Netscape Mail Help for the lab-bound

As much of this class is limited in their network access to the campus computer labs, this page is designed to provide a time saving method for receiving the hypertextual e-mail(that is, e-mail that contains www links, or attached web pages in their entirety), that is fast becoming, the norm.

Netscape and other third generation browsers provide this capability quite handily, and for thoe unfamilliar with those features I am providing this instructional page

To begin, here is a link to Netscape's menu help page. Internet Explorer is not that different, but the only thing I do with Microsoft is make jokes - got some great ones though.
Anyway, one important CAUTION that must be made, is that if you customize the preferences on a publicly accessable machine, it is essential that you delete those changes before you leave. I forgot once and only learned when I go a bounced message that I never sent! I went back to the ITC and luckily found the machine I had been working on, but it was kind of a pain. :)
Here's what you do:
1. After you open Netscape, go to the Options Menu, and select Mail and News Preferences. You will be presented with a window of nested index cards.
2. First click on the one marked Servers. Your screen will look something like this:
3. Next click on the card tabbed Identity. You will then be able to enter the remaining information. Both these windows also give you the opportunity to configure the browser for news.
4. Now, when you want to check your mail, go to the Windows menu, and select Netscape Mail. You will be prompted for your password and shortly after you enter it the first message should appear. The Next button will advance you through the queue. Links will appear as they normally do in the browser, and behave accordingly, taking you where they will.
5. Remember, if you are on a lab machine, when you are finished, go back into the Options and delete everything you've done, then quit Netscape, and if you are running it off a shared disk (like the EMU software disk), put the disk away. (command Y on the Macintosh)

On the whole, all of this is more pleasing to the eye than an extended Telnet session, and as more and more URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are embedded in e-mail and Newsgroup messages,this ends up saving the user a considerable amount of time.

As I advised previously, make sure that you set the appropriate button to Leave messages on Server, in order to save your messages on your campus account, for later threading and organization if you wish. Of course, on a home machine, you have numerous choices. I myself, though I may check mail with Netscape, prefer to save my mail with Eudora, in order to use its superior mailbox system, and one more time, on a public machine delete your changes.

Please address any questions or comments to: Michael Hanson

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