Extending JBiff
This short script can be extended to the point that it is a handy utility, especially for those people who have multiple mail accounts on various machines. Here are a few ideas:
Take input from a configuration file, perhaps in each users home directory. The configuration can include information for multiple mail accounts on different machines and information for multiple mailboxes within each account.
A GUI can be created, which is more visually appealing and which one would be happy to have constantly on a desktop—perhaps an icon which indicates whether new mail is present on any of the watched mailboxes coupled with additional information on a mouse-over event.
A popup window on a mouse-over event can show who the messages are from and the subject lines.
Third-party extensions to Sun’s reference implementation could be used in order to add support for POP or local mailboxes.
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