Mail plugin

Because this plugin was at the heart of the application in the early stages of developement and because of it's importance we will give it a more detailed description. The Mail plugins is a bit more easy to use but still quite simple.

Activate the plugin

As with all other Aethera plugins you activate the Mail plugin by clicking on it's icon the the plugin icon toolbar located by default in the right hand side.

User interface basics

As all Aethera plugins the Mail plugin has the folder tree located by default to the left of the working space. The folder system can be used to organize your emails.

For adding contacts to addressbook or for coping contacts to clipboard, just right click on the To, From or Cc labels.

To create a new folder right click a folder in the tree. Select "New mail group" That folder will contain the new folder that you will create. Because we whant to optimize the way mails are stored on your computer we created two kinds of folder. Select "Container only" if you don't plan to keep mail in that folder of "Might contain mail" if you find it usefull to keep mail in that folder. Type in a name and then click Ok.

The plugin functionality:

Create a new mail. This is also availabile with the Ctrl+N combination or from the Mail->New menu.
Reply to the mail selected in the mail list. Also availabile via "Actions->Reply->Reply" menu.
Reply to all. Also availabile via "Actions->Reply->Reply All" menu.
Forward the mail selected in the mail list. Also availabile via "Actions->Forward->Forward" menu. More forward functions can be found in "Actions-> Forward"
Send and receive mail. This button has a popup menu that is displayed if you click the arrow next to the icon. Select one of the accounts displayed there to restrict the send-receive to that account. If you want more specific operations do them via the "Tools->Send", "Tools->Receive", "Tools->Send-Receive" menus.
The basic copy/cut/paste operations that you can apply to an email. These are also accessible via the "Edit" menu or the context menu availabile when you right-click a mail in the mail list.
Use these to navigate to the previous/next unread email. These actions are also availabile via the "Actions->Go to" menu.

Other menus and actions:

"Mail->Import" used to import mails into the Aethera application. Currently Aethera can import mails in the MBOX format and the Outlook Express format. Select the format and then enter the file name. Click Ok.
"Tools->Filters" used to create filters for your incomeing mail. This part will be described in the next sections.

The mail composer

The mail composer place where you edit and send your emails.

The Aethera emails composer offers rich-text and plain text edit modes so before you start writting your email decide on a format for it and set it in the "Options->Format HTML". If you choose HTML format (rich text) you will see that the color and font buttons in the toolbar will become active.

The functionality:

Will send the email now using the default account. You can also send your email with a different account or a later time. To do so try the options in the "Mail" menu.
Saves the current message to the "Drafts" folder so you will be able to edit it a later time. You can also do this from the "Mail" menu.
The basic Undo/Redo/Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete actions. These are also availabile via the "Edit" menu.
Add an attachment to your email. After you will select the file to attach a attachment pane under the edit area will show you what are your current attachments. You can access this via the "Attach" menu.
Append your signature to the email. You set the signature file from "Aethera-> Settings-> Composer". You can access this via the "Attach" menu.
Is a pop-up button that will allow you to set the priority of this email. You can also set the priority from the "Options->Priority" menu.
The font and color buttons that will be active if you choose to edit your emails in "HTML" mode.

Mail filters

The mail filter part of the Aethera Mail plugin also comes as a plugin. This is transparent for you but means that we will able to deploy new and more advanced mail filters easily.

To create a new filter click the new filter icon . A mail filter consists of a set of conditions and a set of actions to perform in case those conditions are met. For example to filter all the messages that have in subject the word "money" to the folder "Deleted mails" simply set a condition that says "Subject contains Money" as in this example. . You also have to specify one or more actions to take place when the condition is meet.

Settings

You can configure the general Send/Receive settings in "Aethera->Settings->Send/Receive". You can choose to save a copy of all you sent mail (on by default) and you can decide to have the Mail plugin automaticly download your mail at a interval (That can't be smaller than 5 minutes) for your default account or for all your accounts.

Add a new mail account

To add a new email account to have to activate the "Accounts" tab under "Aethera->Settings". It is very likely that you already have an email account set up from the information that Aethera collected on it's first run. (see Getting Started)

Aethera supports the most popular email protocols: POP3 and IMAP.

To add a new account click the "Add POP3" to add a new POP3 account or click "Add IMAP" to add a new IMAP account. A interactive wizard will collect the necessary information to set up your account.

Once you created an account you can edit the information that you provided by selecting that account from the account list and then clicking "Edit". A tabbed version of the wizard will provide access to all the settings for that specific account.

To set an account as your default account all you need to do is select that account from the list and then click "Set default". It is important to have a default account because most operations are done using your default account.

To delete an account just click "Delete".

To enable or disable an account click "Enable/Disable".

Mail composer settings

The Aethera Mail plugin gives you the possibillity to convigure the way you edit your emails. To do so you have to access settings under "Aethera->Settings->Composer". You should be able to see the following picture.

Under signature file you can choose a small text file that will be appended to you email when you click the "Append signature button" (see "The mail composer) section for more details. This file will be your signature.

You can also choose how to format your emails. Your options are "HTML" that gives you rich-text (colors, tables, hyperlinks) but also larger emails and "Plain text" that gives you smaller emails but no rich-text.

In case you choose the "HTML" format for your emails you will also have to specify the default color and font.

You can change the emails on a per email bases using the "Options->Format HTML" menu from the composer window. This settings will not affect the global settings.