The main window is made up of the following parts:
The Menu BarThe Tools BarEvery option setting and action is either listed under a menu choice, or can be reached from within a menu choice. The menu bar has six top level menus to help the user perform actions:
File
Which deals with global settings and global actions of the application.Account
This menu contains all of the choices that deal with the multiple account feature of Emerald Mail.Folder
This menu contains all of the choices that deal with the multiple folder feature of Emerald Mail. All of these choices operate on the folder structure within the currently active account.Message
This menu has all of the choices necessary to perform actions on messages and take advantage of many of Emerald Mail's built in message processing functions.Tools
This menu contains all of the choices that will aid the user in keeping track of the people e-mailed most often and finding e-mails.Help
You can reach this help from this menu choice.
The Account / Folder Tree PanelThe Tools Bar has several buttons on it with pictures representative of the actions of the button. These are just a quick way of getting some of the most frequently used menu items. Clicking them has the same effect as choosing an option from the menu. To find out what each one does, place the mouse cursor over the button. The "tool tip" will popup underneath the mouse cursor after few moments. In this popup text box there will be a brief description of the action taken when the button is clicked.
The Message ListThe Folders panel has a tree view of all the accounts and of the folders for each account. In the Folders panel you might notice that the folder icons sometimes change color. The changes in colors are used to indicate the current status of a folder to the user. Here is brief explanation of what every color means:
Yellow
This is the default colorRed
This means there are unread messages in folder (if you set the folder to indicate unread mail).Green
This means there are messages in the folder, either read or unread (if you set the folder to indicate any mail).
The Message Preview PanelThe message region has all of the information that you have specified to be displayed about each message. To change what is displayed in this region, edit the Message List page, in File -> Preferences. Also, note that all fields that show the sender's name will show the receiver's name instead, in the Outbox and Sent Mail folders.
Each row of information in the message region represents a message. You can set up (via File->Preferences->Message List) what information will be displayed for each e-mail. There are two columns that have icons instead of textual information. The Attachment (A) column will be empty for e-mails that do not contain any attachments, or will have small disk icon for those e-mails which contain an embedded attachment. Also, the Read Status (R) has several states. Any unread message will have an envelope in that column. A curved left-pointing blue arrow in this column implies that the message has been replied to.
Clicking on the column title makes the message list to be sorted by the selected column. Click again on the same column header to change the sort order from descending to ascending.
Double clicking on a message entry will show the message read window, regardless of the layout setting. If the selected layout has the message preview panel enabled, the message text will also be displayed on the preview panel.
The Status BarIf enabled the Message Preview panel is displayed under the Message List panel (Standard layout) or in the bottom half of the Main Window (Navigator layout). The text from the message is automatically wrapped around the right margin of the window and color coded. Here is a brief explanation of what every color means:
Black - Normal text.
Blue - Text quoted from another message.
Please note that Emerald Mail recognizes as quoted text every line that has a ">" (greater than) character in the first 5 positions from the left.
Emerald Mail will also detect and make clickable all e-mail and web addresses that appear inside the message text. All clickable links are marked with a blue, underlined font.
When clicking on an e-mail address, the Message Compose Window is opened with the address listed in the To: field. When clicking on a web address the configured web browser is opened.The Message Preview Panel can be turned off using the Tools Bar or the File -> Preferences dialog.
The status bar is located at the bottom of the window. This displays two different pieces of information. The left field contains some statistics for the folder you are currently in. Emerald Mail will tell you the number of messages in the folder, as well as the current number or unread messages in that folder. The right field displays the current connection status when receiving new message and when sending message to the mail server.