Noupe.com has posted a top ten list of what they consider some of the best PHP/Ajax-based webmail clients (as based on the user interface and ease of use).

Employees need to access their email from wherever they happen to be – on the road, at customer sites, remote offices, and at home. [...] Today i wanted to share with you 10 AJAX-based webmail client that delivers the look and feel, usability and performance of a desktop application. Some of the webmail clients listed below are open source code that can be easily modified to better suit user’s needs, while others are not. So You must check their license to know the rules.

Included in their list is software like:

• RoundCube
• Zimbra
• SquirrelMail
• Hastymail
• Claros inTouch

Some of these tools offer more than just email too - they can include things like collaboration tools and mobile versions right out of the box.

In this new tutorial from the IBM developerWorks site, they take a look at the development of a webmail interface with the help of PHP.

You know how to get users to interact with a PHP application using a Web form, but sometimes e-mail is just more convenient. Maybe your users are using small devices like cell phones or interacting in a way that's not real time, such as subscribing to an e-mail list. Find out how to read and send e-mail by building a PHP Webmail application.

They cover connecting to the server, grabbing the information from a specific email inbox, pulling the data for a single message, deleting emails, getting a list of the current emails, and how to work with attachments and multipart MIME messages.

You'll need to log in to get to it, but it's a great example of how to work with email in PHP (more than just sending them with mail() or PEAR's mailer package).

In this new tutorial from the IBM developerWorks site, they take a look at the development of a webmail interface with the help of PHP.

You know how to get users to interact with a PHP application using a Web form, but sometimes e-mail is just more convenient. Maybe your users are using small devices like cell phones or interacting in a way that's not real time, such as subscribing to an e-mail list. Find out how to read and send e-mail by building a PHP Webmail application.

They cover connecting to the server, grabbing the information from a specific email inbox, pulling the data for a single message, deleting emails, getting a list of the current emails, and how to work with attachments and multipart MIME messages.

You'll need to log in to get to it, but it's a great example of how to work with email in PHP (more than just sending them with mail() or PEAR's mailer package).