Gmail, the AJAX webmails ancestor

Since we started talking about Gmail we can enumerate the features that are powered by AJAX :
- Check username availability in the signup page
- AJAX Spell check
- AJAX page loader to power reading email, loading emails in conversations, browsing and searching ...
- Starring emails
- Live search for contact during typing new messages
- Auto save email while writing new messages
- Auto upload files
- Web clips
- Alternative HTML view of GMail, this is not AJAX but to make webmail accessible

... and maybe more that I have forgot ! In total this make from Gmail an easy to use and intuitive web application, reading email is really a pleasure even that some policy could make people have another idea about it specially if we talk about privacy and we see that google is serving relevant ads to your email, but this is another story.

We can see also the number of things that AJAX can do for a web application, how naviguation is made easier, how is useful to autosave emails so if the browser crash you can always find it ...

The new Yahoo! mail, Powered by AJAX and PHP

Yahoo have a new beta version of their webmail, with certainly a new excellent user interface experience. Usage of tabs is really interesting where you can jump from a section to another, from inbox to compose a new message ... Calendars also have been ajaxified, I find it really an excellent ajax webmail that have been developped with PHP.

Hotmail Ajaxified, the AJAX webmail ala Microsoft

Hotmail have joined also the AJAX webmails in its latest beta version (Kahuna), with a new AJAX based user interface with drag and drop and lot of features that make it very recognizable to the desktop MS Outlook. The new hotmail include not only email, but also contacts and calendar application. Kahuna is planned to be available for public in the first half of 2006.

Roundcube, the Open source webmail

Roundcube is an excellent open source experience for an AJAX webmail, and what will really attract you to Roundcube is its advanced user interface with drag and drop fonctionnalities which make it very easy to organize your email. There is many planned AJAX features to improve the usability of Roundcube, but the good point is that you have a new experience of using email like you are using a desktop application thanks to the drag and drop feature from folder to another.

Roundcube is at its very early stage and released under GPL license.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Zimbra is not only a webmail, but a collaboration suite including email, contacts, calendar ... Zimbra is available as an open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration which could be used via an AJAX web based interface or via desktop applications such Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird ... etc.

Even that Zimbra offer more than one way to access its collaboration server, the best Zimbra experience will be using the AJAX web based application, drag and drop, conversation, message tagging, unified search, rss and atom feeds ... etc.

Zimbra is available as Open Source Edition and Network edition.

More webmails are following

I certainly can't list everybody but today many professional webmail application are implementing AJAX features to make their software usability better and improve their users experience in webmail.

* webmail.us for example have implemented some AJAX feature in their interface, just allowing to jump from a folder to another more easier
* @Mail, the commercial PHP webmail software have implemented some AJAX feature in their webmail such autocomplete feature. Calacode the company behind this software is also looking for AJAX and PHP developers to assist with further development and enhancements to the @Mail software

Conclusion

To conclude you have certainly noticed that lot of webmails are following the AJAX model in a very big competition between the giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, but also many other professionals which have already developped very powerfull AJAX webmails with great user interface.