Handbook: Mail, News, and Bookmarks


Tools for the Internet

In the previous chapter you read about the onscreen fundamentals for exploring the Internet. This chapter covers primary tools for interacting with others on the Internet and organizing the information you find: Mail, News, and Bookmarks.

As you read about mail and news, you'll see their features overlap substantially. Essentially, mail and news perform the same tasks: letting you correspond with others. For both mail and news, you create messages in the Message Composition window.

The core difference between mail and news is in its scope of distribution. Mail is distributed on a person-to-person basis; news is distributed on a publication-for-all basis.

You'll find that Netscape's Mail and News windows offer numerous features to help you organize the volumes of Internet correspondence. For example, you'll want to be able to distinguish old correspondence that you've read from new correspondence that you've yet to read.

Some organizational tools pertain to mail or news, but not both. For example, to organize mail messages you can drag and drop the messages into mail folders. News messages, on the other hand, are already organized among newsgroups and the News window does support the dragging and dropping of messages.

The last sections of this chapter detail the operation of the Bookmarks window and Address Book window. Bookmarks let you organize URLs using the same drag-and-drop metaphor used to organize files in operating systems such as those used by Macintosh and Windows 95 computers. Both the Bookmarks and Address Book windows offer custom menu items to help you set up and use their features.


Message Composition window

You can create and send email and newsgroup messages using the Message Composition window. When sending email, you can transmit Internet pages and disk files as attachments, including fully formatted HTML pages displayed within your mail message.

Netscape automatically recognizes the text of URLs and displays the text as highlighted, clickable links. For example, when you send a mail or news message using the Message Composition window, the recipient of the your message sees any URLs you've entered as links.

To display the Message Composition window, choose File|New Mail Message or File|Mail Document, or one of several toolbar buttons and menu items in the Mail and News windows. You can also display the Message Composition window by clicking on a page link or a button designed to initiate email.

The View menu items let you hide or display numerous types of address fields. Fields can contain more than one address.

Enter a message or include the text of the current page in the large message field. If you're sending mail, this field is preset with the current page's URL. If the Mail and News|Identity panel specifies a text file containing your signature, the signature is appended.

On Windows, you can click on some field labels to produce the Address Book window or Attachment file dialog to simplify text entry. On Macintosh, you can click the small triangle icon in the upper-left of the window to show or hide the address and attachment fields.

Here are the Message Composition buttons:

Here are the Message Composition menu items:


Mail window

Choose Window|Mail to display the Mail window and check for new messages. Alternatively, you can click on the mail icon (the small envelope in the bottom-right of the Netscape and News windows).

When you first open the Mail window, you're prompted to enter your email password. Use the password that you established with your Internet service provider or system administrator when you set up your Internet account. You'll have to enter your email password once per session or specify in the Mail and News|Organization panel that Netscape remember your password.

When you open the Mail window, Netscape checks the server and retrieves any new mail. Thereafter, Netscape can periodically recheck the server for new incoming messages, though does not automatically retrieve the messages. You can set the number of minutes between checks in the Mail and News|Servers panel.

To retrieve new messages, press the Get Mail toolbar button or click the mail icon. You can also click on the mail icon from the Mail window to manually check the server and retrieve new messages.

The mail icon shows you of the availability of new messages.

The Mail window consists of three panes: the mail folder pane, the message header pane, and the message content pane.

The mail folder pane contains a hierarchical list of your mail folders and three columns:

Four Netscape-generated folders can appear at the top of the list of folders: Using menu items, you can add more mail folders to help organize your mail. Any new folders you create will appear after the automatically created folders.

When you select a mail folder by clicking on it, the message heading pane displays the titles of messages contained in that folder and the following columns:

You can move a message stored in one folder to another by dragging the message icon in the message list to a message folder. You can also use Message|Move or Message|Copy to put messages or message copies inside folders.

Mail messages are unthreaded by default. You can change the setting in the Mail and News|Organization panel. On Macintosh, the message headings pane offers an area above the scroll bar that you can click on to show the current headings threaded or unthreaded.

When you select a message heading by clicking on it, the message gets displayed in the message content pane along with header information such as Subject, Date, From, To, and CC.

You can use toolbar buttons or menu items to move on to the next message or read a previous message.

You can resize each of the three panes to accommodate mail information by positioning the cursor on the border lines between two panes (the cursor changes shape) and dragging to the proportions you desire. You can also modify the layout of the panes using options in the Mail and News|Appearance panel.

If the message sender has included a page attachment, you can check the View|Attachments Inline menu item to display fully formatted HTML page information appended to the message body or check the View|Attachments as Links menu item to display a link to the attached page. If the message sender has included a file attachment, you can click on a link that presents the Save As dialog for saving the file to your hard disk. Beside each link to an attachment, you'll find information detailing the attachment's name, file type, and encoding.

The Mail toolbar buttons and menu items offer further options for viewing, creating, sending, and storing mail messages.


Mail toolbar buttons


Mail menu items

When you position the mouse over each Mail window pane, you can use the pop-up menu as a shortcut to several of the menu bar items listed here.


News window

Choose the Window|News menu item to display the News window. The window has a toolbar, distinct menu items, and three panes containing news information.

The newsgroup pane is a hierarchical list of news servers, categories, and newsgroups. Note that you need to set the host name of your news (NNTP) server in the Mail and News|Servers panel before you can access Usenet news.

The outer-level (leftmost) folders in the newsgroup pane show the news servers (news hosts) you've connected to. Typically, you'll have connected to only the default news server and have only one outer-level folder.

To view the full set of available news categories and newsgroups, choose the Options|Show All Newsgroups menu item. A news category, notated by a folder icon and an asterisk in its name, contains newsgroups sharing the same prefix. Click on a category folder to display all its newsgroups.

The newsgroup pane contains the following columns:

The Subscribe column (notated by a check mark) that lets you limit the visible newsgroups to those of your choosing. You can subscribe to newsgroups by first showing all newsgroups, then clicking a particular newsgroup's Subscribe icon in the newsgroup pane.

After subscribing to newsgroups, you can change the Options menu setting so that you view only subscribed newsgroups (or only active newsgroups which are subscribed newsgroups with unread messages). Other columns in the newsgroup pane tell you the number of unread messages and the total number of messages per newsgroup.

Your newsgroup subscription information is stored in a News file. If you have no previous News file, Netscape creates one that lists a couple of newsgroups designed for new users.

When you select a newsgroup by clicking on it, the message headings contained in the newsgroup are displayed in the message headings pane and has the following columns:

News messages are threaded by default. You can change the setting in the Mail and News|Organization panel. On Macintosh, the message headings pane offers areas above and below the scroll bar that you can click on. Click the top area to show the current headings threaded or unthreaded. Click the bottom area to show get more messages (same as File|Get More Messages menu item).

When you select a message heading by clicking on it, the message is displayed in the message content pane along with the header information such as Subject, Date, From, Organization, Newsgroups, and References.

The Newsgroups and References fields contain links to the newsgroup(s) containing the current message and where replies should be posted.

You can use toolbar buttons or menu items to move on to the next message or read a previous message.

You can resize each of the three panes to accommodate the news information by positioning the cursor on the border lines between two panes (the cursor changes shape) and dragging the panes to the proportions you desire. You can also modify the layout of the panes using options in the Mail and News|Appearance panel.

The News toolbar buttons and menu items offer further options for viewing, creating, sending, and storing news messages.


News toolbar buttons


News menu items

When you position the mouse over each News window pane, you can use the pop-up menu as a shortcut to several of the menu bar items listed here.


Bookmarks window

Use the Bookmarks menu for fast and easy access to your favorite pages.

The Bookmarks window contains icons and folders to help you organize your bookmarks. Each bookmark icon corresponds to a menu item. Each bookmark icon in a folder corresponds to a menu item under a header (a hierarchical or multilevel menu). Folders can be nested in other folders. Any changes you make to your bookmarks are saved and available the next time you start Netscape.

Bookmarks are maintained in lists, with each list represented by a bookmarks file. You can maintain multiple bookmark lists, each with its own set of titles linked to favorite pages, although only one bookmark list can be active at a time. You can select which list to display in the Bookmarks menu by choosing File|Open from the Bookmark window.


Bookmarks menu items

The Bookmarks window offers the following menu items:


Bookmarks shortcuts and tips

Selecting items

Positioning items Creating shortcut icons


Address Book window

Use the Address Book to simplify the process of addressing the email you send. To display the Address Book window, choose Window|Address Book. The window operates similarly to the Bookmarks window. You organize your addresses with address book icons and mailing list folders.

Any individual you add to your address book is represented by an icon. These individual icons appear first in the address book. Mailing list folders appear after the individual icons. Use the Address Book's menu items to create and modify entries.

Adding addresses: To add an individual, choose Item|Add User. You'll see the Address Book Properties dialog where you can enter a nickname, name, email address, and description. To modify an address book entry, select the icon to modify, then choose Item|Properties.

You can enter an abbreviation or other alternative name in the Nickname field to further simplify addressing the mail you send. When you compose new mail, simply enter the nickname (rather than the email address), then press Enter or Return. The nickname automatically expands to the corresponding email address in the address book.

Mailing lists: Mailing lists, represented by folder icons, contain aliases to individuals in your address book. Each individual in a mailing list is also represented by an individual icon outside of the mailing list.

To add an address to a mailing list, drag and drop the individual icon on to the mailing list folder. The individual icon remains in its place and the alias, notated in italics, is stored in the folder. Choose Item|Add List to create a new mailing list folder.


Address Book menu items

Menu items specific to the Address Book window work as follows



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