail.imaps.class", "im.webuzz.mail.YahooIMAPSSLStore");
}
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
if (host.indexOf(".yahoo.com") != -1) {
	session.addProvider(new Provider(Provider.Type.STORE, "imap",
		"im.webuzz.mail.YahooIMAPStore", "WeBuzz", "1.0"));
	session.addProvider(new Provider(Provider.Type.STORE, "imaps",
		"im.webuzz.mail.YahooIMAPSSLStore", "WeBuzz", "1.0"));
}

store = session.getStore(protocol);
store.connect(host, user, password);
...

Done! Enjoy Yahoo! Mail’s IMAP support by JavaMail.

BTW: You can test out WeBuzz’s Web Mail for Yahoo! Mail, which is using JavaMail and IMAP with the above hacks.

You can create the best system ever, and people will appreciate it while you’re there, but they may end up cursing you if you disappear and leave it in their laps.

1. Download 7-zip, if you do not have one.
2. Install MinGW, please read MinGW’s Getting Started wiki. I choose manual installation:

   Download at least the following (or newer) packages from the MinGW download page:

   • binutils
   • gcc-core
   • mingw-runtime
   • w32api
   • expat

   Unpack them directly to D:\mingw

   Expat

   GDB can use the Expat XML parsing library. This library may be included with your operating system distribution; if it is not, you can get the latest version from http://expat.sourceforge.net.
   The `configure' script will search for this library in several standard locations; if it is installed in an unusual path, you can use the `–with-libexpat-prefix’ option to specify its location.

   Expat is used for:

   • Remote protocol memory maps (see section D.12 Memory Map Format)
   • Target descriptions (see section F. Target Descriptions)
   • Remote shared library lists (see section D.11 Library List Format)
   • MS-Windows shared libraries (see Shared Libraries)

   To download expat for MinGW, please visit here.

   For more about expat, please visit http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb_31.html.

3. Install MinGW’s MSYS:
   • Install MSYS DTK 1.0 in D:\mingw\1.0
   • Install MSYS Core 1.0.11. It is an archive. Unpack it in D:\mingw\1.0
4. Setting PATH and HOME environment, and run D:\mingw\1.0\msys.bat
5. Download GDB debugger sources. I use the latest repository snapshot. And upack them to D:\mingw\1.0\home
6. ./configure & make

You should have gdb.exe in D:\mingw\1.0\home\gdb-#.#.#\gdb\ in about 30 minutes.

To port GDB debugger to a new architecture, you should not miss the detailed guide ” Howto: Porting the GNU Debugger — Practical Experience with the OpenRISC 1000 Architecture “.

Update:

To compile GDB Insight 6.8 under MSYS environment, you should make a patch :

Index: gdb/ChangeLog
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/src/gdb/ChangeLog,v
retrieving revision 1.9174.2.20
diff -u -r1.9174.2.20 ChangeLog
— ChangeLog 31 Mar 2008 03:40:42 -0000 1.9174.2.20
+++ ChangeLog 11 Apr 2008 09:10:13 -0000
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2008-04-11 Hans Kester
+
+ * configure.ac: Added configdir for MinGW.
+ * configure: Added configdir for MinGW.
+
2008-03-30 Daniel Jacobowitz

* ia64-tdep.c (examine_prologue): Correct array access.

Index: gdb/configure.ac
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/src/gdb/configure.ac,v
retrieving revision 1.64
diff -u -r1.64 configure.ac
— configure.ac 13 Jan 2008 12:23:05 -0000 1.64
+++ configure.ac 11 Apr 2008 09:02:13 -0000
@@ -1445,7 +1445,7 @@
AC_SUBST(WIN32LDAPP)

case “${host}” in
-*-*-cygwin*)
+*-*-cygwin* | *-*-mingw*)
configdir=”win”
;;
*)

Index: gdb/configure
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/src/gdb/configure,v
retrieving revision 1.242
diff -u -r1.242 configure
— configure 13 Jan 2008 12:23:04 -0000 1.242
+++ configure 11 Apr 2008 09:05:54 -0000
@@ -23080,7 +23080,7 @@

case “${host}” in
-*-*-cygwin*)
+*-*-cygwin* | *-*-mingw*)
configdir=”win”
;;
*)

Googling all over the net and there is no clear solution to solve this problem. Someone says that modifying ANT script build.xml by adding source=”1.4″ will solve this problem. But the problem is that using Export->… the build.xml will always be regenerated.

After reading the source of plug-in org.eclipse.pde.build, I found that there is an option for the script generator to specify javacSource in build.xml. You can just add two lines in build.properties file like the following:
javacSource = 1.4
javacTarget = 1.4
And exporting plug-ins won’t have errors any more.

It feels great to have sources in hand when solving problems.

A lot of people have been reporting various versions of this issue. In short you are not able to hear line-in audio from the computers speaker even though the meter shows an audio signal. It seems that simply adding a registry key to enable the input monitor will fix the problem, at least it did on my Dell Dimension 9100. Once you add this key and reboot, you will need to enable the input monitor by going to “Control Panel” –> “Sound” –> “speakers/headphones” click on properties, then click on the “Levels” tab and enable the input monitor button.

That should do it, it did for me.

Here is the contents of the reg file I imported to fix the problem:
——————
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings\filter\SpeakerHp]
“EnableInputMonitor”=hex:01
————————

You can either create a reg file with this text, or go there yourself and create the binary value.

Here is my standard Microsoft type warning that you should never edit the registry unless you really know what you are doing!

Thanks snashbar very much for his/her post “Possible fix for LIne-in issue with SigmaTel driver in Vista”

P.S. After I solved the Line-in problem, I found that the Line-In is really noisy. I finally found a solution: change the level of Microphone/Line In and Microphone Boost to 0:

P.S.2 For Mac OS X user, there is an application called “LineIn” for you to put through line-in to speaker.

Along with downloading and installing VMWare, you should also download OS images ( also called as Virtual Applicances). I think you should not miss Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop image (512M). I found that Ubuntu 8.04 running quite smoothly inside VMWare on my laptop with duo-core 2.2Ghz CPU and 2G memory. And I am lazy to install GIMP on my Vista, so running GIMP for some graphic manipulations may be one of Ubuntu jobs. And developing C++ or Java applications inside Ubuntu may be another job for me. And lots of other testing jobs. So owning an Ubuntu desktop is necessary.

(But I find a big inconvenience in my Ubuntu. I can input anything but having great difficulties in inputting 5 characters: “, ‘, ~, `, ^. I need to press that key and follow a space key to input these characters. I struggled hours to fix it but failed. So if you need a solution, please be kind to inform me.)

By the way, why not taking a try on Mac OSX Leopard. Download its 3.3G (expanded to 8G) Mac OSX Leopard x86 image (You should know that it is a pirate copy), following its instructions to install and patch. As using VMWare Player, you have to modify *.vmx directly to load *.iso patch into Leopard:

ide1:0.fileName = “D:\Downloads\Maxxuss-AMDPCNET-v1.0_1043.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”

And you may also change

guestOS = “freebsd-64″

to

guestOS = “freebsd”

So no 64-bit CPU warning in starting this x86 Mac copy.

Well, I feel little excitement to Leopard as it is too slow. So maybe it is just for feature peeking or some small tests. It is not ready for daily work. Hope you have enough patience for the 2-3 days’ image download time and 12G hard disk spaces wasting.

If you are using XP, you may reinstall Windows Media Player 10.0. But you won’t have chance to downgrade Vista’s WMP 11 to WMP 10.

If the mms:// stream seems to be working for your Vista, it’s not. In fact, the stream media server supports rstp:// protocol stream, and WMP try to rollover mms:// to rtsp:// or http://.

That is my conclusion after reading tons of web pages about Vista’s Media Player on mms. If my conclusion is wrong, please correct me.

For Windows Vista users, you already have the latest remote desktop clients, so you can make sure that your connection’s “Options” is using “High Quality (32 bit)” color in “Display” tab, and using “LAN (10Mbps or higher)” in “Experience” tab.

If you are using Windows Vista Professional or Windows Vista Premium, you may following similar instructions of “Enhance Terminal Services’ Color Depth by MMC” to make your connection become true color (24 bit) connection. If you are using Windows Vista Home Edition, you can use registry editor to add a key as following:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Terminal Services]
“ColorDepth”=dword:00000004

Or you can download the registry file VistaTerminal24bitColor.reg and merge it into your system.

If you are using Windows XP or 2003, you need to upgrade your Terminal Services Client to 6.0. And then following the above MMC enhancement instructions or add a new key in registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Terminal Services]
“ColorDepth”=dword:00000004

Or you can download the registry file XPTerminal24bitColor.reg and merge it into your system.

References:
http://www.j79zlr.com/gphome.php

1. Download AIM SDK, both Windows and Linux
In Linux environment, you may already have NSS/NSPR libraries installed, if not following instructions to install it. You only need to run:

cd dist/release/
ln -s /usr/lib/libnspr4.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libnss3.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libnssckbi.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libplc4.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libplds4.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libsmime3.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libsoftokn3.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libssl3.so .
ln -s /usr/lib/libfreebl3.so .
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/tomcat/lib/

2. Get a developer key to use AIM SDK. The developer web site does not accept external email account, so create a new one. In fact, more new AIM screen names are needed, as testing AIM requires it.

3. Try to compile and run samples/accjsample:

cd samples/accjsample
javac -cp ../../dist/release/accjwrap.jar AccJSample.java Prefs.java
java -cp ../../dist/release/accjwrap.jar:./ AccJSample username password developerkey

But you may get error messasge like:

UNKNOWNVALUE
com.aol.acc.AccException: IAccSession_SignOn
at com.aol.acc.AccSession.SignOn(Native Method)
at com.aol.acc.AccSession.signOn(AccSession.java:113)
at AccJSample.(AccJSample.java:47)
at AccJSample.main(AccJSample.java:22)

But if you go into dist/release/ directory, where *.so are located, and run:

/usr/local/java/bin/java -cp ../../dist/release/accjwrap.jar:../../samples/accjsample/ AccJSample username password developerkey

You may get things running correctly:

[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Connecting, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Validating, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Transferring, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Negotiating, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Starting, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnStateChange: Online, ACC_S_OK
[5/5/08 8:34 AM]: OnUserChange: ACC_S_OK
…

That is because *.so may not be loaded correctly if they are not in the current working directory.

Someone says that inaccurate time may cause problems, so run:

/etc/init.d/ntpd start

to synchronize your server’s time.

4. following, it comes to the time that developing AIM desktop client, and then converting it into Java Servlet based AIM client. So, tutorial “Creating AIM-Enabled Application in Java” series are recommended.

5. And time to deploy your web AIM client to tomcat servlet container.

If your Tomcat 6 server is on Windows, you may need to copy all dist/release/*.dll into your %CATALINA_HOME%/bin/ folder, copy dist/release/accjwrap.jar into %CATALINA_HOME%/lib and restart Tomcat services to get things done. Deploy accjwrap.jar directly into webapps folder is not recommended, because you may want to restart your servlet application frequently while loading and unloading *.dll modules may cause “already loaded in another classloader UnsatisfiedLinkError” problems for Tomcat, which may result that you need to restart your Tomcat server.

If your Tomcat 6 server is on Linux, you also need to copy all dist/release/*.so into your $CATALINA_HOME/bin/ folder, copy dist/release/accjwrap.jar into $CATALINA_HOME/lib. And you need to modify your catalina.sh and add two lines:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$CATALINA_HOME/bin
cd $CATALINA_HOME/bin

And then restart Tomcat server.

Related links:

• Tomcat Native library on java.library.path
• Java Native Interface (JNI) – JNI Dll – java.library.path
• Java Linux issues with SDK
• AIM Custom Client Forum