Getting started with M2

Basic Concept: accesspoints

The most important and innovative feature of M2 are the accesspoints. They are not a mere feature, but form the foundation of the way M2 works and replace the customary way of organizing e-mail.

What are they?

Consider having one database of all your e-mails. If, for instance, you would want to view all e-mail from a friend, you search the database and view the result. Or if you would want to view all e-mails with an MP3 attachment, you search again, and so on.

The important thing to understand is that accesspoints are like searches into your e-mail database (your list of e-mails), where the "search results" are e-mails. accesspoints show all e-mails which fit a certain description, but they do not contain the actual e-mails.

This makes them different from the mail folders you might be familiar with, where an e-mail is stored in a folder and only visible there. In M2 an e-mail may show up in several accesspoints, if it fits the descriptions in each of them. For instance, if a friend attaches a document to an e-mail, the e-mail will show up under the "Attachments" accesspoint as well as the "Contacts" accesspoint.

This unique behaviour will require some getting used to, but it is very intuitive and very powerful and you will be able to retrieve e-mails faster and with greater ease. To quote a user:

I just realized that before M2 I have never had mail in such a good order. If you wonder how I've managed in that, I must say that I haven't [M2 did it for me]! Finally, with M2 I can just leave mail lying around and thanks to accesspoints/labels I can find everything quickly without problems. Now my mailbox looks just like my desktop and floor :-)

Samuli Lintula — Opera User

And one more.

When it comes to actually using it, I personally have found myself spending less time organizing mail and more time getting things done with M2. I didn't even use the e-mail client in Opera 6 because I had "The Bat!", and I thought it suited my needs perfectly. Until I realized how M2 works.

Haavard K. Moen — Opera Support. (Yes he gets paid to say things like this :)

As the quotes above illustrates: accesspoints go a long way toward organizing your mail for you. It is just so much easier than with regular folders. There are a variety of standard accesspoints in M2 and these will be discussed in detail further down in the document.

The concept of accesspoints is discussed right at the start of this tutorial because they form such an important part of M2. This way you are now prepared when you set up your first e-mail account in the following section.

Links

Setting up a new account

As mentioned in the introduction, M2 is both an e-mail client and a newsreader. The mail client also supports two types of e-mail accounts: POP3 and IMAP. This means that you can set up various different accounts in M2. I will primarily discuss the POP3 accounts as that is the most common type. Specific differences will be mentioned in the IMAP section. M2 does not support Microsofts proprietary http mail protocol, so you cannot connect to Hotmail like in Outlook Express; you will have to use the webmail.

As M2 stores all messages in the same mail database, it does not distinguish between e-mails from different accounts. This means that e-mail sent to different accounts will appear in the same accesspoints.

Some people find this very limiting as they wish to strictly separate business and private e-mails. I myself find it very enlightening: I do not care where the e-mail came from; it is all addressed to me, so why bother using different accounts separately?

To accomodate all users however, it is also possible to separate the accounts in O7.2. Multiple account handling will be discussed separately.

POP3 Account

To set up a new e-mail account, go to the Mail menu and select the New Account option. You will then be presented with this dialog, where you can select the type of account to set up. We will continue with the POP3 account.

[New Accounts]

Click Next to continue. At any time you can use the Back button to change previous entries.

[New Accounts 2]
Real name
The name you enter here, will be displayed in the From-field of the e-mails you send.
E-mail address
This is the e-mail address associated with the new account.
Organization
You can enter your company name here or leave it empty for private accounts.
[New Accounts 3]
Login name
This is the login provided by your ISP. It is often the first part of your e-mail address, before the @ sign.
Password
Enter your account password here. Please note that in future, the stored password will be truncated to 6 asterisks (******) for privacy reasons. Upon first connection to the mailservers, M2 will ask if you want to store the password to disk. This is of course done very securely with strong encryption.

If you wish to create one password to protect all passwords stored in Opera (including Wand logins) you can enter a security password in the Preferences. The security password is used as a part of the encryption mechanism input so that the other passwords cannot be decrypted again without the security password being entered.

[New Accounts 4]
Incoming server
The server associated with you e-mail account is often mail.your-isp.com or pop3.your-isp.com.
Use secure connection (TLS)
If your ISP requires an high-security connection, check this box.
Leave messages on server
If checked, M2 will retain a copy of the e-mail on the server when checking. This is useful for instance when checking your work mail at home or vice versa.
Outgoing server
This is often mail.your-isp.com or smtp.your-isp.com

Links

Importing E-Mail

The Mail import functionality allows you to import existing mail accounts from Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape and Opera 5/6. Select File > Import > Mail to import your e-mail. It is unfortunately not yet possible to import e-mail from other Opera 7 installations.

[M2 Mail Import Options]

Here you can select which program to import your e-mail from. A "generic mbox file" is a standardized format in which e-mail is stored to disk. This allows you to import your e-mail (not settings) from all e-mail clients that use (or can export to) this storage format.

[M2 Mail Import]

After selecting an e-mail client, M2 will try to auto-detect the location of that program. You can also select the directory manually by clicking on the "Browse..." button.

Import item
You can select which account to import from the selected e-mail client.
Import settings
This will also transfer as many as possible account settings from the other program (such as servers, login date, signature settings etc.)
Import contacts
When checked, contacts will be imported into M2.
Import mail
If you only desire to import the account settings, uncheck this option.

When importing e-mail from Opera 6 the folder structure is copied to the "Views" area and all the e-mails are located under "Received". The filtering properties are not imported, however. To continue using the classic folder structure for your e-mails you have to reconfigure the filtering criteria of the folders.

Importing contacts

You can also import your contacts manually under File->Import->Opera contacts. You then have to select the contacts file you wish to import from. By default this file is called contacts.adr and you can find the location of the file in an Opera installation by looking under Help -> About

Links

User Interface description

Before going into further detail on how to work with M2, the elements of the M2 User Interface will be briefly discussed and some terminology shall be introduced.

[UI overview]

There are several basic elements to the M2 UI:

Hotlist

The hotlist is essential for effective use of M2 as it contains the Mail panel with all the accesspoints for accessing your e-mail. It also contains various other panels among which the Contacts and Notes. The Hotlist is switched on by default and can be toggled with F4. You can change its position (left, right, floating, off) under View -> Hotlist.

In the bottom part of the Mail panel you will find the status area, which shows the activity for each of the accounts. Is it connected to the server? Is it downloading e-mail? How many? You can show/hide the status area by clicking on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Mail panel.

Mail toolbar

The mail toolbar contains buttons for the most frequently used actions when dealing with your e-mail. The toolbar can roughly be split into two rows.

[Mail toolbar]

Top row

Accesspoint switcher
Switching between accesspoints has now become even easier in Opera 7.20 with this dropdown button. You no longer need the hotlist to switch between accesspoints.
[Switch Accesspoints]
Mail view buttons
The next set of buttons perform the exact same function as the options found under the View button on the second row. From left to right they are Flat/Threaded, Show Unread/Trash/Spam/Mailinglist/News/Time span. Their functions will be discussed in the View mail section.

Bottom row

Compose
Clicking this button will open an empty compose window to write a new message. Depending on the accesspoint or e-mail in focus, a recipient will be automatically entered in the To field.
Reply
Opens the compose window with the original message quoted (with ">") and the original signature will be stripped. These settings can be changed by editing the accounts.ini file.
Reply All
Sends a reply message to all recipients of the e-mail, e.g. all people in the To and CC field.
Forward/Redirect
Pressing Forward will quote the original message and send it to a new recipient. The Redirect option is under the dropdown and will Forward the original message intact without quotes and your signature.
Delete/Remove from View
Sends message to the Trash folder, or removes it from a View. This difference will be discussed in the accesspoint section.
Read
Marks the selected message(s) as read
Add contact
When clicking on the dropdown next to this button, you can add the sender of the selected e-mail to a folder in your Contacts panel.
Label
Using this button you can label a message for easy retrieval. Labels will be discussed in the accesspoints section.
View
This button allows you to set a large number of display values for the e-mail. This is discussed in the View section.
QuickFind
These QuickFind fields can be found throughout Opera and are a powerful element of the UI. By typing in text here you will search the message list incrementally. So if you wish to locate an e-mail with "Opera" in the header, you just start typing the word and M2 will first show all e-mails matching "O" then "Op" etc.

Message list

Clicking on a header in the message list, will show the content of the corresponding message below; double-clicking will open the message in a separate window.

A small triangle in front of a message, indicates that this is the first message of a thread. By clicking on the first message, the thread will expand and show the discussion. You can expand all threads by pressing Shift-Right; collapsing all threads can be done with Shift-Left.

Right-clicking on a message header, will produce a large context menu with many options. These options will be discussed in the Context menu section.

Message body

The content of the message is shown here. The headers are shown in the grey block at the top and if you wish to view more, click on the Display all headers link. You can completely customize the display of the message by editing a stylesheet and this is discussed under Mail display.

Quick Reply

QuickReply is a unique M2 feature which makes it very easy to quickly exchange e-mails in a chat-like fashion. Just type in your reply in the box below the e-mail and press the button to send the reply. No need to press Reply first!

[QuickReply box]

By default QuickReply will top-post as this comes closest to a chat-like conversation. This can currently not be altered. You can however change the maximum level of quoting, currently set to 2, as described under the Quote Depth paragraph.

Links

Composing Messages

To write a new e-mail you open the Compose window by pressing Ctrl-E or clicking on the button on the hotlist.

[Compose Window]
Send
This places the message in the outbox and depending on your settting it will be sent automatically or queued.
Attach
Adding an attachment to your outgoing e-mail can be done by clicking on this button, or by double-clicking on the Attachment field in the top right-hand corner of the Compose window.
Save
Pressing Save will place a copy of the file in the Drafts folder, so that you can continue working on it in future. M2 also automatically saves new messages to Drafts every minute.
View
Using the View button you can set which fields to show in the Compose window, such as To, CC, BCC etc.

Adding a recipient

Selecting a contact to send a message to can be done by clicking on the button before the To/CC/BCC fields or you can start typing the name of the contact and M2 will offer autocomplete options. This is demonstrated on the screenshots below.

[Contacts button]

[Contacts dropdown]

HTML vs. PlainText

M2 does not offer a way to compose HTML messages. This means: no font-sizes, no colours, no stationery etc. Note that M2 will display HTML messages!

There has been endless debate about the pros and cons of this decision and Opera Software's bottomline has been that the available resources are better spent on projects with higher priority.

A good article on the use of HTML vs. plaintext can be found at Evolt.org. It discusses the subject without turning into a rant in favour of either.

I will give my personal opinion on the matter and please feel free to agree/disagree with me to any extent, but do not let me know. I think I've already seen every argument ever conceived on the subject. In my humble opinion there should not be any HTML composing in M2. Not for the often used reason that HTML e-mail takes up more bandwidth than plaintext (though this is definitely true and uses at least 200% more bandwidth) and not for nostalgic reasons. The most important reason is that HTML e-mail is terribly abused by spammers, mailinglist, but especially home users. I DO NOT want to receive an e-mail with a pretty little background image and text in 28 different colours and font-sizes! Every e-mail client with HTML composing abilities propagates the use of this abomination. So don't use it! :)

Changing Compose Font

From O7.2 upwards you can change the compose font in the Preferences, under Fonts -> E-Mail Compose Text. Select Choose to change the setting.

Setting signature

The signature is automatically placed at the bottom of your e-mail when you compose or reply to a message. According to good netiquette signature should not be longer than four lines of plain text, and not wider than 80 characters; 72 is recommended. Opera automatically adds the signature separator ("-- " which are two hyphens and a space) above the text. The sig-dash is important as it indicates the beginning of the signature and when replying to a message, the original signature below the sig-dash is removed.

You change your signature under the Outgoing tab of the account properties (Mail -> Account Properties). If you wish to have some text before the sig-dash this is also possible. Type this in the signature field, followed by the sig-dash and your signature.

[Signature settings]

M2 currently does not support multiple signatures per account. A workaround could be achieved by creating a folder in your Notes panel called Signatures and keeping your signatures there. The signature can then easily be inserted into your e-mail by double-clicking on the Note when composing your message.

Links

Receiving e-mail

After setting up your e-mail account you can now receive e-mail. You can set your accounts to check automatically at a regular interval (set this under Account properties) or you can check manually and per account by clicking on the Check button on the Mail panel in the hotlist, or by going to Mail -> Check. To check all accounts manually just press Ctrl-K.

The new messages will now be downloaded from the server and shown in your accesspoints. To read about this, turn this page :)

Mail notification

There is one thing to add though: mail notificiation. When you receive (and send) an e-mail you will get a small yellow popup in the bottom left corner of your screen. This can currently not be disabled, but you can tweak it a little bit as described in this Tips 'n' Tricks article on My.Opera.