Avatars

[milligandw]

How do I get a sender's favicon (?) to display as an avatar in the message list? I'm a relatively new AquaMail Pro user and recently installed a 3rd party app (Blue Mail) on my iPad Air, which does this - see attached screenshot.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Sorry AquaMail doesn't have this.

In large part -- because those images may be copyrighted / protected as part of "trade dress", etc. I'm not a lawyer and there is no legal department here, so I'm staying clear of any potential violations.

[milligandw]

I'm not sure that I understand why you think it would a copyright risk. While I haven't coded mobile apps, I have coded websites professionally and it looks as though the logos are basically pulled from the e-mails themselves, perhaps from the message header and pretty much the way a favicon is pulled from a coded link in a web page header. And the author usually includes these links because they want them displayed on the client browser tabs and bookmarks.

This is by no means a necessary or can't do without feature, but from a look-n-feel and in some respects usability I think it's very, very nice enhancement.

Hopefully you will research the copyright issues and incorporate in AquaMail someday.   

Otherwise, I'm extremely, extremely satisfied with AquaMail Pro!

[milligandw]

Update: I didn't know that Blue Mail exists for Android, but if fact it does. From their feature list I believe this feature is called "Service Logos:", which in all likelihood is perfectly legal.

VISUALLY APPEALING
● SENDER'S IMAGE - Your friends and contacts photos to help you process your incoming mail faster
● SERVICES LOGOS - Easily recognize popular services from their icons
● UNREAD COUNT - On your App icon (for supported devices) or a 1x1 unread widget for any account including Unified Inbox!
● COLOR CODING - Makes it all simple

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.bluemail.mail

[StR]

I'm not sure that I understand why you think it would a copyright risk. While I haven't coded mobile apps, I have coded websites professionally and it looks as though the logos are basically pulled from the e-mails themselves, perhaps from the message header and pretty much the way a favicon is pulled from a coded link in a web page header. And the author usually includes these links because they want them displayed on the client browser tabs and bookmarks.

You are mixing up two things: webpages and e-mail messages. Those are different.
"Favicon" as a feature of a webpage is a well-described standard supported by the webserver.
At least until HTML5 it didn't even have to be specified explicitly.
(However, it is an optional element: when it is absent in the file and in the default location for the server, the browser does not try to figure out where to get it from.)
E-mails do not have any default place/format for any images. E-mail servers do not provide any images by themselves. There is no "default" location for the image.
Even if some messages include some image files, there is no reliable way to figure out which one is the logo.

So, the only way for the developer to display the logo image is to hardcode it (or a link to it, which would be an awful idea) in the app itself. And that could be a copyright violation (if there is no permission or the image is not in the public domain, and most logos aren't). It is the same way as when you cannot legally place an image taken from Amazon or Getty website to your company's website or your personal blog. Note that even Google was taken to court at some point for storing and displaying images that its search engine collected from other websites.
While Google lawyers were able to argue win this in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, by arguing a "fair use": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc. , it is very clear why Kostya doesn't want to get involved.

I suspect the only way around that would be if Kostya would allow users to insert that logo themselves. (And even then they might be a risk that he can be taken to court for being complacent by not providing an adequate notice that the users might be violating copyright laws by inserting an unlicensed image.) But AFAIR (I don't see that, as I switched off all those chips), that can be done by means of the built-in "Contacts" app, where you can insert images for your correspondents on your own risk. And then that images will be shown by Aquamail.

[StR]

Update: I didn't know that Blue Mail exists for Android, but if fact it does. From their feature list I believe this feature is called "Service Logos:", which in all likelihood is perfectly legal.

BlueMail might be just brave/careless or have a team of lawyers on retainer. However, "but they [BlueMail] do that" has never been a successful line of legal defense.

[milligandw]

That would appear to be the case if your hypothesis is correct. I just sent them a "feedback" message asking how do they get the service logos to display in the message list and if they are hard coding them. It'll be interesting to hear what their response. I for one, am very curious to know. ;-)

Incidentally, I actually installed their Android version and found that rich text is only available for the custom signature and the message list doesn't include the group by date header. Consequently, I decided that the absence of aforementioned features were a "deal breaker" and I've since uninstalled it.

My general impression is that AquaMail is much more robust as far as customization is concerned.

[StR]

What they are doing with my messages and other information they scrape from my phone would be a much bigger concern for me than any of the embellishments.
Take a look e.g. at this comparison: http://androidforums.com/threads/email-which-apps-keep-it-private.935578/

[droidphilev]

Hi,

Profimail has this feature also. Kinda nice and handy. :-)

[milligandw]

Just thought I'd revisit this request since Gmail (version 5.0.10) for iOS added it as an enhancement recently. I initially referred to the image as a favicon, but Gmail refers to it as a "sender image" in their update notes, which suggests the sender wants you to see it displayed in your input list.

I did a quick search to learn more about how senders include this in their sent mail and found this quote:

"Many companies like Groupon, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin have their logos appear in the sender section of an email header. It increases the likelihood of someone opening their email over another in a flooded inbox." Which implies implicit authorization to use their image.

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-add-a-logo-or-image-to-the-sender-or-email-subject-line

That said, I seriously doubt that you need be concerned about copyright violations or unauthorized use of copyrighted material by displaying the sender image in the e-mail list.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

"Many companies like Groupon, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin have their logos appear in the sender section of an email header. It increases the likelihood of someone opening their email over another in a flooded inbox." Which implies implicit authorization to use their image.

This implies that Google has authorization from these services to use the logos (if such authorization was necessary). It does not imply that any email app developer could just "download the logos off the Internet and plug into their app".

That being said, I have just now entered this into our task tracking system as an idea for the future.

[milligandw]

Kostya,

Thank you so much for adding this to your task tracking system! I'm a user who really values apps that offers robust customization and as such, AquaMail fits the bill. Adding the senders image in the email list and as others have mentioned a revised icon/logo would be awesome. For instance, something rectangular or similar to the Gmail logo would be a big improvement, in my opinion.

[Sundog]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I was recently searching for an answer to this very topic. So I wanted to add my +1 to the task tracker, and possibly highlight a solution that has arisen since this thread was last seen:

gravatar.com
(Since I'm not allowed to post external links, please google 'gravatar')

Now I'm not a programmer or claim to be anything close to it, but the above web site seems to help at injecting service/contact logos or avatars into emails & displaying them in email clients. I'm hoping the developer can take a look to see if it is easy enough to implement. Thank you for your time!

Mike

[milligandw]

I would also like to apologize for resurrecting this request, but I really think it would be a nice enhancement. eM Client just added the feature in Version 9, which was recently released. They even give you the option of turning the avatars on or off and resizing them.

eM Client Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzEwnwsWIEE

Please reconsider adding this feature. Otherwise, I'm extremely happy with AquaMail!

[chris122380]

I just recently noticed that Fairemail also has these. Since Fairemail is open source there should be a way to figure out how they are doing it and be able to implement it in Aquamail (as long as they don't mind following the guidelines of the GPL 3, which Fairemail uses).