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Toying with TheBat! - any plugin suggestions?

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Carol Haynes:
I used OE ages ago but I don't like the lack of filtering options. It is also awkward to back up your data including rules, interface layout etc.

Carol Haynes:
Hmmm - just read the FAQ page on another website (strangely it is linked from the Help menu to a blank page - I had to go to the main website and look for the link which had a PDF version).

It seems that theBat can't display images not included in the downloaded message! The only way to see the email with full formatting is to open the HTML attachment in a browser.

I can understand why this might be good as an option but it seems like overkill that you can;t read HTML from trusted sources without having to open extra browser pages.

kimmchii:
It seems that theBat can't display images not included in the downloaded message!
-Carol Haynes (July 08, 2006, 08:33 PM)
--- End quote ---
that's undesirable, so what are you going to try next?

how bout Thunderbird?

Carol Haynes:
I might give Courier a try - I got a free license when they were giving it away a while back and never got round to trying it. (It is still available for free at http://www.rosecitysoftware.com/courier/ so it is worth a look)

Just installed Corier - I quite like the way it works. There are many similarities with theBat on initial use - multiple email accounts/mailboxes (each with multiple email addresses can be set up). Incoming mail on a particular address can be routed to a specific folder. There is built in Junk handling. You have total control over how much HTML is displayed (from none - through blocking specific components - audio, video, pictures, javascript, activeX etc. to complete HTML as received).

There is a full range of filtering options including RegEx.

One of the nice thing is the use of 'templates' for email accounts so that if you have, say , multiple yahoo addresses you can set up a single email account/server set and then use it as a template to quickly enter all the other account details without having to retype all the server details. You can display full headers in the preview window (or an abbreviated version or none at all).

The only things I don't like are:

- the look ... on my screen the icons are tiny (even when set to large) and are 'fuzzy' so it is difficult to see what you are doing. The style is also quite dated.

- it is a bit convoluted to set up (but easy to find your way around once you have played for a few minutes)

- importing is a bit limited (it doesn't work with Outlook, but does with Outlook Express)

- no export function (biggy). You can archive your emails to a text file and a folder of attachments (inc. all the HTML images etc) which can be imported again, but I can't see how you could use this archive in any other app easily.

I have attached a screen shot ...

JavaJones:
I was at one time considering TheBat! for my own switch from Outlook (still hasn't happened, but I get crashes too). I haven't yet tried TheBat! but I have tinkered with with a few mail apps since in my search for a replacement.

Thunderbird is too simplified and reliant on inconsistent extensions for my taste. I like being able to extend a system with 3rd party addons but I don't want to necessarily *have to*. This is the same reason I prefer Opera over FF. The worst part seems to be that even the extensions system has fairly limited access to what it can do so certain extensions simply *can't* be made. Of course any plugin/extension system has to be limited to some degree, but I'm talking about some pretty unnecessary (as far as I can see) limitations.

Outlook Express doesn't like dealing with my several GB of e-mail. It does most of what I want, surprisingly, but its search is not any better than Outlook, probably worse, and faster search is one of the big reasons I wanted to move away from Outlook. Now that I'm playing with X1 this need is much less but the crashes of Outlook are still cramping my style.

Pegasus Mail I haven't played with enough to really get a solid impression. It seems like a very good system but it's not particularly intuitive for me. Ultimately I just hate the windowed UI approach. I've always hated Eudora for the same reason. It has tabs which makes it better and there is also an actual folder tree with preview pane so I can use it just like Outlook or Thunderbird, but it's clearly not built with that as the primary method of interaction.

Pegasus does seem quite powerful and has the potential to make my e-mail activities more efficient but I frankly don't want to deal with learning a new system at this point. So I guess what I want is something that is either A: an immediate replacement for Outlook, behaving very similarly, but more stable and faster or B: something so intuitive that, despite it being different from Outlook, I just immediately "get" it and love it; this is how it was for me with Opera for example.

Anyway, long story short if TheBat! really can't display linked images in-line then I'm afraid it's not the client for me. I can't believe that really isn't an option somewhere though. That seems ridiculous.

- Oshyan

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