TWIG is an open source groupware solution that focuses on simplicity and ease of use without sacrificing functionality.

by Jeff Goldman [November 23, 2005]

TWIG (The Web Information Gateway) was first created by Christopher Heschong in 1998 as Muppet, a web-based IMAP client for customers of his ISP, Johnson City, Tenn.-based The Wire Company. Heschong then rewrote the application the following year, reworking it with a particular focus on expanding groupware functionality and ensuring well-integrated, modular code. That release, TWIG 2, is still current and maintained.

According to developer Aaron Stone, the development group around the application grew in a typical open source fashion. "Someone would use TWIG, find something they wanted to fix or add to it, join the mailing list—and pretty soon, they're developers," he says.

TWIG

Stone says key priorities for TWIG include ease of use, cross-platform compatibility and common web standards. "We avoided JavaScript until it was widely deployed and stable, and we avoided CSS until recently for the same reason," he says. "A key goal of TWIG is to provide a quality user experience that avoids flashy distractions, and steers absolutely clear of the sort of 'web gotchas' that only strike when you're trying to check your e-mail from that clunky old computer in the hotel business center."

Checking the competition
As a groupware suite rather than a pure webmail solution, web-based e-mail is only part of the application. Other functionality includes a contact manager, personal and group calendaring, meeting coordination, newsgroups, to do lists, notes and bookmarks.

While other solutions like SquirrelMail might offer a few individual advantages in their e-mail functionality, Stone says TWIG's ease of use and broad range of features make it a far better choice for most ISPs. "Getting all of the features that TWIG has working in SquirrelMail could take half a dozen plug-ins or more, each one with its own gotchas, issues and separate development schedule," he says.

And even TWIG's e-mail functionality alone, Stone says, stands up well against those of other open source solutions like IMP WebMail. "TWIG's mail feature is, in my opinion, much better than IMP's, and TWIG's feature integration is cleaner than Horde," he says.

Looking ahead
TWIG 2, Stone says, is now essentially in a maintenance-only phase while the various developers work on new versions of the application. "TWIG 3 is focusing on better installation, upgrades, configuration and administration," he says. "A facelift on TWIG 3 has been moving towards cleaner HTML with CSS hooks to allow for better integration with sites."

And running parallel to the development of TWIG 3, Stone is also working on another release with additional features. "TWIG 4 is focusing on overhauls to the feature architecture and the common feature library," he says. "As TWIG 4 matures, the ease-of-use work in TWIG 3 will be ported forward—and we'll have a platform that is both internally robust and visually sharp."

TWIG can be run on just about any operating system, and works with just about any mail server—it can be run on any OS that runs PHP, and works with any MTA that supports IMAP, POP3 and SMTP. There are no commercial support options for the application at this time, though Stone says there are always a number of active and helpful sys admins on the TWIG mailing lists.

— End

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