ihasmail's notifications came from EventSource, which lives exactly as
long as a tab does -- so "desktop notifications" has always quietly
meant "while you are looking". That switch is now labelled as much, and
a second one does the thing people assumed the first one did.
Stalwart 0.16 signs Web Push with VAPID (RFC 9749) and can put the
message itself in the payload (draft-ietf-jmap-emailpush). The server
pushes straight to the browser's own push service: ihasmail's server is
not in the delivery path, there is no relay to run, and nothing beyond
the browser vendor's endpoint that Web Push requires of everyone.
Checked against the live 0.16.19 before any of this was written, because
an advertised capability is not a configured one:
- the session publishes a real applicationServerKey, so no key
generation or server configuration is needed
- PushSubscription/get answers an ordinary user rather than refusing
- emailpush is advertised, and its draft defines a filter, an ordered
properties list and an urgency -- so the payload can carry sender and
subject, and the server drops properties from the end when it will
not fit rather than failing the notification
Three things this gets right that are easy to get wrong:
- The verification handshake. A JMAP subscription delivers nothing
until the client echoes back a code the server pushed, and the
service worker cannot answer it -- no credentials in that context.
It forwards the code to a tab, or leaves it in the cache when no tab
was open to forward it to.
- Key encoding. The W3C Push API produces unpadded base64url and
Stalwart 0.16 was fixed to accept exactly that, so nothing here pads
on the way out. The VAPID key needs padding on the way *in* for
atob; getting that backwards fails at subscribe() with an opaque
error, so it lives in one named function with tests.
- Sign-out. A subscription belongs to the account, not the session.
Without tearing it down, a shared machine keeps notifying for a
mailbox nobody is signed into -- which is somebody else's mail.
The mock models the JMAP half, including refusing padded keys and
non-https endpoints, and creating subscriptions *unverified*. Delivery
cannot be mocked -- it runs through the browser vendor's real push
service -- but a mock that marked a subscription verified on creation
would let a client ship without the handshake, and the symptom in
production is "registered, and silent".
Not verified end to end: an actual notification arriving. That needs a
real browser, a real push service and real delivery, so it is live
testing or nothing.
Every setting lived in localStorage, so none of them travelled between
devices. The sharpest edge is the default identity: with none set the
address that sorts first wins, so mail goes out from an address the
recipient may not recognise -- and someone who sets it at work finds it
unset at home, with nothing to say so. Reported in #54.
They now live in a settings.json in the account's own JMAP Files, beside
the signature images already kept there. ihasmail itself stays stateless:
no volume, no database, nothing to back up separately, and the settings
are covered by whatever backs up the mail store.
localStorage stays as a cache rather than the source of truth, so the
first frame is painted from it and the file corrects it a moment later.
A private window has no cache and shows defaults for that one frame,
which is the trade for not gating the whole app on a network round trip.
Not everything should follow the account. A list-pane width picked on a
27" monitor is wrong on a laptop, and the notification toggles track a
permission the browser grants per-device, so claiming it elsewhere would
be a lie. Those stay local, written as a list of exceptions so that a
setting added later syncs by default -- which is what adding one almost
always means.
Writes are coalesced: update() fires on every frame of a splitter drag,
so a change waits 3s and the newest value wins. A tab going away flushes
first, as does signing out, so a setting changed seconds before either
is not lost.
The ihasmail folder is now hidden from the Files view, contents and all.
Hiding the folder alone would have been worse than showing it: the tree
attaches a node whose parent is missing to the root, so the signature
images would have spilled into the top level as if the user had put them
there. Those images have been visible since signatures shipped.
Requires 0.16 -- FileNode/query cannot see directories before that. On
0.15 settings stay local exactly as they were.
Verified against the mock end to end: folder create, blob upload, node
create, read back, update, re-read. Not yet exercised against the live
0.16.19.
Scheduled send, which the README listed as needing server support that
Stalwart has had all along. The delay cannot be asked for directly --
RFC 8621 makes `sendAt` read-only and server-derived -- so it goes on the
envelope as an RFC 4865 `HOLDUNTIL` parameter, and the server reports back
the time it settled on.
Stalwart advertises this in the *account* capability, not the session-level
one (which is empty): `maxDelayedSend` of thirty days and `FUTURERELEASE`
among its `submissionExtensions`. The composer offers scheduling only when
both are there, and never offers a time the server would refuse.
A held message goes to a Scheduled folder rather than Sent, because
`onSuccessUpdateEmail` would otherwise file it as sent the moment the
submission is created, and it has not been sent. Nothing moves it out when
the hold expires, so the folder is reconciled on the way in: released
messages to Sent, cancelled ones back to Drafts. Cancelling uses a separate
`Email/set` rather than `onSuccessUpdateEmail`, whose key Stalwart reads as
an Email id and not, as the RFC says, a submission id.
The mock grows the whole lifecycle, and learns to resolve creation
references while it is there -- it had been quietly declining to create any
submission at all, since sending names its message as `#m`. Because
Stalwart's own `futureRelease` setting defaults to off and then drops the
hold in silence, `npm run dev:mock:no-future-release` reproduces that.
Verified end to end against the mock; not yet against the live server.
jcoffey-dev