In Chapter 2, in the section Internet connection, we learned how to set up an Internet connection. Let's suppose that the e-mail address is: gorlando@futuretg. Now we will explain how to set up Netscape Communicator to receive and send e-mail using this address.

Once configured, Netscape Communicator can receive and send e-mails; you only have to be connected to Internet via Dial-up, ISDN or Satellite, to receive messages from anywhere in the world . Of course, sendmail must be configured.

You have to identify your company before you can send e-mails. Choose from the menu "Edit" -> "Preferences ...", then select Mail & Group, and "Identity" as shown below.

For these data:

email: gorlando@futuretg.com
Outgoing: mail.futuretg.com         (Server e-mail sending).
Incoming: mail.futuretg.com         (Server e-mail receiving).

we simply complete the entries and choose POP3. There are other ways to download the mail.

As we see, all the messages will be copied to the local machine to be read at any time. You may browse your original messages to respond to previous contacts.
 
 

Communicator verifies that your data agrees with your ISP before downloading your e-mail. You have to be connected to the Internet to set up your Mail Server data correctly.

To read your e-mail messages, Communicator asks you for your password, before downloading it. The password can be saved so that you can retrieve new e-mails without having to re-enter it.

Once downloaded, the e-mails are displayed as follows.

In this case there are many possible steps to follow:

• Answering the e-mail by clicking the "Reply" button.
• Adding the Sender to our Address-Book. To do this, "click" on the "sender" name.
• Printing the message by clicking the "Print" button.
• Trashing the e-mail by clicking the "Delete" button. It is possible to get back the e-mail before doing "Empty Trash on Local mail", which permanently erases deleted mail.
• Reading new e-mail by clicking the "Next" button .
• Sorting the e-mail by date, Sender, Subject, and other data.
• Moving the message to a special directory by choosing from the "File" menu.
• Finding out the operating system and the mail program used by the sender, the pop or the visited router and other interesting information.

 

We discover from this dialog that the e-mail was sent from a Pentium machine with Linux Kernel 2.0.27, using Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0.

To send e-mails, we just click the "New Message" button. A window like the following will appear:

Communicator searches the addresses in the "Address-Book" from the first letters that we enter (see the "r" in bold).

The e-mail address can be also copied with "drag-and-drop" operations from the "Address-Book" to the "New Mail" window.

The entries in the "Address-Book" can be completed in the following ways:

• Clicking on the e-mail address of the "sender", and confirming by pressing the "Enter" key.
• Completing the entries on a "New Card".
• Clicking the right mouse button on the message body, and choosing the option "Add to Address-Book" -> "Sender".

One of the problems of this option is that people receiving the message will see the e-mail addresses of the other recipients, and this isn't in line with "net-iquette". There are also other ways to specify multiple addresses from a single e-mail. You can send the message "To:" the main person, and include the sender e-mail address in the entries "CC", or "BCC".

Once the address is completed, fill in the "Subject", insert the text or "Body" of the message, and send it by clicking the "Send Now" button.

The message can be sent at a later time, too. To do this, complete all the operations, and choose "File" -> "Send Later".

When you want to send this message, choose the menu entry "Send Unsent Messages", under the "File" Menu.

Communicator also lets you send mail messages from an HTML page. Try it now: Dr. Giovanni A. Orlando.
 

When an e-mail is coming, Communicator shows us a green arrow informing us as follows: or , which may change the window border depending on the Window Manager in use.

Under the new KDE, the image will be: . To receive the messages, click on this icon.
 

You can receive a file as an "attachment", in a different format, like Text or ASCII. Netscape Communicator saves the file on the local disk.

Red Hat Linux includes StarOffice 5.0, which supports MS-Word files (version 5.0 or later), as well as MS-Word 97 and 98. To read the "attachment" files in MS-Word format directly from StarOffice, you have to modify the "Helpers" in the Preference menu, as follows:
 
 

When you click the received MS-Word file, StarOffice will start.

The same operation is possible for formats like: MS-Excel, tiff, ps, eps, and many others.

With Communicator, Netscape unifies all your message management in a single program: e-mail messages and news group reading. The program is called: "Message center", which lists all the e-mail directories and the news group that you may read.

You can search in more than 10,000 discussion news groups, and then add it to your daily Web search. Just click on the "newsgroup" search.
 
 

For example about linux news groups we find the following:

To add these groups in your list, just click on the "point" near to the number.

To read a news group, add the news group server to: "Mail & Groups" -> "Groups Server".

Communicator also includes an excellent Help section which introduces some aspects of the product and its features.