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Mailblocks Update

Mailblocks, the web-based, spam-free email system I signed up for a while ago, posted some major updates today.

Some of the new features are exactly what I asked for when I originally signed up, such as putting the number of unread emails out to the side of each folder like this:

Inbox (25)
Friends (21)
Work (14)

They also added a spellchecker, and customizable “reply-to” fields so that you can keep a branded email address like john@yourdomain.com. Plus once a person is approved by anyone on the Mailblocks system, they are approved for everyone. So if Ted sends and email to John, who is a Mailblocks member, he can also send mail to Sue, if she is a Mailblocks member, without being asked the challenge question. You can write your own challenge page now, which is nice because the default Mailblocks one wasn’t that good in my opinion.

However a couple of bad things came along with this update, mainly that the service is now pretty much crap in Opera, which is my favorite browser. The listing of folders on the left side of the screen is completely invisible now. Which makes it impossible to navigate to any folders other than the Inbox. I can still move messages to the folders via a drop down menu, but I can not view them once they have been moved there. Why don’t they make all of the folders accessible via a similarly standard and universal drop down menu? I have no idea.

The service is now also extremely slow. It’s at least 5 times slower than it was before, even though they mention this version being “much faster” in the press release. I can tell you that it is most certainly not faster. They even sent out a second announcement email later in the day, telling people how to speed up the site by emptying your browser’s cache. I am guessing that they sent out that email because of thousands of complaints from people saying the site is too slow. I emptied my browser cache (which is only set to use 2mb anyway) like they said, just to see if it helped, and it didn’t.

The site uses a ton of javascript to hide divs, play a sound when you have new mail, etc. Each message is apparently in its own div, which enables you to delete just one message or move a message without reloading the entire page. This seems like it would reduce the time it takes to do something like delete a message, but it apparently doesn’t. Not in Opera or Firebird anyway. In fact Opera gets so slow from bogging down in the Javascript that it is virtually unusable for a few seconds after I try to do something like open a message or click the checkbox beside it to delete or move it.

Now of course the catch here is that when you login to the service, it says that the only browser that is supported is IE, and the site might work in other browsers, but they don’t support it or care about what it looks like at all. So technically it’s my own fault that I’m having problems because I’m using a “non-supported” browser.

However, the main problem I’m having here is that I paid $10.00 to sign up for this service thinking that I would be using it for the next 3 years or so, and at the time, it worked perfectly well in Opera. Now that they have “upgraded it”, I can’t use it at all. So my choices are either use another browser that I hate, or cut my losses and look for another email solution. This sucks because if I had bought a stand-alone program like ChoiceMail and it worked on my computer, I could be guaranteed it would always work. Sure I may not have the newest features if they come out with something new that doesn’t work with my computer, but at least I would always have the version I paid for. With an online based service, you don’t have that control. The service provider can change anything they want at any time and there is nothing you can do about it, even if it means the service is no longer usable to you.

So now I have a couple of options for my email because of this change…

• Keep using Mailblocks but use another browser, IE for “full support” or Firebird because it works slightly better than Opera with the Mailblocks site.

• Use Mailblocks with Opera, which is basically unusable and affects all other computer tasks and web browsing by slowing down the browser to an unusable level.

• Use IMAP to access my mailblocks mail in Opera’s M2 mail client, or Outlook or something similar. Except that the IMAP support from Mailblocks sucks. You have to log-in to their site to delete email and stuff anyway, plus you don’t have an address book or anything which kind of defeats the purpose of web-based mail.

• Stop using Mailblocks and just setup a pop3 account and turn on SpamAssassin or something and deal with the spam that gets through.

Right now I am leaning towards the last option, because I am doubting that Mailblocks will fix the issues with Opera, and will probably create even more in the future, which would be even more frustrating. I’m not going to use an inferior browser just to check my email, and like I said their IMAP support is crappy at best, so I think it’s time to think of a better solution for my email.

Hello.

I experienced similar problems with Mailblocks and Opera 7 (except the slowness).

I am quite happy, though, to use M2 to talk to Mailblocks over IMAP. I never need to use the web console except for making sure I am not near my 15MB of maximum storage).

If you delete the mail in M2, it goes to the “trash” folder (not sure of the name of “trash” in english). But then if you right click and select “empty trash” it deletes from the IMAP server.

Mailblocks rules!
Opera rules!

Mario