-- Future Development

When using Micromail place your mouse over an object (eg. textbox or button) to activate the

popup mouse-tip help where available. This is the key to learning and using the program

successfully. Every software program takes a while to learn, so if your really stuck please

contact the author rather than struggling on with difficulty.

Although the program is complete, it is still in Beta stage and has some known bugs and

issues which will be solved over time. Further development is planned throughout the year

subject to availability of time. The program will remain freeware and will only improve over

time with your participation, help, ideas and feedback.

Please kindly report bugs, suggestions and helpful comments to: micromail@gmx.net . If reply is desired, please send email to my personal email address: lmd72@gmx.net

Program has been tested on Windows 95 through to Windows XP. There are no known significant issues related to operating system at this time. The main issue(s) is of dependency and version problems. This has been virtually eliminated by including the correct dependency files (which may already be on your system) with the downloadable Program zip file @ dunbrack.com/mail .

Initially simply place the contents of the program Zip file (15 program files) into any directory on

your Windows PC. Then run the MICROMAIL.EXE file and you will be prompted to create a new

User Profile account. Follow the instructions to create your first account.

All program files, including all email, settings and schedule files are saved by default underneath the directory you started this program in (including if program is on floppy disk or flash drive). To relocate the program simply copy the entire contents of the current program directory., and place it intact on another computer drive. Start Micromail.exe as usual and program will run as it did on the previous computer, with your Profile accounts and settings intact as well as any saved or scheduled email.

You need only four details to receive email. 1. Your Email Address, 2. Your ISP's Pop3

Server Name eg.'pop.gmx.net', 3. Your Username for this Email account, 4. The Password

for this account.

To send mail you will generally need three additional details. 1. Your ISP's SMTP Server Name

eg. smtp.hotpop.com, 2. Your Username for this Email account, 3. The Password for this

account (2 & 3 usually the same as Pop3 Username and Password).

You can create an unlimited number of User account Profiles to check and send email from

all your Pop3/SMTP email accounts. Imap accounts will be supported later.

To move the program you need only copy (or zip) everything in the programs main directory,

including subdirectories to another Windows PC, network drive, USB memory drive etc...(any

writable Windows drive). I run Micromail occasionally from my digital camera memory when

using USB enabled PC's. As no installation is necessary just shift the program directory, and

start the .EXE file. Your settings, addresses, saved emails etc... will be available to you as

before.

Adjustable, however a minimum of 800x600 pixels is required to view all screen components

User can open more than one consecutive instance of Micromail. This may be useful to leave one copy automatically checking for new mail. While using another copy to send new mail. Most features, including the above mentioned, will operate synchronously within the one instance of the program.

User can open/edit/send up to five outgoing email windows simultaneously. When this limit is reached a message is shown. If more active outgoing email windows are required, opening a further instance of MicroMail will allow a further five emails to be edited/sent.

When writing email the user can schedule the send time to a time date that may be more suitable to send.

This could be used to send periodic reminders to staff or customers, or to send birthday wishes automatically throughout the year.

To save email as Scheduled mail. Select 'File' -> 'Schedule' from the email window menu. You only need to edit the 'Send Time:' to a future Time/Date and click the 'Save button'. You can change the file name but this is not necessary.

If there are any unsent Scheduled Email, the Toolbar's Scheduler Button will be enabled on the program's Main Window Toolbar. It looks like a square clock about ¾ of the way along the Toolbar from the left end (icon #16).

Periodically the user can push the Scheduler button in to activate the scheduler. If any unsent, scheduled email exist, that's 'Send Time' has been reached, it will be sent immediately. Even if it's scheduled time was months or years ago. It is preferable to only enable the Scheduler during times of low activity, or while you are away from the computer, if many email are to be sent. Alternatively the Scheduler can be left active continuously if preferred.

Scheduled email is automatically named for user similar to:

Once the mail is sent it is renamed to:

So you can check it has been sent.

Both scheduled & sent scheduled email are stored in the Program directory within the \MMX\ subdirectory.

You may edit the schedule.mmx file which stores details of unsent scheduled email, or the scheduled email itself at your own risk. Providing you are careful, this may be a useful feature to create your own scheduled mail lists.

Todo: An interface for viewing / editing existing and sent Scheduled email is planned. Using the information above you can track, edit, delete scheduled email until an interface is provided.

There are two separate automatic, interval Email account checking systems in MicroMail as follows:

Activating the Toolbar or Menu item "Mailbox Info for All Profiles" will allow a single check of all account Profiles, or by selecting an interval time and enabling the checkbox, repetitive check of all Profiles based on the Interval time selected on this page.

When new mail is detected, a warning bell notifies the user (based on availability of soundcard & speakers).

An active Profile's Interval autochecking can be enabled in 'User Profiles', and/or enabled/disabled temporarily using the Main Window toolbar (icon #10). When this is enabled MicroMail automatically checks and reloads all headers available from the remote mail server every 'x' minutes, based on user specified time interval. If new mail is found, a warning bell notifies the user (subject to availability of soundcard & speakers).

Printing is sent directly to the system default printer. Page size is currently set to A4 (210 x 297mm).

A few common Fonts and Font sizes are listed in the drop-down boxes for convenience. Any Font / Size combination available on your system can be entered into the boxes.

User can alter margins to suit their particular preferences. Entering margins approaching 0 or larger than the paper size may cause a minor error. These values will be checked for the user at runtime in a later version.

User selected settings are saved to the path: <Program path>\MMX\printer.mmx . It is recommended users do not alter MicroMail system files, or do so with care.

If initial Search is 'Up', and cursor insertion point is not at the start of word, and nothing is selected in document. Then selection (highlight) of the next word, and subsequent words, found (upward) will be off by the amount the cursor was initially to the right of the start of the Seach term.

Not serious or urgent. Easily fixed in later version. Would have been easier to fix bug than to have written the above explanation.

Date format needs fix. The different Date formats can cause send time to be incorrect. Eg. 3/6/2005 in Aust represents the 3rd of June and in US it represents the 6th of March.

As I have just discovered this bug, I cannot give advice before I look into the problem. However it seems the Australian format is creating the problem, but may rely on your Windows Regional settings also.

- A new local (and scheduled) email 'File Manager' is now available from the drop-down combobox at top-right of the main window.

- A local email file Search facility is also available through the same combobox.

-User can now choose to Download & Save all Emails listed in the Header window (Top half of main screen) by selecting "Download & Save" -> "All (Slow)" on the right-click menu.

-Upgrade of basic Attachment File(s) and Html Webpage content. All embedded files and webpages should now be available to the user both when file is first viewed and when saved copy is re-viewed in the 'File Manager'

-Generic error handling implemented for the first time. This should mean very few or no program crashes from now on (unless caused by linked DLLs etc...). I avoided this protection to try to properly solve all serious bugs through user feedback.

- Exceptions log catching all unhandled errors is recorded to the local file ...\mmx\errTrapLog.mmx and can be sent to me at anytime that the user has repeating problems, together with an explanation of the problem and basic system information (lloyd2005@dunbrack.com).

- On sending an email, the email details are no longer automatically erased

- On checking email from selected server, if no mail is available user is now prompted with a message box saying so.

- Deleting one or more server emails had several bugs. Fixed problem when trying to delete all emails on server. Fixed problem when trying to delete checked emails on server. And a related Rt-click menu typo.

- Make MicroMail network aware.

- Design so that MicroMail can run on Read0only media such as CD, prompting user for local/network/web save path on startup.

- An interface for viewing / editing existing and sent Scheduled email is planned. Using the information above you can track, edit, delete scheduled email until an interface is provided.

- Auto send / warn of filtered email arrival to Mobile phone, through Hotmail email<->sms account.

- Implement IMAP accounts for managing existing accounts

- Need to handle 'new email' beep for each operating system

- May Implement 'SSL' email connections for GMail and other Mail Servers.

... Further Help to be added later

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