Server Settings
E-mail and browsing are arguably the two most common uses of your computer and Internet connection. A feature rich browser is a great tool to have, and if you only use web based e-mail services, you won't need an e-mail client. Firefox fits the browser bill very well with standard features such as newsfeeds and live bookmarks via RSS. When you add in extensions, Firefox becomes a powerful tool that is fun to use. If you happen to prefer using an e-mail client, want copies of your e-mail on the computer you are using, and would like nice features that allow you to subscribe to news groups and receive RSS feeds, then Thunderbird is a really good choice. Both products are provided by the Mozilla Corporation (http://www.mozilla.com ), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/). Both are open source and available for free download. Both work well on Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux, and the settings are compatible across all those systems. So that means you can move between these systems and not have to redefine settings such as address books, bookmarks, and message filters.
This article will provide more detail about Thunderbird. In a follow-up article we will explore Firefox.
This mail client works well on several operating system platforms, and it provides the same user experience on each platform. This article will use screen shots from both Windows and Mac OS X. That's OK because they look and work the same. The screen shots are from Thunderbird version 1.5.0.2.
After you install Thunderbird, the first time you run it, an automatic script runs you through the basics of defining your e-mail account. However, it is not quite what you really want. So we need to define an e-mail account. To do that, select the Tools Menu and select Account Settings. You get a new window that allows you to define a new account by selecting Add Account. This will take you through a set of options where you can define an e-mail account, RSS feed for News & Blogs, or a Newsfeed account. This screen shot shows the Settings for an E-mail Account Servers for my e-mail account called "alwpopmail."
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Server Settings |
Note that I am using mail.psu.edu and many of you would be using email.psu.edu instead. Port 995 is the default for a secure connection, and alw is my Access Account Userid. In the settings box I selected Use secure connection, automatically download, Leave Messages on server (until I delete them), Empty Trash on Exit, and Check for new messages every 10 minutes (seems plenty for meÐshorter than that and I might as well be using chat or IM). The only reason I leave messages on the server is that I use Thunderbird on several different computers. (In general, leaving your mail on the server is not a good practice, and you should download your e-mail to your computer). There are several other choices, such as Security, where you set up your Digital Certificates for signing and/or encrypting your mail—if you have a digital certificate. Disk Space lets you define whether to not download large files (useful if you are traveling and stuck with a dial up connection). Copies & Folders defines where to put your Sent, Drafts and Templates folders.
Here is a screen shot of The Composition and Address Settings where you set personal preferences for how to reply to e-mail (HTML composition or not, quote the message you are replying to, and start the reply above or below the quoted area).
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Composition and Address Settings |
Here is also where you define the LDAP directory you want to use. You will want to use ldap.psu.edu.
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Select LDAP Server |
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Edit LDAP Server |
The following screen shot shows the Thunderbird client running with lots of different mailboxes.
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Thunderbird Client |
Let's look at what's going on in the left frame under the title "Folders." At the bottom of the frame you can see I have a News & Blogs section. More about RSS later. Above that you find the actual e-mail section starting with "Local Folders" and my "Inbox." Note that the Inbox has lots of sub-folders. You create those sub-folders using Message Filters. To build or change your Message Filters, select the Tools Menu and then Message Filters. Here is a screen shot showing my set of Message Filters.
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Message Filters |
Note the check box beside each under the "Enabled" column. The filters need to be both defined and enabled. The shot below is an edit of the PSU.EDU filter.
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PSU.EDU Filter |
Note that you get several matching options and the "match all" or "match any" choices, and you also get several action choices. In this case, I'm just moving all mail messages that match any of the matching choices into the PSU folder under the Inbox folder. One of the useful features of Thunderbird is that many of the settings files are text files that can be moved between operating system platforms. The example we are using is a PostOffice Protocol (POP) mail account. In the First File Explorer screen shot from Windows you can see where Thunderbird saves its settings in a Profiles folder with a generated name (r4j2d2tv.default in this case) in the Application Data folder in your Documents and Settings folder.
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First File Explorer |
Under Mac OS X, these folders are in your Library folder within the Thunderbird folder. Looking in the frame to the right you can see the highlighted file abook.mab. That is the address book, and you can copy that into the generated default folder on a different computer (even if it is a different operating system), and it will work.
The Second File Explorer screen shot shows the expanded view of the mail.psu.edu folder (the name I gave this mail account) within the Mail folder.
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Second File Explorer |
To the right you can see the msgFilterRules.dat file. As you would expect, that contains the message filter rules, and it can be copied between machines and operating systems, and it will work if you keep the same relative folder structure. There are several more interesting things in this shot. Three files combine to define each mailbox—foldername.sbd, foldername, and foldername.msf. So, for example, the inbox shows inbox.sbd, inbox, and inbox.msf. If you expand the inbox.sbd folder you will find the subfolders and corresponding triplets for each one. You can copy these between systems, and that will move your existing mail files between systems.
One of the things you will want to do to make your mail experience bearable is to use the junk mail controls available on Thunderbird. In the Tools menu you should select Junk Mail Controls to get the Junk Mail Controls Panel. The Junk Mail Controls panel has two tabs, the Settings Tabscreen Shot shows your options for what folders to filter, and what to do. The Adaptive Filter tab only contains one check box (enable adaptive junk mail filter), and that is what you select to turn on the filter. One more thing to remember, in order to get rid of your junk mail you need to delete it (unless you select delete as the action instead of move to Junk folder). You probably should select the move to Junk folder option so that you have the chance to review the contents of the Junk mail folder for any false positives (mail marked as junk that you actually want to keep). The latter will be pretty rare, but could be painful if you never check. To get rid of the junk mail, click on the Junk folder and then from the Tools menu select Delete Mail marked as junk in Folder. Remember when we set the server settings, we selected the "delete from server when moved out of inbox." With that option set, deleting your junk mail also deletes the junk mail from the POP mail server (if it was being held there).
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Settings Tab |
One of the really useful features of many web sites is the ability to receive information that you want to follow without having to continually going to the site to see what has changed. They do this with a technology called Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. Sites that use this will display an orange logo that will either say XML or RSS. Typically these will be feeds that will give you information about what has changed at a web site. You can subscribe to these RSS feeds in Thunderbird or Firefox. I do a little of both. Why? The RSS feeds usually give you a brief synopsis of the web page change, and if you want to see the whole article, you will need to open that up. For things that I frequently want to read all the articles, I use RSS in Firefox. For things I just want to keep track of, and occasionally read an article, I use Thunderbird.
Current versions of Thunderbird and Firefox have RSS capabilities without adding any extensions. In Thunderbird you set up your RSS feeds by going to the Tools menu, select Account Settings and then select Add, and then select RSS News & Blogs to create a folder for your feeds (I took the default of News & Blogs). When the RSS feeds are set up they show up in your Folders Frame on the Left. You can manage your subscriptions by selecting the News and Blogs folder and then choosing the Manage subscriptions action.
Below you can see where I am adding a feed for the Windows Supersite.
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RSS Subscriptions |
You will find your RSS Feeds while you are browsing in Firefox. Look for an orange RSS or XML button to indicate you can subscribe to an RSS feed for the page you are browsing. When you select that button, you get a page displayed with a URL that you can copy into the RSS subscriptions field above. Often the page displayed is just XML code, but it should work out OK when you paste the link into the Thunderbird RSS Subscription. If you want extensions, you can find lots of them at http://www.mozilla.com/extensions/. I don't have any extensions that I use with Thunderbird yet, but you may find some you want.
