3. Mail/News

Only the browser can be installed stand-alone. Mail/News, Composer and ChatZilla cannot be installed without the browser.

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The first time you run Mail/News, it should ask you if you want to make Mozilla your default mail client. If you answered ‘no’ and later decide you would like it to act as your default mail client:

• Windows, Mac: go to Edit | Preferences | Mail & Newsgroups and check ‘Use Mozilla Mail as the default mail application’.

  If you still have problems with mailto: links under Windows, go to Start | Settings | Control Panel and open Internet Options. Under the ‘Programs’ tab, select ‘Mozilla 1.0 Mail’ from the drop-down list next to ‘E-mail:’.

• GNOME (Unix/Linux): Open the Control Panel. Go to Document Handlers | URL Handlers. Put mailto in the left text field, and gnome-moz-remote "%s" in the right one. Then put the following text in ~/.gnome/gnome-moz-remote (create the file if it does not exist):

[Mozilla]
 filename=absolute path of Mozilla install directory/mozilla

• KDE 3 (Unix/Linux): Open the Control Center and go to Network | Email. Under Preferred Email Client, enter:

absolute path of Mozilla install directory/mozilla --mail

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Windows, Macintosh: To make Mozilla use another mail program, you can either (a) uninstall Mozilla, then re-install using Browser Only (Mail/News not installed), or (b) add this line to user.js:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailto", true);

This will open the system default mail program when you click on an e-mail link in Mozilla.

GNOME, KDE (Unix/Linux): This is not yet possible in GNOME or KDE, but work is in progress to make Mozilla for Unix compliant with the X Desktop Group Standard as it is finalized.

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Enter chrome://messenger/contents/messenger.xul in the address bar of a tab. You can bookmark this tab, including as part of a group bookmark.

Note: This is unsupported. Odd things may happen, e.g., all of Mozilla closing when you close the tab.

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No. Netscape WebMail and Hotmail use proprietary protocols. To access WebMail directly through an e-mail client requires you to use Netscape 6+ with AIM; to do so with Hotmail requires either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. There is also proprietary shareware available that will let you do the same thing.

You can access your WebMail account on the Web at http://webmail.netscape.com/, or Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com/. If you use Microsoft Messenger, clicking on the appropriate link will open your default browser and take you to your inbox.

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Mozilla Mail will not allow a virus or worm to execute automatically. You can see what attachments have been sent to you without a virus being able to execute, and you would have to save a file to your system and deliberately run it before it could cause any harm.

JavaScript is switched off by default for mail and news, so an e-mail cannot run script code just by being opened.

As with any mail program, take proper caution before running any file that you receive in e-mail. Appropriate anti-virus software should also help keep you safer.

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Open Mail/News and go to Tools | Import, which will bring up a dialog to guide you through the process.

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Mozilla’s mail files are in the standard plain text ‘mbox’ format, which almost all mail programs can use or import. Many proprietary mail programs have a function to import from Eudora, which also uses the ‘mbox’ format; this function should read your Mozilla mail files properly.

Your mail files are inside your profile (see User Profiles), in the Mail and (if you use IMAP) ImapMail folders. Each mail folder (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files – one with no extension (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in ‘mbox’ format), and one with an .msf extension (e.g. INBOX.msf), which is the index (Mail Summary File) to the mail file. Tell the other program to import mail from the file with no extension.

If you want to transfer a mail file to another Mozilla profile or another installation of Mozilla, simply put the mail file into the other installation’s Mail folder.

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A spellchecker is being developed by the Spellchecker project. This is early beta-quality software, and should not be expected to work flawlessly.

Testing builds are currently available for Windows and Linux (Macintosh help is wanted). Expect bugs, and please report new ones to the Spellchecker project. Help in programming for the spellchecker is also welcomed.

If you download the spellchecker for testing: Make sure that ‘Check spelling before sending’ is checked under Edit | Preferences | Mail & Newsgroups | Composition. When you first run the spellchecker, select a dictionary from the drop-down list on the bottom left of the pop-up panel (it defaults to ‘Download More’).

If the spellchecker does not save your user dictionary, add this line to user.js:

user_pref ("spellchecker.savePDEverySession", true);

This creates a personal dictionary file, persdict.dat, and will save changes to the personal dictionary after each use.

Other third-party spellcheckers may also work with Mozilla.

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The spellchecking engine inside Netscape’s spellchecker is proprietary software licensed from another company, and so is not available to the Mozilla project.

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The Windows version of Mozilla includes mail notification in the system tray while Mail/News is open. Notification preferences can be found at Edit | Preferences | Mail & Newsgroups.

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A calendar is in development by the Calendar project. It will be based on existing calendar standards: iCalendar, iTIP, and iMIP.

This is a very early beta, and the design has yet to be finalised. Testing builds are currently available for Windows and Linux (Macintosh help is wanted). Help in programming for the calendar is greatly welcomed.

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To use S/MIME, open Mail/News and go to Edit | Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings | account name | Security. You can set which certificates to use with each account for digital signing and/or encryption.

Hooks to PGP or GnuPG are not yet included in Mozilla, but are under development at Enigmail.

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In user.js, add:

user_pref("mail.server.default.abbreviate", false);

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A development ROT13 tool is available from XULPlanet.

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