I've used Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail client on Windows, for a while now. This worked out better for me than Eudora, Outlook express. Ever since I lost my account at Yahoo some years back, I store important messages on PC. I switched Gmail for the fact that they allowed POP client. (On Yahoo, I had to pay for that service!)
Since I moved to Linux last year, I've tried various software on it. I had Evolution as my mail client as it comes as default on Ubuntu. It was very similar to Thunderbird, but there were some issues: For some reason the address lookup never worked for me there. Also, it had some file permission problems constantly, so my sent mail will sit in outbox forever. Worse yet, it used to silently crash and restart itself every now and then. I am sure, I could have googled for a solution, but I decided to go back to Thunderbird. I love it.
(Googling for "ThunderBird vs Evolution" brings backs hundreds of threads like the one below. They also talk about Kontact, Claws etc. Must explore in the future.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-256684.html. )
When I got Thunderbird, I set it up POP settings for Google. Since, I have 2 PCs connecting POP to Google mail, messages started disappearing on either, depending on which one got it first. (Nature of POP, once you downloaded a message, it's no longer available to download. See below link). Then I discovered IMAP. It's always been there, but suddenly it occurred to me that I could use that for a multi-client setup. I did that, and it's been working OK. One thing with IMAP is that it's a direct access to the Internet Mailbox. So, nothing is stored on your PC. But, IMAP has an option to store locally as well. So, on one PC I set it up to download and the other just connect directly. Below link has a nice article about IMAP vs POP mail.
http://www1.umn.edu/adcs/guides/email/imapvspop.html
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Java & I - My Java Development experience
Over the years I worked with various versions of Java through 1.6. But, Java was never my main bread & butter. Irrespective of the environment there was always some flavor of Java used in the development environment.
Java Swing, Applet etc
I started working with Java 1.0, many years ago. All those books and web sites with applet code with flashy animations made it look really interesting. (Real applet experience was totally different though!). Since then, I've worked in Java on and off. For a few years, I worked in a Java swing building Java applet (2MB jar!!) against a Forte Server. This included working with Visual Cafe, Visigenic CORBA, IDL files etc. Then I had chance to upgrade the application Java 1.2.
J2EE?!
Later, I got a chance to work on a J2EE application against Oracle. This ran in Apache and JBOSS. Java bean, EJB, Servlets, JSP and the whole nine-yards of typical Java developer's field. Then I got contracts to work on PB and VB. I kept in touch with Java though.
Java as a reporting tool
Couple of years ago, I got back into Java when I worked on a Java reporting package based around BIRT Java API for working with Excel files. (I think it's owned by Actuate now). The Java program was part of the batch environment on UNIX. We used it to generate Excel reports (with multiple worksheets) to be sent to users via e-mail. This was a challenging project.
Java Stored Procedures
Recently I got a change to work on yet another Java flavor. As mentioned elsewhere, where I work currently, the environment is mainly in Powerbuilder and Oracle. Every now and then we find some surprises (in the last 18 months I've learned to expect there). There are a lot of Java packages/programs built around the PB application. These run on EA Server's Java container and use CORBA layer to talk to the PB application. The one I worked recently was slightly different. It was not the usual JDBC application, but a Java Stored procedure(s) that runs inside Oracle. I ended up in cleaning up the code, setting up a development environment around Eclipse and Ant and setting standards for other developers.
Java JSP, Coldfusion
We also have a lot of JSP pages that use CORBA to talk to our PB application through IIOP/CORBA. Recently we started building Coldfusion pages. While trying to help the developers to interface with our PB application, I realized that Coldfusion has been completely rewritten in Java. Coldfusion server was running on a Linux box. To get this to work with our Powerbuilder (EA) server, we needed a Visigenic product. (I eventually wrote a Java class that interfaces with the CORBA thus isolating Coldfusion from CORBA thus saving money for the company).
So many places, so many flavors. I've been having fun with Java. I hope to share some of these experiences here. In the coming posts, I will go into more detail about these Java experiences, hoping it would benefit some newcomers.
Java Swing, Applet etc
I started working with Java 1.0, many years ago. All those books and web sites with applet code with flashy animations made it look really interesting. (Real applet experience was totally different though!). Since then, I've worked in Java on and off. For a few years, I worked in a Java swing building Java applet (2MB jar!!) against a Forte Server. This included working with Visual Cafe, Visigenic CORBA, IDL files etc. Then I had chance to upgrade the application Java 1.2.
J2EE?!
Later, I got a chance to work on a J2EE application against Oracle. This ran in Apache and JBOSS. Java bean, EJB, Servlets, JSP and the whole nine-yards of typical Java developer's field. Then I got contracts to work on PB and VB. I kept in touch with Java though.
Java as a reporting tool
Couple of years ago, I got back into Java when I worked on a Java reporting package based around BIRT Java API for working with Excel files. (I think it's owned by Actuate now). The Java program was part of the batch environment on UNIX. We used it to generate Excel reports (with multiple worksheets) to be sent to users via e-mail. This was a challenging project.
Java Stored Procedures
Recently I got a change to work on yet another Java flavor. As mentioned elsewhere, where I work currently, the environment is mainly in Powerbuilder and Oracle. Every now and then we find some surprises (in the last 18 months I've learned to expect there). There are a lot of Java packages/programs built around the PB application. These run on EA Server's Java container and use CORBA layer to talk to the PB application. The one I worked recently was slightly different. It was not the usual JDBC application, but a Java Stored procedure(s) that runs inside Oracle. I ended up in cleaning up the code, setting up a development environment around Eclipse and Ant and setting standards for other developers.
Java JSP, Coldfusion
We also have a lot of JSP pages that use CORBA to talk to our PB application through IIOP/CORBA. Recently we started building Coldfusion pages. While trying to help the developers to interface with our PB application, I realized that Coldfusion has been completely rewritten in Java. Coldfusion server was running on a Linux box. To get this to work with our Powerbuilder (EA) server, we needed a Visigenic product. (I eventually wrote a Java class that interfaces with the CORBA thus isolating Coldfusion from CORBA thus saving money for the company).
So many places, so many flavors. I've been having fun with Java. I hope to share some of these experiences here. In the coming posts, I will go into more detail about these Java experiences, hoping it would benefit some newcomers.
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