TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

[mouser]

So i'm playing with the latest "alpha" of thebat! email client (found here on betanews; ritlabs doesn't like to post their betas on their homepage), and wanted to post some observations.

It doesn't seem or look much different from version 3.  When ritlabs moved from version 2 to version 3 there was a LOT of complaining from users that they just hiked up the version number to be able to charge for an upgrade and it happend so soon after the change from version 1 to version 2.

It seems to me that on one hand this is a bit like an arbitrary version change rather than a major change, BUT in all fairness it has been a long time since version 2 came out and version 4 hasn't been released yet.  And i give them credit for the non-stop constant improvement of the program in small increments, which has to be worth something.

The alpha still is a tiny bit buggy, but quite usable (it is after all really just an improved version 3 not a major rewrite), and i didn't find any showstoppers.

What compelled me to post though was 2 things:

The first thing is that I am a longtime user and fan of thebat and after a couple years of suffering with this bug where the program occasionally loses its connection with a mail server and enters a hung state which requires program restart, it looks like they have FINALLY fixed it!  This fix has been so long in coming and they should be ashamed it took them so long to fix it.  But i am thrilled it is fixed.  It was the one thing i hated and it's fantastic that it finally seems fixed.

The second thing is a double edged sword.  The backup and restore functionality, which ritlabs has obviously put a lot of work into, and which seems wonderfully powerful, FAILED to properly work for me.  It backs up fine, but gives an unintelligible error during the restore process, making it unusable.  Thankfully this issue is not very servere because one of the nicer things about thebat is that it saves all mail in a file directory in a way that can be simply copied or moved between machines.  This is actually one of my favorite features about thebat, that i can see all of the files and manage and backup my mail data manually, and it doesn't mind being moved around.  But this is a warning -- do NOT assume that just because the backup function worked that the restore function will.

There you have it, some early observations.  For me, I remain a fan of the program and am happy to keep using it.

ps. you can read my original review of thebat here; take the comparison with other programs with a grain of salt of course, since the review is over 2 years old and i'm sure some of the other programs (Thunderbird in particular) has grown a lot since then.

[CodeTRUCKER]

Great timing since I am presently in the throes of switching mail clients.
I have TBat and TBird and have been making a comparison.  I also have been working with Barca 2 (Pocomail 4 mail engine).  Once 25,000+ e-mails just "disappeared" without a trace!  I couldn't even find the folders they were in, but next restart and Abracadabra! they were all back AFAICT!  I really like a lot about the way the Pocomail client works, but this type of "magic" leaves me less than confident, but I digress.   </hijack>

I used TBat for some years until about ver 3.90(?) when Ritlabs removed using the Space Bar to read the next unread messages.    Fortunately they added it back in one of the latest builds. 

In light of your post I have a some of things I would like to know about the "new" TBat.

• Did Rilabs stay with the method of not loading HTML in-line remote images in the body (images that load in the e-mail after it is opened that are not part of the mail you received) or have they finally allowed the user to make the decision?
• Did Rilabs make it an option to allow image attachments to be viewed in the same window(tab) as the text as opposed to the present click-on-the-other-tab-to-see-your-picture method?
• Did Ritlabs make any improvements to the SmartBat (Scheduler and Notes)?  This isn't critical, but both could be less arcane.

Thank you for the heads-up!

<edit> additions and rewording </edit>

[mouser]

i'm afraid i'm not going to be too much help here since most of the questions you ask are things i don't use.
never tried smartbat so i have no idea.
regarding nohtml inline, could you be a little more specific?  what i do know is you can choose whether to view and respond to messages with html either as they are, or as always plaintext (which is what i choose).  so i never see any html or inline images.  all pictures and attachments for me are always shown in a panel where i have to click to view (which is how i like it).  i did look for a way to show attached images immediately without clicking and didn't find any way to do so, but the attachment images are all listed as tabs at the bottom of the message so it's just one click to view each one.

[aignes]

It seems to me that on one hand this is a bit like an arbitrary version change rather than a major change, BUT in all fairness it has been a long time since version 2 came out and version 4 hasn't been released yet.  And i give them credit for the non-stop constant improvement of the program in small increments, which has to be worth something.

As far as I know, version 4 will be a free update. But RitLabs will charge for version 4.1 where they introduce a new user interface. I can't remember where it was mentioned, but I read it some time ago in a blog or so...

[marek_mikus]

Hi guys, let me answer some of your questions, because I am using alphas

there will be many and major improvements, this can not be really compared to upgrade from v2 to v3.

1) downloading remote images to HTML messages is implemented, there is an URL download manager, where You will be able to allow/block requested hostnames

2) there is a new images viewer, You can view all images attached to message in one window, it is possible to rotate, zoom, fullscreen etc.

3) the bat! will internally suppport decoding of Microsoft's MS-TNEF format! not sure, how many clients supports it, as I think, only MS's products

4) there is completely new plaintext editor and viewer, it is Unicode based now, supports Redo, supports new spellchecking engine, there will be possible to use more dictionaries at the same time etc.

5) there is completely new feature for monitoring history of communication based on virtual folders

6) there is completely reworked tabs and folder pane, You can set columns for every tab, change their order, create its own tabs with selected addresses from history and folders from accounts

7) there is new searching pane in viewer

and many other smaller improvements

[mouser]

Welcome to the site marek and thank you for the post, looks like there are quite a few new things i didn't see during my quick evaluation.  How do you enable the new image viewer?

ps. The virtual folder and folder tabs features are extremely impressive.

[marek_mikus]

As far as I know, version 4 will be a free update. But RitLabs will charge for version 4.1 where they introduce a new user interface. I can't remember where it was mentioned, but I read it some time ago in a blog or so...

-aignes (January 24, 2008, 08:30 AM)

yes, all users with regcode for v3 will have upgrade to 4.0.0-4.0.9 free of charge. First 3.0 was released more than 3.5 years ago, so upgrades were free for a very long period.

4.1 will have additional changes in GUI, will supports new features like message labels etc

[marek_mikus]

Welcome to the site marek and thank you for the post, looks like there are quite a few new things i didn't see during my quick evaluation.  How do you enable the new image viewer?

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 09:05 AM)

open Options | Preferences and uncheck option "Use external viewer to open attached images". Then open image file from Attachments pane

[mouser]

ok got it, thanks.  doesnt add anything from my standpoint, using my normal external image viewer (irfanview) works exactly the same.  it might be nice if they did what codetrucker seemed to be asking for which is have an option where the images were all shown at once, perhaps automatically.

[tranglos]

Thanks, mouser, for the review. I won't be upgrading at least until the final release is out, since most of my work comes and gtoes via email, and so I'm a little paranoid about mail safety.

It's good that v4 is an incremental improvement rather than a major rewrite - less opportunity for breaking what's already been working fine. Personally, I am immediately wary about the new editor marek mentions, especially that TB! crew have some peculiar ideas about how an editor should work, and they are immune to persuasion on that topic. As much as I like TB, I curse it a few times every day when I have to manually rewrap long lines, and the autoformat feature is even worse, e.g. when type "bulleted" lists of things in your message, as I often do. I've learned to live with it, but sometimes I still want to fling something out the window - the monitor, the keyboard, anything to stop the annoyance

The second thing is a double edged sword.  The backup and restore functionality, which ritlabs has obviously put a lot of work into, and which seems wonderfully powerful, FAILED to properly work for me.  It backs up fine, but gives an unintelligible error during the restore process, making it unusable. 

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 01:15 AM)

This was with the new alpha, right? Have you ever tried restoring in one of the 3.x releases?

I've only used restore once, on the current 3.99 version, and it went fine. I really like the automated backup, especially that TB can generate datestamped versions of the backup file (you can sue the "%macros" in the filename).

And while it's great to have easy access to the physical mail folders on disk, when you install TB from scratch, it does not pick up old folders if you just copy them over. At least in my experience, when I did that, I had to re-create each account manually, naming it after the account sitting on disk, which is when TB noticed the already existing folder by the same name and picked it up. Not a big hassle, but the automatic restore is much smoother.

.marek

[mouser]

when I have to manually rewrap long lines,

Alt-L will reformat a paragraph.

Regarding the restore, it failed both on 3.9x and 4.x
However it did restore far enough to get all of the directory structures.. so that explains part of what you were saying -- the restore recreated all the directory structures but crashed in the middle of restoring messages.  Then i just manually copied files.

[tranglos]

when I have to manually rewrap long lines,

Alt-L will reformat a paragraph.

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 11:47 AM)

I know! Fume! This is excactly what's wrong with that!   Do you ever need to press Alt+L in, I don't know, Notepad or Ultraedit? More fume!

Regarding the restore, it failed both on 3.9x and 4.x
However it did restore far enough to get all of the directory structures.. so that explains part of what you were saying -- the restore recreated all the directory structures but crashed in the middle of restoring messages.  Then i just manually copied files.

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 11:47 AM)

The automatic restore went through 100% for me. I had used the manual method, copying over mail folders, earlier, before TB added the backup/restore feature (or before I learned about it). Did you file a bug with the developers? They usually respond within a few days, and I got at least one (minor) bug fixed that way.

[J-Mac]

I am also looking for a new email client - I have actually been using webmail interfaces for a couple of weeks - Yuck, blah! - because Thunderbird, which I have been using since V.2 was released and I love it, became somehow corrupted and new profiles are not the answer apparently.  I could just do a complete cleanout and reinstall it fresh but I am a little ticked there is no better way to repair it.  I have more than 15,000 messages in it and approximately 500 total folders/mailboxes.  I don't wish to re-create them, and importing them from the corrupted installation, well, that just wouldn't be wise, would it?!

I used Pocomail for three years previously (and Barca for a while when they first released it), and I recently looked at "The Bat!", but I simply don't wish to live with what I consider the "crippled" HTML rendering along with the extremely limited support of IMAP mail accounts.  Personally, with common security protections on my PC (and other PCs I use) I have not seen any security threat from an HTML message that wouldn't easily be handled by an Antivirus and/or Anti-Spyware program.  And I have no idea why these apps do not willingly support IMAP.  Anyone know why IMAP is a problem with either Pocomail or The Bat!?

Another issue I kept banging up against with Pocomail was the refusal to support MAPI. I could not have other applications which are capable of sending emails directly from their own UI use Pocomail because Pocomail won't accept such commands.  Their reasoning is - once again - security.  All those apps are subject to allowing malware to use that path to spam people - I don't believe that's a valid concern.  (Someone should point me to the last time that issue was recorded in the last five years. I cannot find any!)

I know that there is a niche market for such "security measures" in an email client. But I believe the mainstream want and need proper HTML rendering in their email.  I do!  And not for personal reasons only; I receive a lot of business-related email newsletters that can be read - kind of - in Pocomail, but cannot be resent or forwarded because the HTML is stripped out, rendering a newsletter unreadable.

Jim

[CodeTRUCKER]

Moved to Fixed: "Thunderbird is still running..." error

[J-Mac]

That's not the problem, but I don't want to get into all that in this thread - way OT!

Jim

[CodeTRUCKER]

That's not the problem, but I don't want to get into all that in this thread - way OT!

Jim

-J-Mac (January 24, 2008, 01:51 PM)

Right on the OT, I have moved the post to a new thread ( but you still might want to try it... can't hurt?) </off topic>


Marek, sounds like something pretty encouraging!  I look forward to trying the release and Thank You for the heads-up!

[CodeTRUCKER]

regarding nohtml inline, could you be a little more specific? 

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 04:24 AM)

Sorry about that.   Corrected original wording in my post; however, my questions have been addressed by Marek, except for the one about SmartBat.  Well, maybe he already answered it.

[CodeTRUCKER]

...there is new searching pane in viewer

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 09:01 AM)

Would this happen to work like the character-by-character incremental parsing of messge bodies, subject, etc. of the "tree" including subfolders?  (See Pocomail 4 "Focus" box)

[marek_mikus]

ok got it, thanks.  doesnt add anything from my standpoint, using my normal external image viewer (irfanview) works exactly the same.  it might be nice if they did what codetrucker seemed to be asking for which is have an option where the images were all shown at once, perhaps automatically.

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 09:18 AM)

Ritlabs is not going to do a second irfan, but I know many users, who do not or can not use external apps like Irfan and this is great addition for them.

[marek_mikus]

...there is new searching pane in viewer

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 09:01 AM)

Would this happen to work like the character-by-character incremental parsing of messge bodies, subject, etc. of the "tree" including subfolders?  (See Pocomail 4 "Focus" box)

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 03:26 PM)

do not know about Pocomail, but no, this is related to searching text in preview of message

[superboyac]

I know! Fume! This is excactly what's wrong with that!   Do you ever need to press Alt+L in, I don't know, Notepad or Ultraedit? More fume!

-tranglos (January 24, 2008, 11:55 AM)

Exactly!!  This, to me, is the most frustrating feature of the Bat.  There are a couple of quirks with the message editor that I find really annoying.  One is this wrapping issue, I don't know why they don't fix it and I don't understand why it should behave any differently than any other text editor.
The other issue is if you copy a paragraph of text from the Bat and paste it in a regular text editor, even though the paragraph is supposed to be one continuous wrapped line, it appears as multiple lines in the text editor.  That means that the Bat doesn't keep track of wrapped lines and stuff, so if it appears as two lines, it really is two lines.  It's annoying when you have to go back and forth with text between applications.
And what about long hyperlinks (web addresses)?  If it's wrapped, sometimes it doesn't detect and connect the second line, even if you use the context-menu, hyperlink-specific options.  Wasn't this problem solved years ago with most email clients?

Anyway, other than that, I'm happy with the Bat.

[marek_mikus]

regarding nohtml inline, could you be a little more specific? 

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 04:24 AM)

Sorry about that.   Corrected original wording in my post; however, my questions have been addressed by Marek, except for the one about SmartBat.  Well, maybe he already answered it.

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 03:21 PM)

for 4.0, no changes are prepared for SmartBat/Scheduller except GUI changes, as I heard, scheduller improvements are planned for 4th generation, but do not when

[marek_mikus]

I know! Fume! This is excactly what's wrong with that!   Do you ever need to press Alt+L in, I don't know, Notepad or Ultraedit? More fume!

-tranglos (January 24, 2008, 11:55 AM)

Exactly!!  This, to me, is the most frustrating feature of the Bat.  There are a couple of quirks with the message editor that I find really annoying.  One is this wrapping issue, I don't know why they don't fix it and I don't understand why it should behave any differently than any other text editor.
The other issue is if you copy a paragraph of text from the Bat and paste it in a regular text editor, even though the paragraph is supposed to be one continuous wrapped line, it appears as multiple lines in the text editor.  That means that the Bat doesn't keep track of wrapped lines and stuff, so if it appears as two lines, it really is two lines.  It's annoying when you have to go back and forth with text between applications.

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 03:33 PM)

old Microed used until 3.99 is not paragraph based, as I know, new one should be, must check this, it is implemented early.

And what about long hyperlinks (web addresses)?  If it's wrapped, sometimes it doesn't detect and connect the second line, even if you use the context-menu, hyperlink-specific options.  Wasn't this problem solved years ago with most email clients?

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 03:33 PM)

how could program detect wrapped link in plaintext? surprise me :-)

[tamasd]

I used Pocomail for three years previously (and Barca for a while when they first released it), and I recently looked at "The Bat!", but I simply don't wish to live with what I consider the "crippled" HTML rendering along with the extremely limited support of IMAP mail accounts.  Personally, with common security protections on my PC (and other PCs I use) I have not seen any security threat from an HTML message that wouldn't easily be handled by an Antivirus and/or Anti-Spyware program.

-J-Mac (January 24, 2008, 01:00 PM)

1. Problems with HTML in Pocomail/Barca on forwards or replies are not intentional, ie. it's not to "increase security", it's due to a limited viewer/editor control used. Btw. AFAIK it is getting replaced.
2. I have seen antivirus programs fail recognizing security threats in html. No protection is 100%.

And I have no idea why these apps do not willingly support IMAP.  Anyone know why IMAP is a problem with either Pocomail or The Bat!?

Not sure, my guess is that it's way more complex to implement, and way less people use it than the POP protocol.

All those apps are subject to allowing malware to use that path to spam people - I don't believe that's a valid concern.  (Someone should point me to the last time that issue was recorded in the last five years. I cannot find any!)

Whether it's a valid or non-valid concern, depends on point of view. It certainly increases the security. Of course you can say that people shall patch their OS, always use latest up-to-date firewalls and antiviruses and antispywares and whatever, and you know what I do it, you do it, and few other people too, particularly those on this board and similar geek types. But try to see a majority user of those apps.

So IMHO it increases security (how much is another question, maybe it's just a very small increase in overall security, I don't know), but cutting down on functionality. Whether that's valid, depends on the user. You and I might hate it as we can secure our computers without having to sacrifice on functionality, but there might be others who sleep better thanks to it. (I have found several MAPI viruses discovered in 2004 and 2005 after some short search, though frankly I'm not an expert on that so I have no clue whether those threats would apply on what we are discussing.)

We are also speaking about future security. If IMAP has long history of past threats, would you now jump on it as a developer knowing that it was ok for last year or two, but not for the years before?

Anyway, I'd like to stress that I'm not supporting the "no IMAP" stance. I'm the "give me full powers, I decide" advocate.

[CodeTRUCKER]

...there is new searching pane in viewer

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 09:01 AM)

Would this happen to work like the character-by-character incremental parsing of messge bodies, subject, etc. of the "tree" including subfolders?  (See Pocomail 4 "Focus" box)

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 03:26 PM)

do not know about Pocomail, but no, this is related to searching text in preview of message

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:31 PM)

Hmmm... there is a little utility value in searching in the body of a preview for specific text (if I understand you right?), especially if the search parses character-by-character, but I would have very little use for such a thing, personally.  I can see it being a boon to lawyers, contract writers, etc.  My needs are not so critical, but it is improtant for me to be able to locate specific strings in past e-mails (up to 25,000+ so far) quickly.  I know I can use the full search feature, but this is a matter of convenience, I guess?  My think ing is you can't do anything to an e-mail until you have it.  

Here is the link to the free 30-day trial of Pocomail4 download if you want to check out the competition's method of handling a quick search.  Don't misunderstand me I am not playing tit-for-tat here, nor am I trying to start a mail client flame war.  I only see that there is a capability in a competing product that I would LOVE to see in TheBAT!   Thanks again for joining the thread. I wish more developers/representatives would do so.

<edit> spelling and clarifications </edit>