Modest is a lightweight, fully-featured e-mail client optimized for hardware with limited resources, such as low-end PCs or mobile devices like the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablets. It is built on top of Tinymail, a framework for developing mobile applications with e-mail functionality, specially designed to be fast and resource saving. Although the main target of Modest are devices with low resources, it can be used as desktop e-mail client as well. This is possible because it was designed on top of both the Maemo platform and the GNOME Mobile stack.
Back in October 2006, a group of developers from Igalia started to work with Nokia, inside a team lead by Dirk-Jan Binnema, including also the Tinymail maintainer Philip Van Hoof, and other contributors, in the development of the new e-mail client. The work included design and development of the program itself, together with many contributions to Tinymail and other components of the platform.
Igalia has been increasing its involvement in the GNOME community since the company creation more than six years ago, contributing with code and documentation to several components and applications of the project. The company is founding member of the GNOME Mobile initiative, and member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board.
The participation in the development of Modest has been a very satisfactory experience, and Igalia is looking forward to keeping working with Nokia in the future, and to keep contributing to the Maemo and GNOME Mobile platforms.
About Modest
Modest supports, among others, POP3, IMAP4, Maildir and SMTP mail servers with SSL/TLS authentication. Being specially created for mobile computing, Modest was designed with the idea that Internet connectivity is not always available, so online/offline work modes are fully supported and bandwidth is saved by only downloading the minimum information by default. It also fully supports IMAP IDLE (push email), which allows the user to be notified by the server about new emails, without asking for them. Mobile computing implies that a mobile device could be connected to different networks the same day, so Modest is capable to recognize and use the specific SMTP servers of those networks to send mail, allowing for example, to use the company SMTP at work, and the ISP SMTP server at home with zero configuration. Most email protocol handling is done using the Tinymail framework.
Modest includes other cool features that make it specially useful for standard users. First of all, it provides a fully featured rich text editor, based on the wpeditor project, capable of composing rich HTML/text messages. Second, the UI is specially designed to be used without stylus, just using the thumbs, although other complex UI interactions like drag&drop or stylus painting are supported as well. And finally, Modest comes with what is called Easy Setup, just select a country and a ISP, provide an user name and a password, and the account will be automatically configured.
About Maemo and GNOME Mobile
Maemo is an open source development platform for Nokia Internet Tablets and other Linux-based devices. Its aim is enabling applications and innovative technology for mobile devices. The platform is based on GNU/Linux and components widely used on the GNOME desktop, that are part of the GNOME Mobile stack. Maemo is mainly used by the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and its successors, the Nokia N800 and N810. It brings developers an easy to use development environment. The Hildon-based UI is adapted for the typical screen size and usage of a touch screen enabled hand-held device. An active open source community is growing around the platform, with many contributions from Nokia and other companies and individuals.
The GNOME Mobile initiative tries to advance the use, development and commercialization of GNOME components as a mobile and embedded user experience platform. It brings together industry leaders, expert consultants, key developers and the community and industry organizations they represent. Among the goals of the initiative is the standardization of a stack called the GNOME Mobile Platform, a subset of the proven, widely used GNOME Platform, that includes those components that are specially suited for being used in the mobile devices.
About Igalia
Igalia is a company from south-western Europe (Galicia, Spain), specialized in the development of innovative free software technologies and solutions. Igalia has been increasing its involvement in the GNOME community since its foundation more than five years ago, contributing with code and documentation to various components and applications, and sponsoring and organizing different GNOME events, including international conferences.
In May 2003, the Fisterra project, a framework for developing business applications using GNOME, was published by Igalia. The company has also helped public administrations to increase use of free software and GNOME, and developed or evolved different pieces of software that were required to allow this adoption. During the last two years, Igalia has applied all its previous experience on free software, Fisterra, and GNOME to the mobile market, performing several projects for relevant international companies.
