Unable to send with hotmail

Moving to helpwanted

*** Bug 58388 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

See http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/articles/olhotmail.htm for more info.

*** Bug 99809 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Has anybody any kind of technical information for this feature?
How is it implemented? Parsing the HTML? Is it just different for every WebSite?
Isn't it dangerous to presentation/content change from the Web email service?

Outlook Express's Hotmail support isn't based on parsing the web interface's HTML;
it may be based on webdav or something. Try putting a proxy between your Outlook
Express computer and the Internet and especially watch for hits to this URI:
http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp

I've installed a proxy that works under Mozilla but I am now unable to access my
email using Outlook express.
My error is:
Unable to poll for new messages on your HTTP server. Account: 'Hotmail',
Server: 'http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp', Protocol: HTTPMail,
Port: 0, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x80042007

The protocol appears to be proprietary and called HTTPMail. I've found some
resources on the subject such as: http://sourceforge.net/projects/httpmail where
some code has been written.

*** Bug 109559 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 84205 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This article talks about something called curl that (supposedly) does a good job
about extracting mail from Hotmail.
http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=1820/uni1011713175619/0201i.htm

Cf: curl's Achievements

"The accomplishments of curl and libcurl are indeed impressive. It's not just
that they solve the details of, say, redirected cookie-requiring HTTP login in a
theoretical way. Working, well-maintained applications like GotMail
(http://www.hawkins.emu.id.au/gotmail/) demonstrate curl's power in action.
GotMail automates Hotmail message retrieval. We've worked in this area before,
and it's a sticky problem -- one that GotMail solves well."

May be that could be useful for someone interested in implementing the
functionality.

It looks like Hotmail/MSN webmail access can be quite different than any other
webmail service (like Yahoo!).

MS has added features to Outlook (Express) to use a new protocol of some kind to
synchronize mail between those clients and Hotmail/MSN. I think that Mozilla
should use this method to access those accounts as well.

Yahoo! and others have no such feature (web interface only), in which case,
curl-based solutions may be the only option.

Maybe this bug should only be focused the Hotmail/MSN issue, since that's the
issue the duped bugs and the comments in the bug are about. Another bug could
be used for other webmail integration.

My $0.02

*** Bug 124505 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Change Platform from PC to All.

I suggest adding something like "(HTTP e-mail server support)" to the summary to
help people find this bug.

I say: forget about hotmail. With passport and stuff I think it probably never
will happen. But the others might work, we could borrow some ideas from NAMG
http://freshmeat.net/projects/namg/ or something. Parsing HTTP shouldn't be too
hard. Would probably fit better as a mozdev project, btw.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/httpmail/

describes the XML based Hotmail protocol and provides running Perl/Python code
to download messages (I just completed their code for listing folders).

For somebody familiar with the Mozilla mail code (especially IMAP), it may not
be a major effort to pull in.

And think about the number of mail users Mozilla suddenly gains :)

*** Bug 126497 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I am in COMPLETE support of this. It's time that Outlook Express wasn't the only
email client that supports MSN Hotmail and HTTP Mail.

Source code and other stuff on HTTP Mail is at: http://httpmail.sourceforge.net/

Please, carry this project out!

With MSN & Hotmail support, improved HTML e-mail (bugs 107877,
119594, and 124506), receipts (16241), etc. Mozilla will provide very
strong competition to Microsoft Outlook Express, and when the bugs are
worked out, a superior product. When these bugs are resolved anyone
who says Microsoft has won the browser wars (applied to e-mail clients in
this case) will need to take a look at Mozilla and Netscape.
    Anyone who has access to Outlook Express 6 (Windows) can find the
HTTP address of the Hotmail and MSN Explorer mail servers if they have
accounts.

*** Bug 130651 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This would indeed be a useful feature.

Here are some thoughts on possible implementation details:

There are admittedly questions about whether or not this is an "legitimate"
thing to do, but there are already "commercial" (e.g. shareware etc) products
that do this and to my knowledge nobody's been sued yet...

As a starting point it would be good to at least have a new mail notification
feature even if it didn't actually retrieve the mails.

One common way to allow mail clients (e.g. Eudora etc) to read webmail is to set
up a proxy server on the user's machine. The proxy appears to the client as as
an IMAP/POP server and to the website as a browser. It then "screen-scrapes" the
HTML of the web site to extract the messages and passes them on to the mail client.

One major advantage of developing something that implements a known protocol
like IMAP/POP is it avoids reinventing the wheel and can hide the implementation
details from the client, leaving the back end to use whatever methods necessary,
e.g. httpmail, screen-scraping etc.

Something like this could be incorporated into Mozilla and it would "only"
require the Mozilla mail client to be configured to use the localhost as its
server. The downside to this approach is essentially the user is running a
server on their machine which adds security issues (even if it is restricted to
accepting localhost connections only).

An alternative would be to somehow enable the Mozilla IMAP/POP client to make an
internal connection to something pretending to be a IMAP/POP server within
Mozilla itself.

As far as implementing the back-end goes (i.e. the stuff that actually retrieves
the mails from the web sites) a good approach would be to employ a plugin
architecture with a different plugin for each site (at least one product I know
of works this way). The Mozilla side could provide an API for the plugins to
interact with (e.g. to retrieve the pages, handle cookies etc) and the plugins
would essentially render down the html to folder & message listings and the
actual message bodies themselves, which would in turn be passed back to the
IMAP/POP client within Mozilla.

There would need to be some mechanism for updating the plugins when a site's
layout changed, or at least a way of notifying the user that they need to update.

In the past I have developed one fully working Perl script and a couple of
(very) partially working Python/C programs which were designed to archive
messages, so I know it is possible. The hardest parts (of the back end at least)
are handling the cookies and distilling the pages, but as long as you've got a
good regular expression implementation the distilling's tedious as much as anything.

Anyway, that's my $0.02 for the moment...

My opinion on this is - if its done, only the plugin support should be added.
The main reason for this is that the web sites change quite often, and it would
be a lot of work for mozilla to keep the plugins up to date. I believe its
unfair to do this without grabbing the banners/etc from the web sites. The
reason its webmail is so they can show those banners, and doing this without
showing the banners will hurt their profits if they aren't inluded. Also, they
might do little tricks to block the ability if they feel this is a threat to
their profits. What do you think?

NO NO NO! Things do NOT have to be so complicated. All that needs to be done is
the information so far made available at http://httpmail.sourceforge.net to be
implemented into Mozilla Mail. Nothing else!

I agree completely; plugins and "web screen scrapers" would be best placed into
another bug. This bug should be about HTTPmail as provided by msn/hotmail.
See my comment 11.

WRT ads on webmail pages: I get no ads when sync'ing with hotmail through OE, so
MS wouldn't be losing any ad impressions on me if Mozilla implemented the
HTTPmail 'spec'...

Pardon my naive question:
  Currently in Netscape 6.x, the ability to use (1) Netscape Webmail and (2) AOL
mail are possible. Does NetscapeWebmail/AOLmail use a true HTTP webmail
integration? If so, could a similiar implementation be used?

I think that they use IMAP.

On another matter, http://www.fastmail.fm currently offers a free email service.
This email service *allows you to retrieve your mail from Hotmail* Maybe we
could ask how they do it and use their method but in Mozilla Mail? It can't be
too tricky if a smallish web comapny like this can do it.

Also, not much activity seems to be going on in this bug. Can something please
happen???? This bug, I believe, is essential and must be sorted out.

Correcting the link in comment 3, it has now moved to:
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2000/olhotmail.aspx

Some further investigation of what already exists:

Example of 'module' (plugin) based webmail retrieval system:
http://www.jmasoftware.com/english/download/addins.html

FetchYahoo, a Perl script based 'fetching':
http://freshmeat.net/projects/fetchyahoo/

GotMail, a utility to download Hotmail:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/gotmail/

CWebMail, An email 'gateway' that will retrieve mail, and let Mozilla browser
(theoretically) use Hotmail/Yahoo mail:
http://www.cwebmail.com/ (not responding at this time, but can be found at
http://www.rocketdownload.com/Details/Util/3629.htm alternately)

Not meant to spam, but I thought some of these may be useful in either (1)
Development of this feature, or (2) alternatives if this feature is not implemented.

I am curious to know if/what progress has been made regarding the "Hermes - Web
Mail' mail/news plugin". Hermes is a 'slightly' related mozdev project, found @
http://hermes.mozdev.org/

Take a look at the conceptual 'screenshot' of what abilities Hermes could
possibly have. If any progress on such a 'plugin' has been made, it would be a
step closer to fixing this bug.

Note the SECOND image:
http://hermes.mozdev.org/screenshots/concepts.html

[Note: Attempted communication by email with Azrael, the contact listed for the
Hermes dev. project]

And Azrael responded by adding himself to the cc list.. and saying that the
conceptual plugin images are pie in the sky as opposed to reflecting any actual
ability or work so far.
However Hermes beta and soon to be 0.3.x series will be a XUL interface to
webmail login. Images available on the site under the beta link - here
http://hermes.mozdev.org/screenshots/xhermes.html
which _do_ reflect current state of the project. They are actual screenshots as
opposed to mock-ups.

For Yahoo Mail, you could look at the code for
http://sourceforge.net/projects/yahoopops/

I think this should be taken to mozdev (hermes?) though. It is too much to ask
a developer to do by himself when there are a lot of other projects that are
higher priority in most peoples' opinions. Besides, this would probably need
constant updating and maintenance. It is not a simple project and won't just
end when the code is implemented.

another realted project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hotwayd/

The following document gives all the details nessisary to recreate the httpmail
project: http://jhttpmail.sourceforge.net/httpmail.html
If we recreate it under the MPL then we will have no licencing problems. It
looks very easy to implement and I suggest we start it now. this is the same
inteface as outlook express uses so there will be no problem with them changing it.
Then once hotmail support is in we can work on trying to implement the rest of them.

Oh wait a second... it is not yet compleate. However as soon as it is we should
implement it.

Maybe someone could help complete it? The sooner Mozilla Mail supports hotmail, the sooner it will be considered a viable alternative by all :-)

Also all messgaes to the homail servers should be done using the outlook express
useragent. That will keep microsoft from blocking access to mozilla mail.

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.

Could someone add "hotmail" to the summary line? That would prevent dupes. I
almost submitted a dupe, but then managed to find this bug.

Regarding comment #36 , point two would basically be very similar to imap then?
I suggest that we have a look at how Outlook Express does it as it does
something similar to this except that no pop3 like boxes are involved - even the
sent items box and everything are all on the remote server and cached on the
user's computer when they're not online.

--M.

I am not sure if it is like IMAP. However it is NOT agood adea to have
everything on the remote server. Hotmail boxes fill VERY quickly. point 1 in my
suggestion is the easist interface to use, however it has less power than point
2. It turns out that outlook express treats hotmail accounts like they are a
usenet account not only in the fact that you 'subscibe' to your folders but also
in the way that it only downloads headers untill you want to read the message.
IHMO this is not the way to go. All outlook express is really doing is provide a
new 'skin' to the web inteface via the httpmail protocol.

Also for point 2, I suggest that sent items folder be downloaded into the
corisponding local folder by default to save space on the server.

Speeking of MSN Explorer could anybody with a 'real' msn account or with hotmail
'extra storage' place a proxy between MSN Explorer and the internet and see what
protocol MSN explorer is using to access hotmail email form the internet in it's
 e-mail client? MSN explorer is availible at http://explorer.msn.com/.
I doubt it is using HTTPmail because microsoft dubs that 'beta' and certain
features may not work correctly. It seams unlikely that it uses a curl like
meathod, so it could be doing one of 3 things: using undocumented pop3, imap, or
possibly yet annother microsoft invented protocol. If it is using an imap or
pop3 protocol in the background then it is just a matter of figuring out what
server and what special authentication system it is using.

added hotmail in Summary as per comment 37

I suggest that MSN be added to the summary, as it uses the HTTPMail protocol also.

MSN and Hotmail use different servers, but the same protocol. The 'incoming
server' in account settings would need to have the correct one depending on the
service.

Re: protocol that MSN Explorer uses:
I think MSN Explorer *does* use HTTPMail; HTTPMail support is only beta for
Outlook Express. Per the MSN Announcement email:
   "MSN Hotmail provides account access **to Outlook Express customers** as a
    beta service." (emphasis mine)

Re: IMAP-like functionality:
According to the OE Help, HTTPMail works like IMAP, except that you don't need
to subscribe to particular folders; they're all shown.

When you synchronize folders (make available for offline access), you can choose
to get (for each folder):
1) All Messages
2) All New Messages
3) Headers Only
4) Nothing

Re: POP3-like behavior and/or sent items being local automatically:
I do not suggest any POP3-like access; keep it similar to how OE does things.
If your Sent Items on the Hotmail/MSN servers starts getting too full, drag and
drop the messages to the local Sent Items folder. I may want some of my Sent
Itmes to be accessable through the web interface...

my $0.02

Well it looks like i should explain my reasoning for both as in comment 36. The
reasons:
1. Using an interface that mimics that of pop3 allows a user to easily use tha
mail system. in fact in this mode unlike in #2, the messages should use the same
folders as the pop3 boxes. This hides the fact that is is webmail based and is
not at all confusing to the consumer.

2. First of all I suggested this because it is one of the 2 ways that microsoft
displays the hotmail messages. It has the conveince of being able to download
and store messages localy, yet still has allows a person to keep some messages
online. Use of an interface that microsoft uses helps ease the transisition to
mozilla. I chose this over the OE interface because OE makes your email seem
like newsgroup messages. That can be slightly confusing to the customer and it
is awkward.

And as for comment 41: IHMO the pop3 emulation is a must. That is what would
make the whole httpmail system worthwhile. It would allow you to use both your
pop3 accounts and the hotmail accounts and never even know the difference. And
as for downloading the sent items automaticly that could be a pref. I mean IHMO
it woud be nice to be able to keep all your sent items for hotmail in one place.
that would not be the server due to space limitations. Also to keep messages on
the mail server by default the clieint woulnd not only have to send the message,
but also send a copy to the sentmail folder on the server.

*** Bug 186579 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

i think this proggie might be usefull

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hotwayd/
don't know if it should really be implented into mozilla though

from their site:
'Ever wanted to access your hotmail emails using linux (or another unix variant)
without having to go through the web interface? Well now it is possible using
your favourite standard-POP implementing mail reader. Hotwayd uses the same
protocol that Outlook Express uses to access the hotmail servers, HTTPMail.
Hotwayd acts as a proxy between your POP mail reader and the HTTPMail hotmail
servers. Simply set it up as a service on your machine or another machine on
your network and enjoy using POP to collect your hotmail emails.

Included in this file are some tips getting particular configurations working.
If your configuration is not listed here then feel free to mail me with
instructions and I will add them to the list.'

 <email address hidden>:

The idea would be three layers:

Mozilla Mailnews Layer <- Imap/Mailnews interface -> web site parser

The interface could be pluggable to allow for the web site parser to be
written by 3rd parties. The interface could also interact with MailNews.

For instance: If MailNews deleted an item, the interface would alert the 3rd
party plugin or script that it was deleted. The script would do it through
http and then return the status code of success/failure.

We could provide everything needed so that the 3rd party people would have to
write as little as possible and not have to duplicate efforts. For instance,
the interface could contain regexp support, http support, etc. It could
possibly even help the 3rd party plugin more easily walk the DOM tree of the
web page to get what it needs for scraping purposes.

Don't get excited though. I'm not planning on doing this.

comment #32:
"After it has gotten the messages, it will
erase them from the server."

Pop3 also has an option to leave messages on the server. Mode 1 and Mode 2 are
essentially the same thing.

The 2 different modes are VERY DIFFERENT!
Mode one: the pop3 emulation acts to the end user EXACTLY like a pop3 box. There
is no way to place a message on an 'online folder'.
Mode 2 acts more like imap. for any of you that are having trouble understanding
the difference I STRONGLY suggest that you get a hotmail account download msn
explorer ate http://explorer.msn.com and buy hotmail extra storage. then when
you try to get access to hotmail messages you will be using a non web-mail
interface. Now it does happen that the interface is writen in html, but it is
dynamicly generated by msn explorer and is truly off line except of course it
must use the internet connection to get and send the adress book and mail
msssages. That interface (also avaible to msn subscribers using msn explorer) is
almost exactly like what i mean by mode 2. If anybody here does use msn explorer
and either buys hotmail extra storage or subscribes to msn, please post a
screnshot to this bug. Now mode 2 would still use the tree control in mail/news
and the same e-mail composer, but would not be the same as mode 1.
Possibly as a mode 3 we could have an 'IMAP emulation'-ish mode like that used
by OE.

Now in my opinion Mode 2 is a must, but automatic download of sent items as i
originaly described may be better implemented as a preference. Mode one as a
said before is really what would make the whole thing worthwhile as a person who
does not want to be bothered by having to know the difference between the
differnent email adresses. this mode would be for those who don't ever want to
use the webmail interface for messages. the problem i have with mode 3is that it
keeps allthe messages on the server where space tends to be MUCH more limited
than a person's hard drive.

Below is a crude ascii diagram showing the three modes (for those who have
forgoten i described mode 1 and 2 in comment 36):

Client Server
 +---------------------------------+
 |Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode 3|
 +---------------------------------+

As you can hopefully see mode 1 does almost everything on the client side, Mode
3 does almost everything on the server side, and mode 2 is more or less a
comprimise between the 2.

Now for a brief note on non-hotmail webmail:
the ideal implementation of this would be just as comment #42 says. However, we
would still have to decide on the end user interface. Logically mode 1, and mode
3 would work with almost all webmail systems while mode 2 might not due to a
lack of a mechignism to move a message from client side to server side.

It apears that i missunderstood the power of the ie interface.. I recall my
pevious comments and ask tha we continue with IE Emulation. (although i still
think pop3 emu would be usefull, i may make annother feature request bug about
that.) On annother note, Has anybody gone right out and e-mailed msn tech
support asking of they will release the httpmail protocol specs? It would be an
advatage to them because it would encourage more people to use their hotmail
service.

However if they do give us the specs I would appreciate it if they used the User
Agent to determine that the browser is mozilla and not send us the 'OE support
is beta' messages, because MailNews is not Outlook Express. If they feel the
need to send such messages to Mozilla users they should at least change the
contents of the message to say 'Mozilla/Netscape MailNews support is beta.' :)

If everyone on the cc: of this bug emails the following address asking for
httpmail's specs to be made available.

I contacted MSN live chat tech support, and they gave me, erm, this...

<email address hidden>

The person I was talking to said: "you are our valued customer and they will
definetely email you"

...

*** Bug 212600 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I am not sure on how Hot Mail works, but I do believe it uses the WebDav
protocol. I mention this, since I don't feel the efforts should be limited to
Hot Mail, they should also include MS Exchange Server. I know many people who
would love a replacement for Outlook Express to use in connecting to Exchange
via WebDav. IE they are on the road and despise the Outlook Web Access client
or are at a client site and are behind a firewall or proxy that restricts any
type of mail, etc.

Thanks!

For anybody who wants to try to implement this, I've noticed Gaim
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/gaim/) can detect when mail arrives in a Yahoo!
Mail or Hotmail account. And -- at least for the Yahoo! Mail (I haven't gotten
anything in my Hotmail account yet) -- it will show you the Subject of the message.

Just a heads up

Alexander Hirzel
  <email address hidden>

*** Bug 229671 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Noe Lycos is moving to HTTPMail too and cutting pop3.
On Linux I use hotwayd, on Win32 Blue HTTPMail http://bhttpmail.sourceforge.net
which has a library and imap like possibilities

(In reply to comment #22)
> My opinion on this is - if its done, only the plugin support should be added.
> The main reason for this is that the web sites change quite often, and it
would
> be a lot of work for mozilla to keep the plugins up to date. I believe its
> unfair to do this without grabbing the banners/etc from the web sites. The
> reason its webmail is so they can show those banners, and doing this without
> showing the banners will hurt their profits if they aren't inluded. Also, they
> might do little tricks to block the ability if they feel this is a threat to
> their profits. What do you think?

I think that the email client showed be able to accesses these services
nativly, without any loopbacks or whatever to have problems with firewall
systems and etc. I propose having a email protocol plugin system that you can
add and remove pluging through the options menus in the email client.

- HTTP Mail doesn't use ad banners. ie. if you add a hotmail account in outlook
express/outlook, it doesn't show a banner.

- I guess a thunderbird extension could be made.

- But this bug prob. will never be fixed anyway. And most pple use hotmail's web
mail interface, they don't even know you can use a mail client like outlook.

hell you say?!? Hotmail's web interface is @$$...that i can use outlook to get
the mail is the only reason I have a hotmail account...

(In reply to comment #56)
> hell you say?!? Hotmail's web interface is @$$...that i can use outlook to get
> the mail is the only reason I have a hotmail account...

In Feb 2004 lycos.de send the following Mail to there users:

POP3 war gestern - Rüsten Sie mit Lycos Mail Outlook Synchronisation auf!

Liebe Lycos Mail Nutzer!

Seit dem 16.02.2004 hat Lycos den kostenlosen Pop3-Dienst eingestellt.
Sie haben jedoch weiterhin die Möglichkeit, auf Ihr Lycos Postfach zuzugreifen -
und das mit weitaus mehr Komfort als bisher. Mit der Lycos Mail Outlook
Synchronisation können Sie vollständig synchronisiert all Ihre Unterordner in
Outlook einsehen. Versendete Mails erscheinen sofort auch in Ihrem Lycos Mail
Web-Postfach.

Also wozu noch Pop3? Pop3 war gestern!
Mit Synchronisation können Sie in Outlook löschen, verschieben und Ordner
erstellen und das gleiche wird automatisch in Ihrer Lycos Webmail geschehen.

Möchten Sie mehr über die Lycos Mail Outlook Synchronisation herausfinden?
Informieren Sie sich hier oder in Ihrem Lycos Mail Postfach unter Einstellungen

Free translation to english:

Pop3 was yesterday - Settong up Lycos mail with Outlook Synchronisation!
....

*** Bug 250671 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

There's a HTTPmail to POP/IMAP proxy that works under windows available at
http://bhttpmail.sourceforge.net/ and it includes SMTP support too. That would
probably be worth checking out.

*** Bug 261969 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

this seem to be becoming a lesser importance for Hotmail users

MSN Ends Hotmail's Free Outlook Access

http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,1761,a=136006,00.asp

*** Bug 270755 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 284392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 350619 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

There is at least a budding extension that does this, http://webmail.mozdev.org.

In terms of making integrating, I'm not sure about that. But, in the meantime, satiate yourselves with that extension.

*** Bug 461039 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 462999 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 477784 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 477266 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 478735 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Especially as (even!) hotmail is opening up free pop access to the public - said to be world wide later this year - we should just mark this WONTFIX.

We shouldn't mark WONTFIX. We have gmail support out of the box, we should also have hotmail (especially now that pop access is free).

Sure, as POP. I only meant to wontfix the "http mail" part (or whatever hack would be required to support it for non-standard, changing protocols)

Hotmail now supports pop world wide.

The new account wizard (landed today) doesn't support it yet, but I'm sure hotmail will be added to the list soon enough...

->WONTFIX for the non-pop case, there is always http://webmail.mozdev.org.

Yep, the Webmail extension is just an html parser not a pop solution. So, it seems to need updates every time something changes in hotmail's website. A nice hack for the times before pop access was free, but now that it finally is, we should take advantage of it. We should definitely add support for it (don't want to rise suspicions of bias in favor of gmail/google).