Ian's Handout

What is the project?	
    Goals		
	- Think creatively!
	- Glamour helps!
    What do you have to do?
	- Build a mailer interface in Netscape using a Java Applet
	- Must use Java IMAP as back end
    What do you need to learn?
	- Not very much: IMAP, MIME
	- Some: Java, AWT 
	- Quite a bit: Java IMAP

What is Java?
    - Java is a compiled language like C++
    - Books are available about it
    - Netscape is an interpreter for Java binaries
    - Command line interpreters exist
    - Comp.lang.java might be a good idea
    
What is IMAP?
    - Interactive Mail Access Protocol
    - Client-Server network protocol
    - Written by Mark Crispin @ Univ Washington (DON'T BOTHER HIM!)
    
What is MIME? 
    - Internet standard for encoding multipart/multimedia email messages
    
What is Java IMAP?
    - Toolkit written in Java which implements the IMAP
    - Think of it as a library
    - Abstracts the protocol and its contents
    - You get the "already boiled down" stuff
    - Objects are things like "Mailboxes" "Messages" "MailAddresses" & 
	    "BodyParts"
	    
What is an Applet? (What is its relation to Netscape)
    - Bit of Java code which is compiled and is executable in a web page
    - Must be a subclass of the Class Applet
    - Security is an issue
    
What is AWT? 
    - This is the library written in Java for building GUI's 
    - Has calls to make buttons, scrollbars, put them in containers, etc.
    - Lots of samples already available on the web

What is the state?
    - Code freeze is Thursday
	    - Will include good docs
    - Working mailer that does most things
    
Planned state?
    - More documentation (although already API doc is there)
    - Callbacks (asynchronous event processing)

Short term things for you to do:
    Read RFC 1730
	    ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap
    Read RFC 1521
	    http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1521.txt
    Read the AWT Tutorial (Web Page)
	    http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~nelson/java/AWT.Tutorial.html
    Any and all Java development materials
	    http://java.sun.com/
	    http://java.sun.com/devcorner.html
    Read comp.lang.java and look for people advertising their applets.
    Note: /net/news-spool/comp/lang/java is a directory where all the
    old articles live.

Things I can do: 
    Send out programmer mail about code snapshot
    Make web pages available as is