OT: IE in the news

[Els]

I use SeaMonkey so advance settings with about:config are simple, but
editing the pref.js you can customize Gecko...

pref("mail.quoted_graphical", false);

I see your point, and I think it's great that you can customize
Thunderbird like that, but I have no reason to switch from OE to TB,
and having to dive into pref.js and all kinds of extensions to get the
simple no-nonsense display, is therefore too much work.

[snip]

OE use to store all accounts in a single Global Inbox, I assume they
still do, since now TB defaults to this Global Inbox option, but you can
easily change this behavior. I have 5 accounts, I do not want everything
in one pile...makes finding things a pain.

I have a good bunch of filters in OE, which deliver various emails in
various folders - the only thing I would wish for, is having an option
to set the same filters also for outgoing messages. I can have all
client X's emails come in to folder 'X', but when I reply, I have to
move my email from the 'sent' folder to folder 'X'. I'm used to that
though, so even if Thunderbird had an extension that would solve that
issue, it would still not be worth the hassle of moving away from OE.

Never understood MS "dump
everything in one pile" philosophy. If you separate and organize your
data it makes finding stuff *much* easier.

Yup, agreed. And that's how I use OE too.

I have over 600GB disk space
on my workstation and over a 1/3 is used and I have no trouble finding a
file. Latest patch tried to push that Desktop Search on me. I tested
it...what crap, doesn't beat good old hierarchical folders and a logical
filing scheme! In fact I miss old W2K search. I've hacked XP's to get it
close, but W2K's was much faster especially when searching file content.

Searching within OE is a breeze, but searching the whole pc? It's
usually quicker to just download the file again (if possible).

Did they ever fix the OE problem with large Inboxes? If a folder got
more than X# of message OE would bog down and searching was painfully
slow. I have keep all my messages...since old NN Communicator days.
Messages are stored in large text files I have never had trouble
transferring or rescuing messages.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that problem still exists. Must say
that my most of my folders don't go over 2000, so no idea if that is
past the old limit?

I have rescued and recovered messages from client's failing hard drives.
Folks that corrupted their filesystems or profiles and you can still
piece together mailboxes. Even if folks delete messages but haven't
compressed the folder yet I have Perl scripts to recover the messages,
you can also do this with a good text editor. OE binary format is not so
flexible...

That's why you should do regular backups, and it's easy enough to
restore the whole set of folders in OE from a backup. Sure, TB will
have more options once things are going wrong (if you're technical
enough to know how), but for me that's not reason to switch from OE.
Critical email needs backing up, and all the other emails are just
very handy to have, but if they disappear, the world doesn't end for
me.

 

[Els]

The QuoteColors extension allows you to toggle the vertical lines off and
get back to the ">" indicators. Are you aware that there are tons of
extensions available for customizing TB, just as there are for FF?

No, I wasn't aware of that. But really - I'd need TB, *and* install
extensions to get what I already have in OE? Granted, I use OE also
with "extension" Quotefix, but I already have that installed, so it's
zero effort to keep using it.

TB isn't my preferred mail/news client (I don't care for combo clients
like that in the first place). But the fact remains that it's *highly*
customizable.

I didn't know, but now I do, thanks

 

[Els]

Just "disabling HTML" doesn't save you from exploits when there's a new
exploit in OE. If you keep it up to date, you'll probably be okay
though (of course, that goes for pretty much anything).

Any program can have an exploit. Disabling HTML is only a way to avoid
the obvious stuff. (Personally, my reason for disabling it was that I
hate to get spam email with images in them.)

You think Thunderbird is immune to possible future exploits?

 

[Tim Streater]

Just looked up FCC, do you me File Carbon Copy? If so, TB as all
predecessors back to Netscape have had the "Sent" folder by default that
supplies this function, unless I am missing something here.

Yes, you are. If I'm replying to a mail, it means I can get a copy of
the reply put in the folder where the original mail is. If it's a new
mail I get to choose where the copy will be put. Or I can tell Eudora to
make several copies and store them in more than one mailbox, if I want.
Just keeping stuff in a Sent folder is barely useful, but Eudora will do
this too.

I can also edit received mails and their subjects.

 

[Tim Streater]

Look like it is in the works...

http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/06/thunderbird-earns-its-tabs/
Thunderbird earns its tabs - Mozilla Links

Also there may be an extension, new extensions are always being added...



Not sure what you mean here? (right-click>Edit as new)?

No, edit the mail that has come in. When people send mails with lines
and lines of rubbish in them, I can get rid of that. I can also change
irrelevant or wrong subject lines, which is handy, especially when you
get a mail with the one or two lines of useful stuff in a mail you'd
otherwise throw away (such as a hint on fixing some problem)

What is Fcc: ?

See other reply.

 

[Tim Greer]

Any program can have an exploit. Disabling HTML is only a way to avoid
the obvious stuff. (Personally, my reason for disabling it was that I
hate to get spam email with images in them.)

You think Thunderbird is immune to possible future exploits?

I'm not saying that other programs are secure, but OE is the most
insecure of all of them (by design, not just because it's so popular
and thus a bigger target -- it's an easy target). I don't use
Thunderbird, so I haven't done a lot of research on that particular
option. There are a lot of email programs out there to use, and if you
want the most secure, it'll likely not be one of the top 2 or 3
discussed. The mention of disabling HTML wasn't to debate about it, I
just wanted to make it clear that it just disables the basic HTML, and
there's no way to fully disable it to prevent an HTML based exploit in
some aspects, which seems stupid. The fact any email program is
created to display HTML or send with HTML formatting is a bad idea in
itself, so I don't display HTML in my email programs anyway.
Currently, I primarily use Evolution, if that matters. I'm on a Linux
system though, so there's really no issues like you'd see on OE anyway.

 

[Neredbojias]

I've downloaded and installed TB again today, just to see if anything
had changed since I checked last time, and that appears to be the
case. My main gripe was that when replying back and forth a couple of
times, the skipped lines between the replies were adding every time.
Start with one skipped line, reply, and it has become 2 lines, reply
again, and there's a space of 3 lines.

They seem to have solved that now, and it now only looks like lines
are added. The space still gets larger, but it's not an actual empty
line, but merely a visual thing - the larger the indent for replied
to text, the larger also the distance vertically.

Hmm, I've never noticed that, but then I seldom have more than one
sequential reply to any message (-People think I'm obnoxious; what can
I say?) Anyway, TB could surely be improved, but it works okay for me
and I switched from OE mainly for security reasons.

I prefer regular indent markers.

Ditto. Maybe the forthcoming TB will have them.

When composing without HTML, it looks
fine, regular markers for replied to text, with an added marker for
each level. But when reading received email, even in plain text, the
markers are gone and instead there's coloured vertical lines. Somehow
they don't behave logical to me, I really prefer the OE-Quotefix
system.

If that's the ">", same preference here.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Yes, you are. If I'm replying to a mail, it means I can get a copy of
the reply put in the folder where the original mail is. If it's a new
mail I get to choose where the copy will be put. Or I can tell Eudora to
make several copies and store them in more than one mailbox, if I want.
Just keeping stuff in a Sent folder is barely useful, but Eudora will do
this too.

I can also edit received mails and their subjects.

Ah, yes it is called message filters. TB as well as my SeaMonkey can do
all that and more. I have several folders that sort my incoming mail
from one account for eBay sales, questions, listing receipts, etc all
automatically with filters. This can also be done for outgoing, etc.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

No, I wasn't aware of that. But really - I'd need TB, *and* install
extensions to get what I already have in OE? Granted, I use OE also
with "extension" Quotefix, but I already have that installed, so it's
zero effort to keep using it.

As I said elsewhere in the thread that Mozilla has a fundamentally
different approach to software than MS.

"Do remember that both Firefox and Thunderbird are "strip down" by
default. If you want features, add what you need via extensions. It is
intended to be counter to the MS "everything AND the kitchen sink"
hogware..."

 

[dorayme]

Disabling HTML is only a way to avoid
the obvious stuff. (Personally, my reason for disabling it was that I
hate to get spam email with images in them.)

In the Mac email program Mail.app, one can untick the preference
"Display remote images in HTML messages" and this at least allows one to
get html but not use up bandwidth or having to see images you don't want
to see. They can be turned on on an individual message basis. Sort of
flexible and might suit some people.

 

[Tim Greer]

In the Mac email program Mail.app, one can untick the preference
"Display remote images in HTML messages" and this at least allows one
to get html but not use up bandwidth or having to see images you don't
want to see. They can be turned on on an individual message basis.
Sort of flexible and might suit some people.

I actually somehow didn't see the mention of the images loading when I
read the reply (long day, I guess). All HTML, images, etc. are a bad
idea for email, but I do think all of them have an option to disable
loading remote images (though some will still display attached images).
I've not used OE in so long (<happy>), that I didn't realize it was all
or none, or is there an option to display remote images only? Either
way, I'd not enable HTML for a lot of reasons so I guess it's the best
of both worlds.

 

[Els]

In the Mac email program Mail.app, one can untick the preference
"Display remote images in HTML messages" and this at least allows one to
get html but not use up bandwidth or having to see images you don't want
to see. They can be turned on on an individual message basis. Sort of
flexible and might suit some people.

OE does that, and that's how I use it. Messages come in in plain text
or multi-format, I click 'view as HTML' if I want to see the HTML
version, and then I have to click the bar (which has a warning about
it) above the message pane to download external images.

On the Mac I use Mailsmith, because Mac's own Mail doesn't have an
option to switch HTML off. Even without images, I still prefer plain
text to HTML. With the amount of emails I have to read every day, it's
much easier to have them all in the exact same font and style, then
having to adjust to everybody's different ideas of 'nice'.

 

[Els]

As I said elsewhere in the thread that Mozilla has a fundamentally
different approach to software than MS.

"Do remember that both Firefox and Thunderbird are "strip down" by
default. If you want features, add what you need via extensions. It is
intended to be counter to the MS "everything AND the kitchen sink"
hogware..."

I did read that, and I agree with the idea. I just think that coloured
bars that are clearly an "extra", should be the feature, and the
regular > markers should be the strip down version. The way it is now,
I have to install an extension to get rid of a feature

 

[Tim Streater]

Ah, yes it is called message filters. TB as well as my SeaMonkey can do
all that and more. I have several folders that sort my incoming mail
from one account for eBay sales, questions, listing receipts, etc all
automatically with filters. This can also be done for outgoing, etc.

I'm not talking about filters, Eudora has those too. I'm talking about,
as you compose a mail, being able to choose a destination folder there
and then for the sent mail. I'm talking about, as I compose a reply
mail, knowing that after it has been sent, a copy will be in the
original folder regardless of which one the original mail was in,and
without having to set up a filter for that particular folder.

 

[Els]

I'm not talking about filters, Eudora has those too. I'm talking about,
as you compose a mail, being able to choose a destination folder there
and then for the sent mail. I'm talking about, as I compose a reply
mail, knowing that after it has been sent, a copy will be in the
original folder regardless of which one the original mail was in,and
without having to set up a filter for that particular folder.

That sounds like the single one feature I'm missing in both OE and
Mailsmith.

Too bad Eudora doesn't have the other options I want: 3 pane view (not
a slide out drawer on the wrong side of the window), separate email
accounts without having to make a bunch of personalities for each of
which you need to check email separately, and which open in separate
windows. Maybe I've missed settings that would give me the ordinary
system of automatically checking multiple email accounts, and having a
single window with a hierarchical set of folders in a 3rd pane (on the
left! ;-))?

 

[dorayme]

All HTML, images, etc. are a bad
idea for email

This is very severe! Don't you share small snaps with friends *in*
emails?

 

[Tim Greer]

This is very severe! Don't you share small snaps with friends *in*
emails?

Not usually, but when I do, I don't send people HTML pages to display
the image, I'd link to a web page then. Besides, what's wrong with
attachments people can view in line (if they want to view it in their
email window), or save to view elsewhere? I didn't say sending images
was a bad idea, I said displaying them over email (and overall, forcing
HTML (and images that are attached by spammers) to not offer an
effective way to disable it (for example).

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I'm not talking about filters, Eudora has those too. I'm talking about,
as you compose a mail, being able to choose a destination folder there
and then for the sent mail. I'm talking about, as I compose a reply
mail, knowing that after it has been sent, a copy will be in the
original folder regardless of which one the original mail was in,and
without having to set up a filter for that particular folder.

Oh, sure you can direct copies of composed messages to sent or any other
folder that you choose or create. All account can go to a single
destination or different, whatever you choose. It's under "Account
settings > Copies & Folders"

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I did read that, and I agree with the idea. I just think that coloured
bars that are clearly an "extra", should be the feature, and the
regular > markers should be the strip down version. The way it is now,
I have to install an extension to get rid of a feature

Have to take that up with the developers. Maybe they thought the color
bars are easier to keep track of the level of quoting...in TB the color
changes with the level sometimes

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

This is very severe! Don't you share small snaps with friends *in*
emails?

My customers wouldn't agree. That is how they get to preview their
commissions!