Announcing the Vision Client
I’ve always dreamed of creating something new - something which would be useful to the community and something I could proudly host on GitHub. Today comes that day - today, I’m releasing my first ever application - the Vision Client.
What is it?⌗
Vision Client - at it’s core - is a desktop client for Microsoft Exchange emails. I’ve created it as I was starting to get pretty annoyed with a policy on one of the Exchange servers I’m regularly using. That server basically prohibited the use of anything else than ActiveSync (mobile clients) and Exchange OWA.
Anybody who ever had to use an OWA should know how big of a pain it sometimes is. The web version of Outlook - especially pre-2013 - is a slow, out-dated and straight-out ugly email client with no support for things which are most loved about regular Outlook or other email clients.
Vision Client is also an alternative for all the Linux users out there tired of setting up Wine to use regular Outlook or purchasing programs such as Hiri. Vision Client enables you to use your Exchange-based emails on your desktop without any heavy modifications to your system, bypassing any security rules or setting up complex solutions such as Wine or DavMail.
How does it work?⌗
Vision Client is an Electron App, which means it is compatibile with nearly all operating systems out there. It might not be the most resource-optimized app (JavaScript and Node.js are known to slow down some older machines), but at the same time you can be certain that if you are able to access OWA on your machine, you will albe to use the Vision Client as well.
The basic structure of my application is simple - it is essentially a heavly stripped down browser window on steroids. Once you first launch the Vision Client and go through the setup window, your email credentials will be saved to your local password manager, which makes the use of your email faster (less password typing), yet more secure at the same time (by preventing keyloggers from reading your keyboard output).