Postbox mail setup. Postbox is an interesting email client
Somehow the Thundebird mailer is developing sluggishly, I have been looking for a replacement for it for a long time, but there is a problem - now I have so many message filters in it that if I switch to some fundamentally different program, it will take too much time to configure the sorting of letters. Therefore, first of all, I am interested in programs based on the same Thundebird engine, but with greater capabilities.
Before that, I looked at Eudora, which is essentially the same Thundebird, but with different icons on the buttons, and the Spicebird combine, which is more interesting, but somehow did not impress me. Once upon a time I wrote about , then 0.7 was released, in which the developers even broke what worked in the previous version, but I’m still waiting for the next version, because the program is interesting.
Once upon a time I came across the PostBox mailer, I don’t even remember what it was, but I subscribed to their updates. And recently another beta came out (the 13th in a row, a lucky number :)) and I decided to watch it again. Moreover, this time I liked it so much (though not immediately and not in everything) that I decided to switch to it.
After installation, Postbox offered to import emails and settings from the Thunderbird profile, which it did successfully, although after importing I had to go into each folder in turn. Until I did this, the mailer showed that there were unread letters in these folders, but no matter how many times I wrote, after logging in it turned out that the number of new letters was sometimes equal to 0. In addition, several folders, for some unknown reason, were renamed into something alphabetical digital like abc12de3f. There weren’t many such folders, so it’s okay, I renamed them manually. All email filters were transferred from Thunderbird without any problems.
What won me over with Postbox were the features that Thunderbird doesn’t have. It’s these features that I would like to tell you about.
Firstly, the developers redesigned the viewing of the text of the letter, adding a new panel with the sender’s avatar (avatars appeared in the address book, and in general there were more fields about the user) and links in the letter. I have not yet assessed how convenient it is and whether this panel is worth the space it takes up, but it looks nice. Here, for example, is what my letters from LiveJournal look like:
You can also import contacts from Outlook.
Secondly, Postbox can display email chains as one list of messages, much like it is done in Gmail. The following screenshot shows how one message ends and another begins.
Another feature that I have not seen in any mailer is that you can add a so-called To-Do message to each folder, which looks like a regular letter, but has a special mark in the header.
There is a special setting in the menu (View - Pin To-Dos), which means that letters or created messages marked as To-Do will always be located above other letters without this mark. I’ll have to try to use this feature to mark emails that I need to return to; now for these purposes I use opening them in separate tabs. It might be worth making some kind of mark in the folder tree indicating that there are more TO-DO messages in this folder to make them stand out more.
By the way, from the tabs. Unlike Thunderbird, open tabs are saved between program restarts.
Once upon a time, back in Thunderbird 2, it became possible to tag letters with certain tags, Postbox expanded these capabilities. If previously a mark simply painted the subject of the letter in a certain color, here the developers have added a special Favorite Topics panel, which allows you to show only letters with certain tags (here they are called Topics).
These tags, unfortunately, are not global and only act within the email folder where they were marked.
One of the small amenities is that when creating a new account for a mailbox, Postbox offers presets for some servers, including Gmail.
In addition, the panel has a special button so that you can quickly send a message to some social network (Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed) or email.
It is also possible to remove letters out of sight, but at the same time not delete them. Letters can be sent to the so-called archive, then they will only be visible there, and will disappear from the original folder.
In the latest beta, it became possible to install extensions, of which there are still few, but at least Minimize To Tray for minimizing to the tray is there. It is strange that the developers (both Postbox and Thunderbird) do not want to build this feature into the program itself.
Postbox has one more feature that I have never seen before - the ability to edit received messages. For example, you can manually remove advertisements from an email. I cannot judge how useful this opportunity is.
Unfortunately, PostBox does not have the ability to mark folders as favorites and show only them; I really liked this feature in Thunderbird. Well, maybe someday it will appear here too.
Now about writing letters. The most important thing, which actually prompted me to switch from Thunderbird to this program, is that it is possible to insert pre-prepared signatures. Thunderbird really lacks this, and the plugins that try to correct this misunderstanding are somewhat inconvenient. It is convenient to insert a signature in this program.
However, when entering the text of a new signature, the cursor always disappears somewhere.
Here you can also search for pictures on the Picasa and Flickr sites (in your albums) or in already received messages
The program is still in beta (and it is not known how long it will be), so there should be glitches in it, and there are some. All of them may be unpleasant, but not critical. It happens that the highlight that shows the selected letter suddenly disappears, or that threads from letters stop opening. But after restarting the program everything was restored. But Postbox has fixed some glitches that were present in the latest beta of Thunderbird.
The program is cross-platform, but in the download section there are only versions for Windows and Mac. Regarding the version for Linux, the FAQ writes that the developers are thinking about this possibility, but so far they cannot say anything concrete.
In addition, I did not understand what they had with the license. The folder with the program contains a license from Thunderbird, but it is not clear how open the Postbox sources are. At least two developers were (and maybe are) Thunderbird developers, so who knows, maybe they just took the source code and started making their own project based on it. Moreover, in the FAQ there is a suspicious question: “How much will Postbox cost?”, the answer to which is written that we have a beta version and we don’t know anything about prices. It feels like the program may become paid in the future, which I really wouldn’t want.
It’s very nice that the program is developing and at least one, or even two betas are released per month. I would like to believe that the developers have the strength not to abandon this project and continue in the same spirit.
Which of the ten for some reason intrigued me the most. I downloaded it, installed it, and tried it.
Me and the post office
I use email relatively little; I write less than one message per day, if averaged. I have to read more, about 10 a day, which is also not very much. I mainly use GMail in the browser; I always have it open. Apple Mail is used only for work correspondence with a few regular clients. Connected via IMAP to the same Google Mail for my domain. It’s not that Mail doesn’t suit me, but the impressions are not the best - the “organize by topic” mode is inconvenient, they expand and collapse, which annoys me, I’m more familiar and more comfortable the way it’s done in GMail, where the entire correspondence thread is one continuous thread "footcloth". It can also be difficult to find a sent or received letter with the desired attachment - people have completely stopped specifying meaningful subjects for letters.
Postbox
The program is a client for mail (IMAP/POP3), RSS and news groups (NNTP), the last two points are of no use to me, I will not consider them.
Postbox is made on the Mozilla engine, add-ons and dictionaries for it come from Thunderbird, if I understand correctly. It would probably be correct to compare Postbox with Thunderbird, but I have never used the latter, so I will compare it with Apple Mail and my understanding of beauty.
When installing Postbox, I deftly imported the settings from Mail, downloaded headers from Google Mail via IMAP, and we were ready to work. All the features and advantages of Postbox can be studied on the website, and I will go through the main ones that are important to me personally. Good things to start with.
Porn
Postbox, main window after the first launch, the Inbox folder has not yet been loaded from the server.
You can assign a topic to a Conversation thread (dark window). The list of topics can be edited, of course. On the right you can see a list of pictures in this thread.
Create a new message. The interface is somewhat lame, but there is quick access and search for attachments, pictures, links, and contacts.
Tar
There were some shortcomings. There is no Russian language and Russian in Postbox is generally bad. For starters, Postbox Inc is proud of its ability to edit sent or received messages. It can be convenient - you can add a note, change the subject (Subject), etc. But with the Russian language, obviously, not everything is so smooth.
A completely readable message becomes like this when you try to edit it.
Some messages in Russian are edited normally, and this does not depend on the encoding - I tried editing letters in KOI-8R, Windows-1251, UTF-8. I haven't done a comprehensive study, but The problem is typical for letters encoded in BASE64(Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64). Eight-bit (Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit) letters in any encoding are edited normally.
There is no spell check in Russian, that is, Postbox does not use the built-in dictionaries of Mac OS, like other Mozilla programs. You can download a Russian dictionary from Thunderbird from the website, but you can check either Russian or English, not both together, alas.
With the dictionary, it becomes possible to include a Russian interface in Postbox, but not all of it has been translated; the interface lines missing in Thunderbird will remain in English.
Every year, TechCrunch holds a conference where several dozen of the most interesting startups make presentations about themselves. In 2008, Postbox attracted attention. The developers showed a desktop email client (and this at a time when an increasing number of applications have analogues in the form of web services). On February 8, Postbox left the closed beta testing stage, so now you can get to know this program for yourself.
Postbox, as the developers say, is made using Mozilla technology. One might expect something similar to ThunderBird, but in reality it turned out to be a unique client with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Let's start with the fact that they honestly tried to make the Postbox interface as “native” as possible, although the eye of an attentive user will certainly notice deviations from AHIG.
Messages, contact list, attachments can be opened in separate tabs. The next time you start the program, the tabs are restored, although session management is not yet provided.
Unlike most mailers, which use a folder-search or folder-search-tags model to organize mail, Postbox takes a different approach. You can sort messages into folders and assign labels to them, but the main tool is sorting by Favorite Topics. The messages themselves are grouped by discussion, much like in Gmail.
Another interesting Postbox find is the Inspector panel. If the sent message contains links, addresses, pictures or other attachments, they will appear in the right column.
Postbox supports working with popular web services. If the received letter contains a link, you can save it in Del.icio.us, the address can be viewed on a map service, and the fragment of text you like can be sent to Twitter or FriendFeed.
Overall, Postbox is an interesting development. However, there are also plenty of disadvantages. Spell checking is carried out only for English-language texts, and it is unclear how to add support for the Russian language. There are no plugins and, apparently, there won’t be any. There is mail and address book import, but there seems to be no export.
Developer's website:
Price: for free
As you probably already know from the news in recent months, Google acquired the Sparrow email client, which delighted users with its excellent integration with Gmail. The development of a multi-platform Thunderbird client has been frozen: apparently, the developers at Mozilla believe that it is becoming increasingly difficult to compete with a good web interface, and it is not practical to maintain a staff for Thunderbird development.
However, not everything is so pessimistic in the email client market. Today we will get acquainted with the Postbox product, which began its development in 2008 as an “improved commercial version of Thunderbird.” Today, Postbox combines both the advantages of Burevestnik and new functions that allow you to keep up with the times.
The client is distributed for Windows and Mac platforms. Postbox, Inc. has no plans for Linux. No.
Getting to know Postbox
You can download a 30-day trial version of Postbox here. The current license price is $9.95, an upgrade from older versions will cost $4.95. Updates between releases (eg 3.x.x) are free.
When you launch it for the first time, you will be prompted to import settings from Thunderbird/Apple Mail. If you are a rare user of Windows Live Mail or Entourage, I advise you to go to and look for an unofficial solution to the problem.
To create an account, most often it is enough to indicate your email, username and password, the email client will select the server configuration for you. Occasionally, if the account settings are specific (or you need to select the POP protocol instead of IMAP), specify them immediately, in the settings window or after adding the account to the program. In the second case, in the Accounts list, click on the account name in the left panel and select Settings in the context menu.
Interface
Unfortunately or fortunately, Postbox launches in Russian localization, which had to be immediately changed to the original one (File|Localization|English (USA)). The problem is that the dialogs and menus display key hints, which, in my opinion, reduces readability and distracts from the functionality of Postbox.
The icons, colors and fonts are chosen in the best traditions of Mac OS, with the difference that Postbox looks much more interesting on the Mac. Windows users can only complain that Apple is ahead of the rest in terms of design.
Before Postbox, we were accustomed to the “classic” display of letters: at the top is the list of messages, at the bottom is the contents of the letter. Vertical View is also initially offered here. On wide-format monitors, this mode is more justified in order to save working space. However, it was noticed that the headers of read and unread messages have the same bold style. This, of course, leads to confusion. You can switch to the classic view through the View|Layout|Classic View menu.
The correspondence chain can be collapsed and expanded (keys O and Shift + O, respectively); each message in the chain can be easily viewed separately by clicking on the gray icon in the list with the number of letters in the correspondence.
Another feature that brings convenience to the interface is the Focus Pane mode. The closest analogy is iTunes: choose a genre, artist, album, until you find the song you were looking for. In the case of mail, there is always a need to find a particular letter by attributes (attachment, unread), subject, contacts or date. That's what the Focus Pane is for.
In addition, Postbox has account grouping. So, you can combine several folders with incoming letters into one, so as not to check each mailbox separately. In addition, accounts can be grouped: personal mail, corporate, etc.
Each message is assigned a topic (Assign Topic), something like a folder or tag. A similar system already exists in Gmail, which uses labels. Read about integration with Gmail below.
Postman's Toolkit
The developers have provided for the case when, if there are several mailboxes, the signatures for the letter must differ. That's why there is a signature editor in the Composition|Signatures section. Also in the Accounts tab, in the Identity settings group, you can select the desired signature.
To reply, just click on the Quick Reply field, write a reply and click Send (a simplified alternative to Reply and composing a message in the Compose editor).
In the third edition of Postbox, templates appeared - Responses. They are compiled by analogy with Signatures. To quickly respond, you need to go to the message editor (Ctrl + R, or the Reply item) and select the appropriate template in Responses on the top toolbar. I note that for such tasks there is a more functional extension, QuickText Pro, but more on that below.
By default, the editor has the English spell checking system activated. The Russian dictionary needs to be downloaded and, oddly enough, .
Now let's look at the Tools menu.
The Address Book (Tools | Address Book) is divided into Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses. Collected Addresses includes all recipients or senders. Unfortunately, with this kind of collecting, it is very difficult to clean up your address book, since there are no tools to track duplicates. On the other hand, Postbox does not limit the creation of new collections and filling out a personal contact card in your own collection.
To automate sorting, there are Message Filters (Tools | Message Filters). Let's say emails with the title “left you private messages” should end up in the trash. To do this, create a filter with the following rule:
Subject contains “left you private messages”; Move Message to Trash.
Likewise, it is not difficult to come up with at least a hundred rules. In general, filters are a fairly practical tool, but there is one thing: they will disappear immediately after you delete your account (accidentally or intentionally).
Unfortunately, Postbox does not provide global filters for multiple accounts. Plus, imagine a dozen rules that an email client must process regularly. Productivity suffers.
There is an alternative - to create them directly on the server. In particular, Gmail has , which can be imported/exported to another Gmail account.
Indexing of letters (Tools | Indexing | Index All Messages...) must be carried out regularly so that letters can be found through search. The developer assures that on a sufficiently powerful computer, 3,000 letters are indexed in 1 minute. However, it happens differently: if you have several accounts with tens of thousands of letters, and the hard drive is the weak link of the computer, get ready to wait 15-20 minutes. At times, indexing completely freezes during the “Sending login information...” process.
I mentioned search. It is implemented in the address book (search by contacts), by images, attachments, as well as in the main window (search in messages). Supported. If you don't want to study operators, click the arrow in the far right corner of the search to launch an advanced search.
In addition to everything, I would like to note the Anti-Phishing and Malware services indicated in the program description, which prevent letters of this nature. Additionally, Mac users can install the SpamSieve extension. Under Windows, the only advice would be to install a proven antivirus and activate the module responsible for checking email.
Add-ons
Go to the Tools | Addons.
Postbox supports extensions (Tools | Add-ons). There is no extension gallery, unlike Thunderbird, but there is a separate one on the developers' website. Alas, modules from Thunderbird are not compatible with Postbox, and this is often due to small things like an incorrectly specified name or variable.
Of particularly interesting applications, I would like to mention MailHops and QuickText.
MailHops allows you to find out the IP address of the sender of the letter (accordingly, its location on the map), as well as track the route the message followed. In addition, the Inspector Pane (lower right sidebar in Postbox) displays information about the reputation of the email address.
QuickText is an extension for working with templates. Variables are supported (clipboard, name, date, subject and more). The Pro edition has the ability to write scripts, but we will not go into the details that are disclosed.
For contrast, I will say that there are also unhelpful extensions, for example Lightning Calendar. This kind of “program within a program” exists both in the form and in .
There are no themes available for Postbox.
Integration with applications and services
Let's move on to the equally important features of Postbox; they can be divided into three categories.
Gmail integration
If you have Gmail in your list of accounts, you'll get some extra convenience.
In Gmail accounts, Postbox recognizes labels. At any time, you can select a message in the list, press the L key and assign a label from the drop-down list. A separate item in this list is the “Important” option. Messages marked with this label are placed in a folder of the same name, which helps to track important correspondence.
In addition to the built-in hotkeys, the hotkeys provided in Gmail work.
Integration with services
You can connect third-party services by going to the Tools | Options | Advanced | Web Services.
Integration with operating systems
Mac users get bonuses in the form of support for mouse gestures, plus integration with Evernote, Growl, and iCal applications.
Integration with Windows manifests itself purely in the form of support Taskbars.
Flaws
The mentioned advantages of Postbox do not mean that the email client is ideal.
There are strange features that migrated to Postbox as inheritance from Thunderbird (along with the Gecko engine). For example, in the Outgoing server settings, if you have several mailboxes, the information remains when you delete your account. It was thought that the more outgoing server addresses, the more options for replacement if one of them fails. In fact, everything turns out exactly the opposite.
Another unpleasant moment is the laggy address book. As soon as you start entering the recipient’s name in the “To:” destination field, Postbox begins to sort through the entire database of letters, of which there can be several thousand. We have to wait.
And the last negative: the purpose of integration with one or another social service is still not completely clear. Apart from the aforementioned mysterious integration with Google Calendar, I still haven't realized the benefit of having a connected Facebook account.
However, Postbox remains one of the best email clients at the moment. At the same time - what is important - the developers are actively developing the program, adding important functions and pleasant little things.