E-Mail Tutorial
The most popular aspect of any network including the Internet is electronic mail (e-mail). This is not surprising when you consider all the benefits it has over other ‘traditional’ communication methods such as the postal system, or the fax machine, or even the phone.
To illustrate the point, compare the process of sending an electronic message via the Internet with Sending a letter by post.
E-mail: type in the address (or choose it from your address book), compose your message; press the Send button.
Sending a letter by post: get headed notepaper, find an envelope, go to the Post Office to buy the stamps, print off the letter, put it in an envelope, go to the postbox...
And whereas it could take a day, or two days, (or three or..) for the post to arrive, the e-mail could be delivered in a matter of seconds, or a few minutes.
The down side to e-mail is that it is such a cheap and easy way to send information to loads of people at once that marketing companies can easily send ‘junk mail’ and clog up your mailbox. In practice however I haven’t found that this happens too often, but if it does there are mail programs which can filter incoming messages and delete those from particular sources or about particular topics.
E-mail messages have their own unique qualities and are essentially a different ‘beast’ from traditional ‘snail mail’ letters. For example, e-mail messages are less formal in tone, they tend to be shorter and are sent more frequently.
I’m convinced they are a good thing but to help get you converted here’s a list of some of the reasons why e-mail has become so popular:
- • It is extremely fast; a message can be received in a matter of seconds after it has been sent—irrespective of the geographic location of the sender and recipient.
- • When you send an e-mail message the person you send it to doesn’t have to be there at the time to receive it (their computer doesn’t even have to be switched on). Mail is collected when the person chooses to log on to their computer network or mail server.
- • You can send a message to a group of people as cheaply, quickly and easily as you can one person.
- • You can send documents, graphics, sound files, software indeed any file along with your e-mail, providing both you and the person your are sending the files to have e-mail programs which support these ‘attachments’. Many modern e-mail programs make sending such files effortless and deal with all the complicated bits for you.
E-mail Addresses
If you send a letter to someone you need to know their address, the same is true if you want to send an e-mail - you need to know their e-mail address. My e-mail address for example is j.byrne@gcal.ac.uk.Without the full stop at the end.
Understanding e-mail addresses
If you understand URL’s then you will understand e-mail addresses, the former points to a file on computer and the latter points to a person who’s account is on a computer.
An e-mail address breaks neatly into two sections - the name of the person you are sending the mail to (the username)which is before the @ sign and the hostname which is after it. The hostname is similar to the street, town and country part of a conventional postal address. The standard e-mail address therefore consists of:
If we look at my e-mail address j.byrne@gcal.ac.uk, you will see that after the @ symbol, there is the four letter abbreviation gcal, which is short for Glasgow Caledonian University, then you have ac which stands for academic, then uk for United Kingdom. From this you can deduce that j.byrne is located in the UK in an academic institution called Glasgow Caledonian University. Simple once it is deciphered(or maybe you don’t think so?).
Most Internet e-mail addresses conform to this layout. Starting from the right and working backwards to the @ you get the country the person is located in, e.g au for Australia or fr for France. Then an abbreviation which tells us the type of organisation the person is located in this could be gov for government organisation or mil for military organisation. lastly there is some letters which stand for the name of the organisation this could be ic for imperial college, or Emap for Emap Business Communications.
Just for the record the following tables give examples of the categories of organisations you will find on the web
Occasionally you will come across e-mail addresses which don’t seem to fit this nice comfortable model. Some e-mail addresses have more sections after the @ sign, perhaps denoting the names of internal organisational departments . You will sometimes find that the country is left out at the end of addresses - American address for example are like this. Bulletin board systems , commercial networks or academic and research networks which don’t use the same communication standards as the Internet have tended to have there own conventions of determining e-mail names, CompuServe for example has numbers instead of usernames.
If you are interested in finding out more about e-mail1 there is a great amount of information to be found on the Internet.
E-mail Programs
To send E-mail you need an e-mail program, of which there are many: both commercial and shareware. The commercial programs are not necessarily better than the shareware products - one of the best for example is Eudora, a version of which can be obtained as Shareware.
Most e-mail programs let you compose, send and receive/reply to messages, but the one we will concentrate on comes as part of Netscape Navigator.
E-Mail using Netscape Navigator
The information set out in the next few pages covers quite a lot of detail about Netscapes’ Mail capabilities - some of which could be interpreted, on a day when you are not feeling at your best, as being a bit tedious to wade through. I assume that what you want to know quickly is how you send an e-mail and how you read and reply to those messages you receive (I’m just guessing). To assist you in this goal I have set out the very basics in ‘quick style’ boxes separated out from the main text. You can try these basic instructions out and if you get stuck use the rest of the material for reference purposes.
I also assume that at some point you will become curious as to what all the other things on the menu’s do. So I expect at some point you will read through this material.
The Mail Window
Netscapes' mail capabilities are all centred around the Mail window. To open the Mail Window choose Netscape Mail from the Windows menu or click on the mail icon which is located at the bottom right of the Netscape Browser window. At this point, depending how your system has been set up you my be asked for a password.
Let’s look through the Mail Window
Each time you open the Mail Window, Netscape checks to see if you have any new mail. If there is mail waiting it downloads it from the server (assuming you are on-line at the time).
If you remain online while in the Mail Window Netscape will check for mail periodically and inform you if anything new has arrived. It does not however download this new mail automatically. To retrieve mail from the server click the Get Mail button or the mail icon.
The mail window is broken into three ‘window panes—Mail Folders, Message Headers, and the Messages Display area.
The mail folders window contains a hierarchical list of your mail folders and is divided into three columns:
- Mail Folder : showing the name of the mail folder
- Unread messages : the number of messages that have not been read.
- Total messages: the total number of messages within the folder.
- When you open the Mail Window for the first time the mail folders window contains three folders:
- the Inbox which holds incoming mail
- the Outbox, which holds unsent messages
- the Sent Mail folder which holds copies of messages that you have sent.
When you delete a message a Trash Folder is automatically created.
New Mail folders can be created using the menu items. This allows you to organise and store your mail in a way that suits you.
Click on one of the mail folders and the headers from the messages it contains are displayed in the window to the right in the Message Headers window. The Message Headers window is divided into the following columns:
Sender: the name of the person who sent the message
The flag icon: you use this to mark any noteworthy messages—perhaps one you want to get back to at a later date.
The Read icon: shows if the message has been read.
Subject: the subject of the message.
Date: the date and time the message arrived in your mail box.
To move a message from one folder to another - drag it’s icon into the folder you want to store it in - or use Move or Copy from the Message menu.
When you click on a particular message header its contents are displayed in the window at the bottom of the screen.
Mail Toolbar and menu items
Depending of the version of Netscape you are using you may or may not have a toolbar at the top of the Mail Window. All command on the Toolbar however can be accessed from the menu’s.
The toolbar buttons from left to right are:
Get New Mail:
Check for new mail and download new messages.
Delete Selected Messages
Puts any messages which are selected in the trash.
Compose New Mail Messages (or To: Mail)
Open the Message Composition Window to create a new message.
Reply to Sender (or Re: Mail)
Opens the Message Composition Window to reply to the current message. The message is automatically addressed.
Reply to All (or Re: All)
Opens the Message Composition Window to reply to the current message. The message is automatically addressed to the original sender plus anyone else who was a recipient of the original message.
Forward Message (or Forward)
Opens the Message Composition Window to forward the current message as an attachment.
Next
Open the next unread message in the message list
Previous
Open the previous unread message in the message list.
Print:
Print selected messages
Stop
Stop any messages to or from the mail server.
Creating a signature for you messages
Create a text file which contains the information you would like to appear at the bottom of each e-mail message you send. This will be your signature and could contain, amongst other things, your name, address and phone number. Signatures are use for all sort of things; advertising web sites, random quotes and most famously ASCI art, i.e. pictures drawn using just text, eg here’s a cat peering over a wall;
/_/
OOO ( 0 0 ) OOO
= (._.) =
To set your signature in Netscape go to the Identity panel in the Mail and News Preferences and choose Browse at the Signature File section. Find the file you created using the resulting dialog box—the file you choose will appear at the bottom of all of your e-mail messages.
Attachments
When you send a word processing file or some other file to someone along with you e-mail message this is called an attachment. You can send an attachment with your message choosing Attach from the File menu when you are in the Message Composition Window—then choose the file you want to send with your message from the resulting dialog box.
The Address book
You can store the e-mail addresses of people you contact often in an address book. This speeds up the process of sending mail because it means you don’t have to re-type an e-mail address each time you send a message.
You open the Address Book by choosing Address Book from the Window menu. The resulting window has a set of menu’s to allow you to add, modify or delete e-mail addresses.
Mailing Lists
The Internet is useful because it makes communication and exchange of information easier. One of the most valuable things any information provider can have is a network of other people who can be contacted when help is needed. Even better is if they make their information accessible on the Internet so that you can check it out whenever you need it.
One of the best examples of using the internet to communicate and share information is the use of mailing lists. With a mailing list a group of people with a shared interest - but perhaps living in different and distant locations - can get together and intereact as a ‘virtual community’. They can ask and answer questions, publicise their latest news and information become part of a pool of expertise which would be impossible to set up in the ‘off-line’ world. Ok mailing list are a good thing but what is a mailing list and how does it work?
Imagine you are working on your favourite word processing package and you come up against a problem. You have looked under all of the menu’s, used the built in help and read the manual, but you can not seem to find a solution.
What if you could address your question to the other two millions users2 of this programs who are scattered around the world. Well you don’t need to imagine that because that is just what mailing lists allow you to do.
At its simplest a mailing list is literally just a list of people’s e-mail addresses located on a computer. All the people who are on the list want to share information and participate in discussion and all discussion is conducted by e-mail. The computer has the capability of forwarding any mail that is sent to it to everyone who is on the list. This can be done by a ‘real’ person (the list administrator) or can be automated.
Once you subscribe to a list your name and e-mail address is just added to this list. If you send a message to a mailing list your message gets sent to everyone who is a member of the list - any replies to your question gets sent to you and everyone else on the list.
To get back to our original problem with your word processor. To ‘plug in’ to the brain power of the many other people who use the same wordprocessor as you all you have to do is find a mailing list about that particular product and subscribe. Ask your question and wait for the replies to pour in.
One mailing list you may be interested in joining if you are in the disability information business is the ‘Scottish Disability Information Mailing List’ administered by the Making Connection Unit and accessible from the Connections Disability web site. Details of what it is and how to join can be found at: http://www.connections.gcal.ac.uk/MailList/DisList.html
Once you are connected to the internet you have access to thousands of mailing lists. Say for example you are interested in Cliff Richard (and why not!), you can join a list where people exchange e-mail about how much they love Cliff.
When you join a mailing list, you will start getting mail on the subject you are interested in, and you will get to know people with a similar interest to you.
How to Join a Mailing List
To join one of the many thousands of mailing lists you use your e-mail program to write to either the person who is organising the list or an automatic list server.
There are different ways to subscribe to different lists - you may have to do a bit of research to find out exactly what is required. However, many of the automatic list servers are very similar in the way they work; to join the list start up your e-mail program, enter the list server address and type the word subscribe and the name of the list into the body of the message.
For example there is a list maintained by the Disability Reseach Unit which was set up to discuss issues related to disability, including the social model of disability
To subscribe to this list send mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. The subject line is left blank and the following is put in the body of the message:
Join disability-research firstname Surname
for example: Join disability-research Jim Byrne
The address you would use to join the list is different from the one you will be using once you are actually participating in the e-mail discussion. For example the address for sending contribution to the Disability Research Lisit is:
disability-research@mailbase.ac.uk, 100726.141@compuserve.com
This is an important distinction: there is an address for joining and an address for posting contributions. It pays to be careful when starting out otherwise you could end up upsetting fellow subscribers.
Unfortunately many mailing lists not meant for the general public. It's probably a good idea therefore to make some enquiries before trying to subscribe. Usually you can do this by putting the word info then the name of the list in the message of your e-mail - you will get back information about that particular list.
Once you have subscribed to a list it is a good idea just to read the posting for a few weeks to get an idea of the local rules, regulation and etiquete
Conclusion
That’s probably enough to be getting on with at the moment. The next step is just to use it yourself - that’s only way to really become comfortable with e-mail or any other aspect of the Internet.
Suggested further learning opportunities
Use the Netscape on-line Help find out how to use the Netscape Address Book. Use your address book to send me an e-mail ( j.byrne@gcal.ac.uk ), to tell me how easy it all is.