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Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Manuel Ricart
ISBN: 078971826x
Publication Date: 12/22/98

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Configuring Your Identity for Netscape Messenger

In the identity panel, you provide information that will be included in your email, such as your “real” name and your email address (see following figure).


Identity panel in Netscape Preferences.

Configuring Your Mail Server

The next step in configuring your email program is to configure your mail servers so that Messenger can receive and send your email (see the following figure). Information to be entered here includes:

  Name of your email account (don’t put a domain name on it).
  Name of mail server that sends your mail (SMTP).
  Name of mail server that stores email sent to you.
  Type of mail server. If it’s a POP account, check whether if you want to leave incoming messages on the server (Otherwise messages are deleted from your ISP’s server after they are downloaded. If it’s an IMAP server, your mailboxes are kept on the server.


Messenger’s Mail Server Configuration panel stores information about sending and receiving your email.

Reading Email

After configuring your identity and mail server settings, Messenger is ready to send and receive email. To start a Messenger session, choose the Messenger Mailbox command under the Communicator menu in a Navigator window. Messenger displays four main areas (from top to bottom):

  Menus and buttons—Access to commands and functions
  Mailboxes—Access to separate mailboxes
  Mailbox contents
  Message body

See the following figure for a description of the most important buttons and areas.

Different buttons in the Messenger window include:

  Get Msg—Click to download new messages.
  New Msg—Click to compose a new message.
  Reply—Click to reply to sender of the current message.
  Forward—Click to send a copy of the current message to another person.
  Delete—Click to delete the message from your mailbox.

You can also organize your messages into different boxes. To select a different message box, click the Inbox menu.


The Netscape Messenger window.

Composing an Email Message

Sending email is just as easy as reading email. To send a message, click the New Msg button (see the previous figure). This will present you with a window where you can compose and address an email message like the one shown in the following figure. When done composing a message, click Send Now to forward your email message to your mail server for delivery.


Messenger’s Compose Window—this is where you type a new email message.

Kmail is very similar in interface to Netscape’s Messenger component. However, at the moment, Messenger is a more polished product with better tools and features.

News

If you have time to wander through Usenet, no doubt you will find a lot of useful and useless stuff. If you want to surf, you’ll need a decent news reader. Again, the choices for you are several: under KDE you have knews, and under any X-Windows, including KDE, you have Netscape’s Collabra.


Techno Talk:  What Is Usenet?"
Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system. It is made up of a classified hierarchy of topics grouped by subject (newsgroups). Messages are broadcast and propagated between news servers. Some groups are moderated, meaning that information posted by users needs to be approved prior to posting. Others are not moderated.

For a detailed description of what Usenet is and is not, see http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/what-is/part1/faq.html


Collabra doesn’t make too much of a distinction between email and news. Although the configuration to access them is different, the result is similar. You use Collabra to subscribe to newsgroups that interest you, and then you use Messenger to read and post messages. Before you can read news, however, you need to download a list of what messages are available. When you click on one of them, the message is then downloaded and you can view it. If you want to post a message, you compose one basically like you compose an email message, but instead it is posted to a news server. From there the message is disseminated around the globe.

Configuring your system to use news is simple: You connect to a news server (nntp server; the name of this machine is provided by your ISP), and you download a very long and large list of newsgroups available from that server. (There are thousands and thousands of different groups.) You then select all the groups that interest you and start reading (see the next three figures). As a sanity check, you might want to assign an amount of time per day that you want to do this. It’s very easy to get caught up in news reading and not realize that hours have flown by. As a choice, I tend not to look at newsgroups unless I am searching for specific information. Several years ago, I used to spend more than anyone’s share reading news. Today I try to stay away; it’s easy to get caught up in the noise.

If your ISP serves news under a special port, enter in the Port space; otherwise leave the default 119. Organizations also use news to distribute information. Some of these newsgroups are only available through a secure server that requires authentication; if your news server requires this, check the Secure checkbox next to the Port space.


The news configuration panel. To configure your news, use the Preferences command under the Edit menu in any Communicator window.


After you define your news server, you’ll be presented with this window. Here, you can select the groups to join from those carried by your news server.

If you know the name of a newsgroup that interests you, type it next to Discussion Group and click Join.


Messenger displaying a list of newsgroups.

Use the Reply button to reply to a posting. If you hold it down, a menu will allow you to choose the reply method: to the group, to the poster, or to a combination of the two. A posting listed in bold indicates it hasn’t been read yet.

Telnet

Telnet is an additional way to interact with another computer on the Internet. It is a command line[nd]only program that allows you to access a remote UNIX-like computer through a command line interface. Telnet is discussed in Chapter 17, “Command Toolbox: Usefull Shell Commands and Shortcuts.”


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