[announce] IMP 4.0-ALPHA

[Jan Schneider]

After more than two years of work, the Horde Team is very excited to
announce the first alpha release of the IMP Webmail Client version 4.0.

IMP, the Internet Messaging Program, is one of the most popular webmail
applications available.  It allows universal, web-based access to IMAP and
POP3 mail servers and provides a full range of features normally found only in
desktop email clients.

This is a preview version that should not be used on production
systems.  Some small parts are missing and there are still a few bugs,
some of which are listed below.  You should not use this preview
version over existing production data.

The API, configuration items, or features may change before the final
release, but we encourage widespread testing and feedback via the mailing
lists or our bug tracking system. Translations are not ready to be updated
yet, since some strings will change before the final release.

The major changes compared to the IMP 3.x versions are:
    * Much improved message format support through Horde's rewritten MIME
      system.
    * Many, many additional and improved mime viewers for attachments.
    * Encrypting, signing, decrypting and verifying of signed and encrypted
      messages (PGP/GPG and S/MIME).
    * Message filters moved to a separate application (Ingo) to support more
      filter backends and a more robust/comprehensive/easy-to-use UI.
    * Full charset support in folders, mailbox, message and compose views.
    * HTML message composition with a cross-browser WYSIWIG editor.
    * Fetching mails from other email accounts to view with IMP.
    * Message previews in mailbox view.
    * Prevent message loss during compositon due to session timeouts.
    * Management of shared IMAP folders.
    * Priority settings for composed messages.
    * Integrated quota support.
    * Support for mailing list headers.
    * Ability to forward multiple messages at once.
    * Downloading of all attachments from a message as a single ZIP file.
    * Stripping individual attachments from messages.
    * Alias and "tied to" addresses in user identities.
    * Authentication with Horde credentials.
    * Graphical emoticons and country flags in message view.
    * Various caching improvements to drastically minimize duplicate IMAP
      server->web server traffic.

Known issues:
    * Documentation is not completely updated yet.
    * Downloaded text attachments get the charset of the user interface.

The IMP 4.0-ALPHA distribution is available from the following locations:

    ftp://ftp.horde.org/pub/imp/imp-4.0-ALPHA.tar.gz
    http://ftp.horde.org/pub/imp/imp-4.0-ALPHA.tar.gz

Or, for quicker access, download from your nearest mirror:

    http://www.horde.org/mirrors.php

MD5 sums for the packages are as follows:

    a068702f76ae95d205b2341c8420c6b5  imp-4.0-ALPHA.tar.gz
    

Have fun!

The Horde Team.