Today we announce the first release of Atmail Mobile UI – a new interface optimised for handheld devices (iPhone, iPod Touch & Android). Atmail has always integrated well with modern smartphones due to it’s use of open-standards, and set-up on iOS has been a breeze with iOS Provisioning but sometimes you don’t want to configure your whole device, just to get quickly to an important email, or compose a new one. The Atmail Mobile UI is the first release of a new way to access your Atmail services and we hope to expand on this base to build a feature rich combined interface to go beyond what segmented native apps currently provide.
How we did it
We chose to use jQuery Mobile as we are well versed in the parent library from our use of jQuery in the full browser version of Atmail and liked out-of-box support for other mobile platforms (such as Android). Using jQuery Mobile and our existing API we were able to get a simple inbox view and folder navigation running within a day. By Day 2 we had messages viewable and the ability to compose an email at a rudimentary stage. In between other work commitments we spent the next week “adding polish” where, through daily in-house use of the “app” we’d modify, test and try different changes to the way interactions were done. Most of the time was spent experimenting with keeping the relatively complex task of composing a message clean and simple on the limited display size.
Launch Early
Mobile UI is being launched early and with limited features. By releasing early we are hoping take your feedback from the Mobile UI to take it to a level of further refinement. We want to make this “web app” a joy to use – something that just works intuitively… and looks good while giving you easy access to your Atmail data while away from your desktop. Please use comments section below for suggestions and feedback. If you have a unique issue, please raise it as a ticket from within your client portal.
To see Mobile UI for yourself you can try our online demo or evaluate Atmail on your own server.
@Helen H: Those are browser errors – sounds like you were on a flakey internet connection when testing. Seems the login form submission was successful, but the inbox failed to load fully – so you were logged in, but it didn’t appear that way until you reloaded.
Mobile UI is an additional to the iOS Provisioning Profile option – our next release will make it much easier to choose the iOS profile from the Mobile UI login screen. Thank you for trying the new feature.