Email Management System
Email won't die, beacuse it is great. It is easy, universal and asynchronous. There are thousands of programs, apps and sites that give people access to email. They have grown to offer features, power and integration. But each email system is just that, a prebuilt system.
Websites have CMS's, content management systems. They allow users to build websites that look and function how the user wants. Why has nobody done the same for email?
An Email Management System is what I propose. At its core it offers the standard email protocols, IMAP/SMTP. It can connect to email clients like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. Where it differs is in its flexibility, modularity and extendibility.
An EMS should offer a drag-and-drop builder, either via a desktop app or web. Users can build the layouts, styles and colors they prefer, at a folder level. These settings can be stores in a config.json file and/or css file. This allows "themes" that can be shared and published. The format should be open and universal so any app can integrate the features, hence json and css.
Is it possible to store all the (per email) configuration data in the email header?
Example use cases
I hate Gmail's buttons and icons. They are grey on grey and the pictures don't make sense to me. Why can't I upload and use my own icons?
In my "family" folder I want to see email/attachment size so I can quickly delete large forwarded "funnies".
In my "shopping" folders (say I only shop from Amazon and Costco ) I want a two columns layout with each vendor in their own column.
In my finance folder I want emails sorted by date.
A better experience
Email seems to have gotten more, but I want better. 90% of new features I don't use. I want to use email to read and write, to communicate and have conversations with people.
HTML within email is limited but an email client could build HTML fairly easily. Let me select an email thread and click "view as..." The EMS could quickly build out HTML using templates so I can vew the email thread like a book, or a single appended PDF with vertical scroll, attached images could be inlined or made into a slideshow/gallery.
Most CMS systems let you create new posts or pages using templates. I want my compose window to allow this. Compose New > (Letter | Status Update | Gallery ). This is more than an email templte, it is a composer template. It doesn't simply prefill the body of the email, it changes the way the editor looks. If I choose Letter the composer is focused on text styling with a minimal interface. If I choose Gallery the editor will have additional image controls front-and-center. Email templates could be assigned to editor templates.
Better is personal
Better is different for everybody. Let the user decide what better means.
I don't want an email app update to change the appearance and make me relearn my email. Like HTML and CSS, the data, logic and styling should be seperate. When the email app is updated it should update the logic. The data (emails) would be untouched. Styling should also remain untouched since this is something the user sets according to their preferences.
Bringing it all together
If this is all truly open and uses universal standards an entire experience could be shared. I could email my siblings my config.json+css for my "siblings" folder. This could contain views, composer templates and email templates. When me and my siblings communicate we know we are all getting the same experience, both receiving and sending.
My sister might use Outlook.com, my brother Gmail.com and me Yahoo.com. If we all use the EMS as the program to access these email clients we can all have the same experience.
What is might look like
The program/site would have three main facets. One, the email backend (SMTP/IMAP) obviously. Much like a browser it would have the default browser view and also a Developer Tools view- I will call them Viewer and Developer.
Check out Adalo, it is a no-code product. The no-code idea isn't to build the EMS but would be baked into the EMS program. When a user clicks on the Developer view it would load up a no-code, drag-and-drop environment. Layouts could be created and basic elements dropped into the layouts. Say a 2-columns layout, a "Send" button could be dropped into the left columns and a "Word Count" function could be dropped into the right column. The colors and fonts would be customizable.
Pinegrow is another exmple of what the EMS Developer could look like.
Ugly as sin with a horrible floating compose window- all the functions are hidden.
Publii Editor, simple and clean. This is what I want my email composer to look like.
