LuxSci has just introduced a new featured called “Deferred Email Messages”.  With deferred messages, you can select message(s), in any email folder, have them removed from that folder and automatically returned to the folder at a later date and time.

If, like me, you use your INBOX as a “to do list”, this is a big help.  You no longer have to keep old messages hanging around for a long time until you “deal with them”.  Now, you can defer them, specifying exactly when you would like to see them again.  They are moved away and automatically returned at that time.  This keeps your INBOX (and other active folders manageable).

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LuxSci has added a new Widget to its inventory of pre-defined Widgets available to all users — the “Multi-Feed” Widget.

With the Multi-Feed widget, you can specify an arbitrary collection of news feeds from diverse sources and have them be all downloaded, sorted together by date, and displayed to you as an aggregate list of news items in your Workspace.

The Multi-Feed Widget supports:

• RSS Feeds
• Twitter update feeds (showing the tweets of everyone that you follow on Twitter)
• LuxSci WebAide Blogs

In the future, other feed sources will also be supported, such as facebook.

This article is Part 6 of our series on Internet Programming. See the Introduction and Part 1, Introduction to HTML. This article covers the Perl "hash" data type.

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LuxSci’s facebook page incorporates all of our LuxSci FYI Blog postings.  If you use facebook, you can become a fan of LuxSci and keep informed of LuxSci happenings via your facebook interface.

Become a fan of LuxSci on facebook.

LuxSci has updated its WebMail application to behave even more like a regular email program.  Now, users can right click on folders in the WebMail folder tree and on messages in the email message list.  The right clicks will bring up little pop-up context menus of actions that can be performed on the folder (i.e. share, delete, remove deleted messages, etc.) or on the message (i.e. view, reply, delete, etc.)

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LuxSci will be posting small updates, news, and other information on our Twitter account, http://twitter.com/LuxSci.

Follow LuxSci on Twitter

LuxSci has significantly improved the automatic checking for new email messages in its WebMail application.

Previously, automatic checking was lacking: you had to manually enable automatic checking, messages were checked for only every 5 minutes, and checking stopped as soon as new messages were detected.

Now, automatic checking works with the speed and usability of a desktop email application:

• Automatic: WebMail will always check for new email messages — you never have to “enable” anything.
• Fast: Checking for new messages happens as frequently as once/minute*
• Multiple Folders: WebMail checks for new email messages in your current folder, your INBOX, and any other folders that you have added to your “QuickCheck” list (you can have up to 5 folders on this list in addition to your INBOX).  You can be informed of new messages in any of your important folders, even if you are currently working in other folders.  Many folks have requested automatic checking for new messages in multiple folders — it is finally here!
• Notifications: WebMail will notify you of new email
  • Icons are displayed next to folders with new messages in them in your folder tree
  • The “Get Email” button pulsates yellow if there are new messages in the current folder
  • An audible “new email” sound is played (you can turn that off — you can also upload your own new email sound)
  • A pop-up window can be displayed if you have new messages in your INBOX (good if your WebMail window is minimized or hidden — use of this, too, is a Preference).

Combined with our recent turbo charging of WebMail, you will find use of web-based email at LuxSci a productivity booster.

*The frequency of checking depends dynamically on how long the checking actually takes and can very from 1 to 5 minutes.  The speed of checking may be slower than once/minute if you are checking many folders, large folders, or if your email server is responding slowly at the moment (i.e. due to a usage spike). For most people checking will be close to once/minute.

Users of LuxSci’s WebMail have a new message notification – sound! When the LuxSci WebMail interface detects that new messages have arrived,* the interface will play a “new email” sound to alert the user of the new messages.

No, it does not actually say “You Have New Mail” — it plays a simple, standard Windows notification sound by default.  However, you can upload your own sound file (in your Preferences area) so that the reminder tone can be anything that you like.  Your custom sound file can be an mp3, wav, or mid file and can be up to 250KB in size. If you do not like sound effects, you have the option to turn them off in your Preferences.

Sound effects work in all of our supported browsers: Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

*The sound will be played when new email is detected in your current folder, your INBOX, or any of your “QuickCheck” folders — as all of these folders are automatically checked for new messages every minute or so.

Faster WebMail access!  LuxSci’s WebMail solution has been enhanced to make access to email folders much faster. The response time and usage of WebMail is now much closer to that of a desktop email program.

How did we do it? In addition to recent hardware upgrades, we have implemented some aggressive data “caching” mechanisms to make sure that your message data is ready for you when you want it.  This includes:

• Pre-caching: As soon as you access an email folder’s status, i.e. from your login Welcome page or from WebMail itself, LuxSci’s Web Mail application will automatically (and in the background) read the contents of your folder and get it ready for quick access.  Thus, when you go check your folder or page among your messages, the messages will likely have already been prepared for you and access to them will be very fast.
• Long-term caching: LuxSci’s WebMail application keeps your cached message data ready for you for up to 7 days after your last access to each folder.  So even if you do not check your email for a few days, when you return access will remain fast.
• Progress Feedback: When WebMail requires time to process your email message data before displaying it to you (i.e. because it is the first time you have accessed a folder in a long while, or because the folder is very large), you will see a progress bar that gives you visual feedback on the progress of that operation.  No more wondering “how long is this going to take?”
• Unread Messages: Determining the number of unread messages in a folder has been optimized to be up to 35x faster.  This makes folder status checks much quicker and lighter on the system overall.

LuxSci has released a number of new features in the past few weeks.  These include:

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