On Sep 11, 2008, at 11:55 PM, Paul Plack wrote: > > Yahoo has lately been letting HTML mail through, > > and OE might be displaying some of the message > > as HTML/graphics or similar? It's really hard to tell > > from here. But it's really odd that it won't let you > > remove the text. Hmm. > > Interestinger still, the message quoted above would not let me snip, > where your previous one did. I cut-and-pasted the portion above from > the original before I started, because after I hit reply, the entire > block was treated as one piece.
Very odd. Gotta love e-mail. Everyone can have their own standards. :-) Kinda like digital radios. > That suggests to me it's an Outlook Express issue. I'll look into > the other options folks have suggested. My largest client wants me > to start getting involved with video, so I'm likely to become a Mac > person soon anyway. I'll share a few other quick thoughts about mail, mail clients, servers, etc... Thunderbird is great, as I mentioned before, but be careful when you start experimenting with multiple mailers to see what you like. The vast majority of folks on the Net are using their ISP's mail service, and most ISP's do only POP3 protocol. POP3 was originally designed as a system that allows you to get your mail off of their server, and in the process it removes it after it copies it to your local MUA as us old Unix mail geeks call them. Mail User Agent. The software you read your mail in. (MTA = Mail Transfer Agent, that's the software your ISP runs to move the mail from one place to another.) Later POP3 clients added the ability to "Leave mail on server". They did this by telling the server "I didn't really get that last message" even though they did. This is why if you've got multiple computers and you choose "Leave mail on server", things like your "new mail" flags and stuff just don't work right between machines. Later POP3 servers added real "support" for doing this right, and all of this "magic" is pretty much hidden from the end-user by their MUA. (Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora, whatever.) When you're testing new mail clients -- you want that "Leave mail on server" feature turned on from the start in any new clients you point at your ISP's mail server. Otherwise, you're going to be ultra- frustrated by the fact that your new toy you're playing with just downloaded all your new mail into itself, and the next time you open whatever "old faithful" client you've been using... none of that mail shows up. "No new messages on server"... Hey, wait a minute! Where'd those messages go?! So be careful when trying out new things. Of course, the Internet geniuses figured out there was a "better way" and created a protocol called IMAP later on. IMAP mail servers are unique in that the client gets a COPY of the message but does NOT have to delete it off the server. IMAP servers also usually understand the concept of mail "folders" that are up ON THE SERVER, not just a folder/ directory that the local MUA creates to give you a "view" that looks like your mail is neatly sorted into folders locally. The problem is... for ISP's and mail providers, that people don't delete e-mail... it gets "saved" for later review by many people, and this means DISK SPACE on the server if you're offering IMAP to your customers. So most don't. I *highly* recommend it, if you can find a provider with IMAP capability, to use one. With one caveat. Gmail. Gmail (as many know) has both POP3 and IMAP support, but it's hideously weird. If you "tag" a message via the Gmail web interface with a "topic" name, that becomes a "folder" in IMAP. It's just downright odd, unless you like it. I don't. Here, I've been running my own MTA mail servers for years.... so I have IMAP. I open Thunderbird on the Windows machine, or Mail.App on the Mac, and every message is right where I left it... in the Inbox, in the "Repeater-Builder" folder, etc. In fact, the mail SERVER sorts the incoming mail and Repeater-Builder new messages go DIRECTLY into that folder... they never hit the Inbox at all. It's AMAZING when you can do this type of server-side filtering and combine it with IMAP on the clients. After that, ANY IMAP client displays your folders and your messages the same... and they're all "synced". I can have the Mac on the desk next to the Windows machine and the next time both check for new mail on the IMAP server, they both show that there's new messages in whatever folders they're in. If I remember right, even OE could do IMAP. (Another gotcha to know... you'll see providers say they have "IMAP4" support. IMAP4 *usually* refers to Microsoft Exchange servers (an MTA), talking to Microsoft Outlook (the full blown, not Outlook Express, version.) IMAP4 is generally compatible with all regular IMAP clients, but you often pay too much for that extra Microsoft Outlook capability... shared public folders inside a company, shared calendars, yadda yadda...) Okay so now you're wondering, how the heck can I try out IMAP? Since I run my own mail server here, I'm ultra-spoiled. It's just a dumb Linux box in the basement with a domain name on it, and some blood, sweat and tears (and a public IP address at extra cost) to make it do stuff for me, I didn't pay a dime for the software. But many folks aren't going to go to that much trouble to have a really nice mail server... so I asked around. One of the local hams here in town has been using a company called FastMail (www.fastmail.fm) and paying for his e-mail service from them for a long time. They have some free options (limited in how much you can receive, and you have to choose from their fairly long and interesting list of domain names for your user account, or pay them to host your own domain name), and then they scale on up to crazy-big sizes, if you pay 'em. He's been ultra-happy with them, and they offer some WILD features, like e-mail to web file transfer/storage with WebDAV, their own webmail "client" if you're away from your computers, etc. I'm gettin' lazy enough that I keep toying with the idea of moving my LARGE set of IMAP folders and saved mail off my server and over to theirs, and just payin' them a few bucks to deal with spam filtering, and other "administrative" stuff one has to do to run their own mail server. I keep thinkin', "I'm a pro, but I'd rather let OTHER mail pros do this crap!". So far I haven't bit the bullet, but I hear good things about them from every savvy IT guy I've talked to who uses them. So... there's a bunch of TOTALLY unrelated e-mail "stuff" that probably shouldn't have gone to the RB list. But I figured folks might like to hear about some of the options out there. And the main reason was to warn you about that POP3 "where did all my mail go?!" scenario... wouldn't want you trying out my favorite Windows mail client and getting MAD at it, because it ATE your mail! Have fun trying out some new stuff. If you're playing with T-Bird and have any problems, holler off-list. I can't always answer "right now" kinds of stuff, but I eventually get back to all e-mail in the INBOX folder. (An awful lot of mail in the various LIST folders gets DUMPED if I get behind... never RB, but some of the electronics and other lists that I just don't feel like keeping up with if I come home from a vacation and have 500 messages in there... or similar.) No matter WHAT... I ALWAYS recommend that folks learn how their MUA of choice can do sorting into folders for you. Almost all can, and it's NICE... people that freak out about off-topic posts on lists USUALLY aren't doing this. They're getting hundreds of mixed list and personal messages in their Inbox a day, and they "can't keep up". I don't do that. If I weren't sorting on the server, I'd sort in the MUA. Oh here's another bonus. If you ARE using an IMAP server, and you've taken the time to "teach" one of the MUA's to do that type of sorting, remember that the folders created are really UP ON THE SERVER. So you can leave say, your home Windows machine on, doing the sorting in Thunderbird as things arrive in your Inbox... and as it sorts things and puts them into folders, they MOVE on any other machine you're reading on. It's just PFM the first time you get a taste of using IMAP servers and folder sorting. You get addicted to it and would NEVER want to go back to "plain old POP3". But again, most ISP's won't do it... they don't want to be the "permanent" storage location for your mail. > Thanks for the tips! I think I just overdid it. :-) Anyway... again, have fun. And if you can, try out a free IMAP service like fastmail.fm -- in most MUA's you can set them up to pull mail from say a POP3... your ISP mail... and also have a folder structure from ANOTHER server that's IMAP, all in the same client, so you can play to your heart's content. Smart MUA's like Thunderbird will even let you do wacky stuff like COPY mail from POP3 servers to IMAP servers, a great way to MOVE from one ISP to another, or a commercial mail provider. Just watch out if your IMAP provider has disk space or transfer limits on how much a day... doing a mass copy from an old e-mail account into the IMAP server of a new one can QUICKLY exceed those limits and you might get a surprise bill at the end of the month! 73, from someone who's been doing this mail server junk professionally (while trying to avoid it) for WAY too long... -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
