VaadinMail Webmail System

  1.  Introduction

 The VaadinMail Webmail Application is a Rich Internet Application that provides all the features which are sufficient to act it as a full-featured
webmail client.

It is built primarily using Vaadin AJAX framework for web user interface. It uses JAVA Mail API as a middleware to connect to various mail stores. So it can work with almost any mail stores.

Currently it is tasted with following mail servers.

1.1. Apache James (james-server-container-spring-3.0-M2) -
1.2. hMailServer - http://www.hmailserver.com/
1.3. Gmail - http://www.gmail.com// (IMAPS mail store)


2.  Features


VaadinMail Webmail Application provides following features.

o   Intuitive AJAX based Webmail GUI – VaadinMail provides smooth, responsive and customizable user interface using Vaadin framework.

o   AJAX based chat module – Comprehensive multi tabbed chat module.

o   Mailbox Sorting & Searching – Emails can be sorted based on the subject, received/sent date, from user etc. Users can search their mailbox on various fields based on JAVA Mail API search.

o   Folder Management – Users can create, rename and delete folders to manage email to easily organize their mailbox.

o   Drag and Drop support for emails and contacts – User can move mail and contacts to and from folders and categories by drag and drop. This feature is under development.

o   Rich HTML email editor – Rich email editor with all the basic features. Special characters, smiley are supported.

o   Comprehensive Address book – Manage contacts by comprehensive address book. All the basic address fields are added. It can be extended to support new address fields. AJAX based interface allows quick navigation and modification of contact details.

o   Inline AJAX based attachment upload component – Custom component has been developed and integrated for attachment upload which supports single click file attachment. Users can also watch the progress of the attachment upload. Multiple attachments also supported.

o   Time zone customization – User time zone is detected automatically and all the dates are displayed as per that time zone.  Also user can change the default time zone after login.

o   Wide range of Web GUI theme support – User can customize web interface by various themes.

o   User Signature configuration as a plain text and as a image
– Users are able to configure signature to be added while composing mails as a plain text and as an image.

o   Quick mail preview support – Mail preview panel support as in Outlook for quick access of email.


3.  Tools/Technology used

1.4.              JDK 1.6 -
1.5.              JAVA Mail 1.4.3 -
1.6.              Vaadin Framework  (6.4.9)
1.7.              MySQL database - http://www.mysql.com/



4.  Deployment


VaadinMail.war
Deploy war file in any J2EE compliant web container/application server
db_tables.sql
Execute sql file in mysql server to create required database tables
DBConnection.properties
Update property file to point to database server in war file
Config.properties
Update property file to point to mail server address in war file.




5.  Screenshots

5.1.      Login



5.2.     Homepage




5.3.     Compose Mail




5.4.      Chat Modul


5.5.      Mail Details Window



5.6.      Folder Management


5.7.      Add Folder