March 6, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) -
EarthLink announced on Thursday that it will release a beta of a new Flash-based Web e-mail within four weeks. Earthlink turned to the Laszlo platform, which generates Flash-based applications, to create the system which features a one-page interface that allows users to check their mail without ever having to do a page refresh.
"We've taken a completely different approach than, say, AOL and Google," said John Foltz, the product manager for EarthLink's e-mail. "It doesn't behave like a Web page at all. There's never a page refresh, so it works exactly like a desktop application."
Due to Flash’s vector based graphics the new email application is also highly customizable with users able to resize panes and reposition elements in the browser window quite easily.
Initially, Earthlink will offer 100MB of storage for mail users but plans to upgrade that to 1GB in order to match Google’s new gmail.
