A Bat-fellow, Allister Jenks, wrote on Tuesday, 2nd September 2003 at 10:10:43 (GMT +1200), which was 0:10 a.m. in Bratislava --
AJ> 1) Is it ready for prime time? ie. stable? I have had no time to participate in Beta cycles after 1.61. However, when version 2.0 Final came out earlier this evening, the temptation was too much, so after backing up all of my 10 accounts with 63000+ messages through the Maintenance Center, I went ahead and upgraded. AJ> 2) If I install it, is my wife going to have trouble using it, after AJ> being used to 1.xx, and not being technically minded? No trouble at all. Version 2 looks much the same as 1.61 did, despite the new default set of icons. I do like the new set of icons, incidentally, unlike many users on the Bat lists. (The icons may strike you as too gray after you got used to all the yellows in version 1.xx. Yellow is gone in Version 2.) AJ> 3) Is the upgrade straightforward? That's the word for it. Everything* has been restored perfectly and everything is in its place. The upgrade took me about 30 seconds (excluding the speedy download of Version 2 from http://www.ritlabs.com/download/the_bat/beta/the_bat.exe ). * an exception: something that has not worked for me recently, even when restoring accounts from a CD backup, is the restoration of Address Book Groups -- only the Main Personal Address Book gets restored here from a CD backup or after upgrading to Version 2, with all email addresses from former Groups indiscriminately dumped in it. So in order not to lose your Groups, simply copy the *.ABD and *.INI files from your The Bat!\MAIL\ folder to a temporary folder prior to upgrading. Then, when in Version 2.0, should you find that your Groups are gone, in the Address Book go to: File --> Load Address Book Set..., and find your Addrbook.INI file previously copied from your 1.xx TB! version. That will restore the former status quo. As I said, this is not a Version 2 issue, as I had to do the same thing with v1.61 when I reformatted my hard-drive a few weeks ago. Incidentally, the restoration of all mail data, including numerous user-specific settings, via the Maintenance Centre from a single *.tbk file of about 120 MB size, worked like a charm. Deborah W asks: DW>> What are the highlights of v2? After reading all the sceptical opinions about v2 betas on the TBBETA list, I doubted whether it would be necessary for me to upgrade. The big improvement in v2 is supposed to be full working IMAP, which I don't use. However, the few hours that I've been using version 2 have convinced me that v2 is worth paying the price for upgrade. There are lots of cosmetic improvements and bug-fixes in version 2 compared to 1.61 that I wouldn't want to live without any longer. Such as, o attachments to messages can be displayed at the bottom of the preview pane, as small icons (rather than on the left as huge icons) o finally, if you have more than one message open for editing, your customized keyboard shortcuts work in all open editor windows instead of in only the one that was opened first o the content of attached *.txt, *.att, and most importantly, *.msg files gets displayed directly in the preview pane after you press CTRL+TAB, so you no longer need to open separate windows to view the content of those attachments. o new centralized Preferences dialog, with new options thrown in o new Folder Maintenance center o enhanced Search, it seems (though I can't seem to be able to find the 1.xx option to search in All Accounts or only in Current Account) o new Scheduler -- haven't tested it yet o if you decide to view Kludges in v2's Preview Window, Word-Wrap is finally applied to them (as in TB! 1.5x, later lost in 1.6x, now restored) o in v2 you can use Message Header Fields data directly in your reply templates via new (and customizable) Message Header macros o generally speaking, version 2 feels very stable, is super-fast and so, a joy to work with. Concerning Message Header fields data, could anyone help with the following: Is it possible to get to the message header pane via the keyboard only, without clicking with the mouse? It is often useful to copy data from the message header, but having to use the mouse for accessing the message header pane above the preview pane is time-consuming. Thank you. -- Yours, Alex. of Slovakia www.avenarius.sk [flying with The Bat! 2.00 under Windows 98 4.10 Build 2222 A amd k6-2 500 mhz processor with 128 mb ram] ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.62r | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
