Comment 36 for bug 327773

I think we have decided that there are 2 parts to this. the first is HTTPmail
integration the other is plugins for remaining services. the plugins would
probably use the 'webscraping' features. Also if anybody here happens to know a
person high on the chain of command, a call from a top AOL exec. may yeild some
results for any specs on some webmail protocols. although i doubt that would
happen in the case of msn.

Anyway since it has been decided that we WILL implment HTTPmail we need a person
with expirence w/ MozMail hacking to assign the bug to themself. Preferably
somebody well respected in the community who will have no trouble getting the
code checked in.

Then we need to assemble a team of people to get the known specs on the httpmail
protocol and post it either to this bug report in the form of an attachment or
to the newsgroups. once we have the entire protocol we may start implementing it.

As an offical hotmail user I suggest that we have 2 modes. One of the modes will
act like the hotmail server is any regular pop3 server. The other one will mimic
the interface used by MSN Explorer. Here are the details.

Mode 1 (pop3 mimic)
When a user goes to check his/her/its mail the cleint will login to the server.
it will then download a local copy of the messages strored on the server and
place them in corisponding folders. After it has gotten the messages, it will
erase them from the server.

Mode 2 (MSN explorer mimic)
In this mode there will be two sets of folders for each hotmail account. One of
them are the 'online' folders. The contents of these folders will not be saved
to the user's harddrive and are excactly the same folders as a user would see if
the logged in via the web interface. All message operations on these messages
except transfer to a 'local' folder and viewing the messages, are sent to and
carried out by the hotmail service.
The other set of folders are called the 'local' folders. These folders are
'Archived mail' which is the local version of the in-box, 'Drafts', which acts
just like it would for a pop3 box, 'Sent messages' which also acts like it would
for a pop3 box, and any user created folder. Localy the messages are stored just
like any messages from a pop3 box, and the user can do anything to them that
they could to a message from a pop3 box.
The user can transfer messages both to and from the 'online' folders.