i was wondering what exactly aol meant by saying it was shutting off their communicator mail client. well, around midnight, it looked like this:
[1]
my pop3 accounts still look connected. and i know aol supports both pop3 and imap, not to mention their two desktop applications. so how much would it really have cost them to have continued to maintain connectivity for communicator given that their proprietary protocol must still run anyway ?
that leaves their address book synchronization, which doesn't necessarily need to happen, and instant messaging, which again just uses aim protocols. morons.
well, i'll see if i can create imap accounts in communicator which correspond to the proprietary aol ones. why ? because that could save me from having to migrate more than fifty 65 mail filter rules. i'll let you know how things turn out.
update(1):
ok, that was just plain silly. almost trivial to do the following, in the C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\AOL Communicator\ac_mail.prefs file, using a regex search & replace (note userid pattern capture / replacement):
- search for: host=aol.com%20login=\(.*\)%20aolImapServer=true%0A
- replace with: host=imap.aol.com%20dir=%20login=\1%20usessl=nss_nossl%0A
all my filters and other settings were preserved just fine (including passwords). the only differences are that i cannot use the old aol inbox display approach, and some mail items were downloaded again. i could have prevented this easily too, if i had thought about it. no biggie. note that i don't send mail using this package, so i didn't attempt any smtp fixes. also associated with sending, there may be adjustments needed for "drafts" and "sent" folder configuration, but these can be done through the ui afterwards.
as easy as that was, there's no reason aol could not have given instructions or distributed a tiny fix program.
the old host config had "aolImapServer=true", eh ? they easily could have not disrupted service at all, and just communicated to users that the software was no longer supported. in fact, in seems that they only created more work for themselves and their users.
that's the final death of the old netsape packages, i think.
update(2):
[1] i searched to check & see if anyone else commented about this message, and found that it was a quote, lord byron's dying words. i feel i should have recognized this, for some reason. huh - father of ada lovelace (yes, of computing fame), and a supporter of the then luddites, which term is now used to mean almost anything anti-tech. interesting sign-off note connections.