Improved and more consistent performance, a new menu for marking messages read and flagged, improved Contacts layout, and many other fixes and improvements.
Bugfix (webmail): Update local (non-index) folder counts on refresh
New feature (login): Set inputmode to show email and numeric keyboards on mobile as appropriate
New feature (webmail): Always show popular recipients component if enabled, even with no local index
Bugfix (account): Redirect domain renewals to domain registration app
Bugfix (webmail): Ensure folder counts are updated after read/unread
New feature (webmail): Change icons and tooltips when a message is deleted from trash
New feature (compose): Add debug logs for measuring impact of recipient loading
New feature (folder): Speed up folder size calculations
New feature (webmail): Separate read/unread, flag/unflag in multi-menu
Bugfix (menu): Hide account security until its backend issues are resolved
Bugfix (mailviewer): Load mailpane status (vert/horiz) on page load
Bugfix (compose): Set focus in textarea for replies
Bugfix (contacts-app): Correct filtering options background color
Bugfix (contacts-app): Fix positioning of email contact icon
Bugfix (contacts-app): Make middle column width adjust to its content
Runbox 7 enhancements and bug fixes, including better navigation, improved message handling, and a Welcome Desk with common tasks for new and existing users
A full changelog can be seen directly in the app at Runbox 7.
New feature (webmail): Highlight currently “opened” email in mail list
Bugfix (webmail): Fix up/down navigation in maillist
Bugfix (webmail): Close mailviewer when email is deleted via multi-select operation
Bugfix (webmail): Don’t “check” emails in folder view unless actually clicking on the checkbox
Bugfix (webmail): Display selected-mail operations whenever more than one message is selected
Bugfix (messagetable): Display time instead of the date for messages received after midnight
Bugfix (mailviewer): Store message list view settings in browser
Bugfix (mailviewer): Grow HTML view to proper size right away
Bugfix (contacts): Make sure we’re not adding duplicate contacts to groups
Visual fix (mailviewer): Increase the minimal width of canvastable columns
Visual fix (welcome): Add note about how to return to Welcome Desk.
Visual fix (welcome): Make Welcome Desk a flexbox. Use routerlinks where applicable.
Visual fix (mailviewer): Increase the minimal width of canvastable columns
Bugfix (styling): Fix breakpoints for iPad Pro
Bugfix (compose): Ensure we can forward emails with no To or Subject
New feature (login): Add password reset link to login window
Bugfix (canvastable): Make it possible to open email from the bottom of the screen
New feature (login): Add password reset link to login window
Visual fix (login): More modern look to the login window
We are extremely pleased to be able to announce that the Runbox 7 Calendar is now in beta test.
You may be aware that Runbox for a while has provided a calendar (CalDAV) service for calendar clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird Lightning, and macOS Calendar.
If you’ve previously used our CalDAV server you’ll be pleased to be able to finally use it through the web interface, not needing a separate program anymore.
The Runbox 7 Calendar currently offers month, week, and day views, you may add and edit events, and perform other basic actions.
It can also be synchronized with your other programs and devices by setting them up with our CalDAV service.
As this is still a Beta, not everything that your own calendar program can do will be available in the Runbox 7 Calendar quite yet. One notable missing feature is Tasks (TODOs) support – this will be coming later on as a separate feature.
We invite you to try it out by logging into Runbox 7 and clicking Calendar in the main menu.
And let us know what you think over in the Runbox 7 Forum!
It is our pleasure to announce that the new Runbox 7 Contacts is available in open beta test!
If you’re already using Runbox 7 you may have noticed them already, and if you aren’t — here’s another reason to try it: Runbox 7 Contacts combines the best of the Runbox 7 web interface with the world of email clients.
Modern user interface
The first thing you’ll notice after clicking Contacts in the main menu in Runbox 7 is the beautiful and smooth user interface.
Runbox 7 Contacts is built with the same Angular framework that powers the Runbox 7 Webmail, and you will recognize its design components and interactive functionality.
Runbox 7 Contacts
New Contacts storage (CardDAV)
One of the key parts of the new Contacts is how we store your contacts on the servers. So far they’ve been stored in a proprietary database, with no other way to access them than through the Runbox 6 web interface.
This has been an annoyance to those of you who would like to use your contacts across many different apps and devices.
From now on in the new Runbox 7, all contacts will be stored on a CardDAV server – an open standard for sharing contacts and address books between different devices.
The advantages of Runbox 7 Contacts
If you know what CardDAV is, chances are you were eagerly awaiting this and need no further encouragement to use it. If you’ve never heard of it before, here are two key benefits it has over the existing system
First of all, Runbox 7 uses the standard vCardfor representing the contacts. You may have heard the name before — if you ever sent a contact to someone over an SMS for example, it was a vCard. Using vCards in Runbox 7 Contacts means that much more flexibility when it comes to the information you can store.
vCards in Runbox 7 and CardDAV can store everything Runbox 6 can, and more — as many emails, phones and addresses as you desire, all categorized. Pictures, links to social media accounts, messengers, public keys for encryption; whatever you can think of, it’s probably there.
Second, you can access your Runbox 7 Contacts everywhere. No need to even use the Runbox 7 app — you can use any email client, any contacts app on your computer or your phone, and you’ll have access to the same contacts everywhere.
Add them on your phone, edit them on your laptop, and then they’ll still be available Runbox 7 when you compose a new email. Runbox 7 Contacts contains all the information that you need to set up any other apps that you use.
Using Runbox 7 Contacts
Until you migrate your contacts they will not be available for synchronization yet. Migrating them will move them over to CardDAV and give you all the glorious new features of Runbox 7 Contacts.
Try out the new Runbox 7 Contacts by logging into Runbox 7 and clicking Contacts in the main menu.
And let us know what you think over in the Runbox 7 Forum!
When you log into Runbox 7 the first thing you’ll notice — aside from its beautiful design — is the speed.
Your folders and messages will load instantly, and no matter how many messages you have the message list will scroll without delay and without any limit.
Gone are the days of waiting for the next screen-full of messages to load, or having to click to navigate between pages. Switching between folders, sorting the message list, and moving messages — any action you perform is executed instantly.
And the message search is lightning fast — results will show up immediately while you type into the search field. Combined with message threading and inline message previews, this makes email management extremely efficient with Runbox 7.
Under the hood
We have modified Xapian by porting Xapian to WebAssembly using the C to WebAssembly compiler from emscripten, which lets it run both in NodeJS on the server and in the browser. Our fork of Xapian will be merged into Xapian’s repository on Github so that it will become available for others to use.
This is accomplished by utilizing a custom version of the open source Xapian email indexer. We have always been impressed with Xapian’s processing speed, reliability, and adaptability, and it’s ability to index large amounts of messages.
The Runbox 7 Webmail App is open source and is available in our main repo at https://github.com/runbox/runbox7. We encourage you to check out our code base, and invite you to join the Runbox revolution by getting involved in our growing community at https://community.runbox.com!
The Xapian database is stored in the browser using IndexedDB, which is available through the IDBFS file system of emscripten.
Combined with a central message database and the use of websockets, this allows the indices to stay in sync when new email arrives on the server and when changes are made locally.
The user interface
The power of the WebAssembly Xapian port is matched by the message listing which is written in HTML5 Canvas. This makes it possible to handle large tables and quick re-rendering, and provides good control of the rendering process.
Ordinary HTML tables would suffer slowdown penalties on sorting, filtering, and resizing, and would require pagination, and would not be efficient enough for our needs.
The Canvas element is wrapped in a user interface written in HTML/Typescript using Angular 2+, and is built using UI elements from https://material.angular.io/.
Mail parsing is done using the HTML parser from Andris Reinmann which is written for NodeJS and can be found here: https://github.com/andris9/mailparser.
We are very excited to announce that we are now making the Runbox 7 App available as open source software!
Runbox 7 is our new Webmail service currently in open beta, featuring unprecedented email indexing and search capabilities. It’s the first product whose source code we are making publicly available, and marks a major milestone for Runbox.
Open source software powers most of the Internet, and makes up a large part of the platform Runbox is running on. Now Runbox 7 will become part of this global collaboration, and you can join in by visiting the Runbox repository on Github: https://github.com/runbox.
Why we are going open source
Runbox has utilized and promoted open source software since the very beginning, and we owe much of our success to the open source community.
Now we’re contributing back to the community with the front-end of Runbox 7, which will allow others to review our code and verify that it’s safe and secure.
It also allows others to copy and modify the codebase for their own use, and contribute back to Runbox and our community.
Additionally it means that we will automatically publish the Runbox 7 changelog and issues, and even let Runbox users create issues for bug reports or feature requests.
Why we chose GPLv3
It was important to Runbox that we ensure that any derivative work remains open source, which the GNU General Public License does.
Another reason for selecting the GPLv3 license is that Runbox 7 utilizes the open source Xapian search engine library which is licensed under GPLv2.
What’s new in Runbox 7
Runbox 7 isn’t merely an upgrade to our existing services, it’s a bold step into a new world of synchronized Webmail apps that provide unprecedented speed and usability.
Our new app is the cornerstone of Runbox 7, and is the first of several development stages that will culminate in a completely new user interface.
Runbox 7 Webmail currently features superior speed, incremental search, infinite listing, inline message previews, threaded conversation views, web push notifications, and a Progressive Web App for mobile phones.
Contributing to Runbox 7
In the future we plan to publish the entire Runbox 7 codebase including the backend, but you can already develop the Runbox 7 App while using the Runbox servers as the backend.