The Bat! sucks for IMAP

[moerl]

I don't know... I've tried The Bat! multiple times, and while I will agree that it is an excellent overall email client with by far the most impressive feature-set in the entire email-client market, I find it very frustrating to use with the IMAP email protocol. I don't know how many of you use IMAP, but you will probably be bound to agree with me if you do. I wish I could use The Bat!, really. I've always been a great fan of Thunderbird, and still use it as my only email client, but recently I've found more problems with it than ever before. I desperately need a "check mail before send" option, and Thunderbird does not support this to my knowledge. Because of this, I am now stuck with having to restart Thunderbird every time I want to send mail! Talk about pain... just because that little option is missing, I can only send mail this way. For some reason, all the "send pending" or "send unsent" mail simply does NOT work in Thunderbird. I click on the button and it's as if the button to do so points nowhere. I will see if I can find extensions that will solve these problems for me, but isn't it a pain if you have to look for extensions that will fix something so fundamental?

Having said that, I wish I could figure out how to use The Bat! effectively with IMAP, but I'm afraid the boys over at Ritlabs will have to do some work on The Bat!'s IMAP backend.


So long,

Me

[JeffK]

I've recently been trialling The Bat! 3.5 Pro and am not finding it too bad, although it seems to have an unnecessary delay when deleting an email and moving on to the next one.  Also the IMAP does not appear to support IDLE and I think this is a shortfall although workarounds can be done.

I'm not sure what you mean by "check before send" in Thunderbird.  Could you please elaborate a little more?

Jeff

[moerl]

See this: http://www.bu.edu/pc...e/sending/index.html

Option 1.

This is done to prevent spam relaying through a specific smtp mail server. Not all email servers require this option to be enabled, but many do these days in order to prevent abuse by spammers. That option plain does not exist in Thunderbird as far as I know, and it's a pain right now, because I'm using my university's SMTP server but I'm not connected to the internet through the university. My university therefore is not currently my ISP, and therefore I can only send mail if I check my mail immediately before sending. Now that I say this, I could of course try checking my mail manually immediately before sending. That should work. Still, it is a very basic option that most other advanced email clients have, including The Bat!

As for The Bat! not supporting the IMAP idle functionality--how could I forget about that!! That is one of the biggest drawbacks of The Bat! in combination with IMAP. It always felt really awkward using The Bat! with IMAP because it kept disconnecting me from the server, and it has all these options under preferences that ask you how you want to handle server connectivity with IMAP. For example... do you want The Bat! to connect when you change folders on the server by clicking on a different folder, or when you perform any command, or or or... it's confusing. Thunderbird simply stays connected and that's that. Doesn't get any simpler. That's why, among other reasons, The Bat! currently just sucks for IMAP. Sadly... because as we all know, it is otherwise an amazing email client.

I love Thunderbird, and I can't wait for v1.1 to officially be released. It is scheduled for release at the end of July. Still, I'd like to see Ritlabs make some drastic improvements to The Bat! in terms of IMAP functionality, so that I could consider it as an actual option. Sadly, The Bat! in its current form simply is not even an option for me.

[JeffK]

Is it practical for you to use another SMTP server for your outgoing mail?

[moerl]

It is. At least while I am not on-campus. I tried another one today and it didn't go too well. I'll have to investigate a bit further. I believe I have a third SMTP server I can use, just need to check.

[jpfx]

I went to v2 for the IMAP support. Tried it for a very short while and found it impossible to work with. Of course when you have Email Chat and skinning, who needs IMAP?

[moerl]

I went to v2 for the IMAP support. Tried it for a very short while and found it impossible to work with. Of course when you have Email Chat and skinning, who needs IMAP?

-jpfx (June 07, 2005, 05:55 PM)

You're still talking of The Bat!, right? Well... IMAP > POP3 in many respects, and I have come to rely on it. I wish Google would offer IMAP access to GMail already, instead of just POP3. And I'd love The Bat! to have better IMAP support. I could do with a new Opera release with the latest IMAP backend integrated as well. They're the only company I know that is actively working on a brand-new IMAP backend for their mail-client.

I wish I could give Bat! another chance but in its current form it's just useless for me