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Modest: Creating a modern mobile email client with gnome technologies

Submitted by admin on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 15:12
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Author(s): 
José Dapena Paz

Modest is a modern e-mail client designed for mobile and embedded devices, that focuses on providing a simple user interface, even when it offers advanced e-mail functionality. It's the default e-mail client for the Nokia N810 device.

Modest is based on the GObject based Tinymail/Camel framework, that provides a simple and extensible API for e-mail services, and support for SMTP, POP and IMAP (including the most popular extensions of IMAP protocol). 

It currently provides up to three frontends: the Maemo one, used in the Nokia N810 internet tablet, a new Maemo frontend based on the new Maemo5 platform and Hildon 2.2, focused on advanced touchscreen interfaces, and a Gnome desktop-oriented one. 

In this presentation we will show the new Hildon 2.2 frontend, and talk about the interesting challenges faced to improve the user experience of Modest using the new Maemo 5 platform. How we tried to simplify the UI overhead in the old N810 Maemo frontend, splitting Modest in multiple views and aggressively simplifying the actions exposed to user. 

We'll go through a more general discussion about implementing an e-mail client in mobile devices:

  • The new challenges massive e-mail accounts as GMail have brought.
  • High volumes of information in very small screens.
  • Performance requirements.
  • E-mail in slow network connections.

We'll finally invite the audience to discuss about Modest, and the future of e-mail and messaging in mobile environments.

Author bio: 
Affiliation: Igalia José, who holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of A Coruña, is one of the founding members of Igalia. Now he is involved in the development of projects using Gtk/Gnome technologies and, in particular, Tinymail. He is also one of the initiators of Gnome Build Brigade. Currently, he's a member of Modest development team, and also a regular contributor to Tinymail. Sergio joined Igalia in 2003 after getting his Degree in Computer Engineering, and is now a proud stakeholder of the company. He has been involved in Gnome/Maemo developments since then. Sergio is currently co-maintainer of the Modest email client along with José. After more than two years of contributions to Tinymail, he became a co-maintainer of the project in 2009.