7.2. Thunderbird
This section briefly covers the basic steps for sending and
receiving email with Thunderbird. For
more information about using
Thunderbird, the
Help
contents are located under
Help on the main menu.
To start Thunderbird, select
=>
=> .
You are presented with a New Account Setup
screen. You are first asked whether you would like to import
information from other email programs. Make your selection and
click on the Next >> button. On the
next screen, select Email account, which
allows you to configure your email connection. Follow the
on-screen instructions and fill in the information you collected
from your ISP or administrator in the text boxes provided.
To create a new email message, click the
Write button. A blank message will open
in a new window. Enter the address(es) of the recipient(s) of
your email in the To field(s). Enter the
subject of your email in the Subject field.
In the large bottom pane, enter the text of your email. You can
spell check your email by clicking on the
Spell icon or by pressing
[Ctrl]-[Shift]-[K].
You can attach files by clicking on the
Attach icon, or by going to
=> =>
. Finally, when you are
finihsed with your email, click the Send
icon. The email window closes and returns you to the main
screen.
To read email, click on the Get Mail icon to
check for new mail. Click on the folders in the left sidebar to
open them. If there are any messsages in that folder, they
appear as a list in the top-right pane of the window. As you
click on each email in the list, a preview of its contents
appears in the pane directly below. If there are any
attachments to your email, a field labelled
Attachments lists the names of the files.
Double-click the file name to open or save the file.
Once you read a message, you can delete it, save it to a
separate folder, and more.
7.2.1. Thunderbird and Newsgroups
Newsgroups are Internet discussion groups with specific
topics. The discussions are in threaded format (which means
all topics and responses to the topic are sorted and organized
for convenient reading) and subscribing to a group is easy.
You are not required to post messages; instead, you can just
lurk, which is a Newsgroup term for
reading without posting messages. There are a great many
newsgroups on the Web with topics ranging from politics to
computer games to random strange thoughts. You can even post
and download pictures and files to Newsgroups (although your
ISP may restrict Newsgroups to text-based postings only).
To join a newsgroup, you first need to set up a newsgroup
account. Click on your mail account name in the sidebar and
select Create a new account from the
options that appear on the right of the screen. The
New Account Setup screen appears again.
Select Newsgroup account and then click
Next.
Enter your name and email address in the blank fields and
click Next. On the following screen,
enter the name of your news server (if you do not know the
name of your news server, contact your Internet service
provider or network administrator for this information). On
the last few screens, you can determine the name of this
account and review your settings.
The newsgroup account you created appears in the sidebar
of the Thunderbird mail screen.
Right-click on this account name and select
Subscribe. A dialog box appears, listing
all the newsgroups available. Select the groups you are
interested in reading and click
Subscribe. When you are done, click on
OK.
Double-click on the newsgroup account name and the list of
groups you are subscribed to appears beneath. Select the
newsgroup you want to access and a dialog box appears with
information about downloading and reading existing messages.
Posting to a newsgroup is just like writing an email, except
that the newsgroup name appears in the To
field rather than an email address. To unsubscribe from a
newsgroup, right-click on the group name and select
Unsubscribe.
