Cyberdog E-mail Client

Manage your email like a god? Why not manage it like a dog...

Okay, how do I set up my mail account?

First off, you need to configure your Inbox. Or Inboxes. Or Inboxen. Go to your Mail & News Menu. Select Mail & News Setup.

• The first option to set is Mail. Put in your email address (the one that you're going to want your mail to be coming from), and your outgoing mail (SMTP) server [note that this is optional].
• Next, select how you want to be notified of new mail. I say, skip the Dialog and Flashing Icon options, and check the Sound box. Then, in the menu, select Name of Sender [make sure that you have PlainTalk Speech installed]. Now, when you get email, your Mac will speak the name of the sender. A lot of people think that this is really pretty cool...and they are correct. Unfortunately, if you get more than 5 or so emails at a time, Cyberdog will just tell you how many new messages you have. Not quite as cool, but still okay. Just check your mail pretty often...
• You can set where you want your mail trays to be kept. The default is in the Cyberdog Preferences folder. If you want them somewhere else, say so here.

Still with me? Good...

How do I set up to get my mail?

• Add a mail account. This is where a lot of good stuff happens. Click this option. Enter your userid in the Account Name box, and your mail server in the Host: box. Your password goes just where you expect it, and you can set it to save your password with that handy checkbox.
• Next, you can set Cyberdog to check for mail at regular intervals.
• You can also set Cyberdog to leave a copy of your mail on your server. Be nice to your ISP, don't leave your messages on the server.
• Your Personal mail trays will come in handy later, when we talk about Handlers

I want to use Cyberdog to get my AOL mail...

Just stop now. It's not going to happen. AOL uses a non-standard email protocol, which is only supported by AOL's client (as you might have guessed) and Claris Emailer (Claris paid AOL for the priviledge of supporting the non-standard format).

How do I send messages out?

• Cyberdog allows you to send either plain text or rich text (MIME) messages. It's a good idea to keep track of what you are sending, because if the recipient of your email does not have a MIME capable email client, they will not be able to see your message as you intend it to be seen.
• You can select to quote text either as an entire message, or a small portion of the message that you select. You can also choose to attribute the text to the sender of the message to which you are replying. Or not. Choice is a wonderful thing. The attributes of the quoted text can be set using the Internet Config application.
• If you like to keep track of what you send out, you can leave your messages in your outbox for as long as you want.
• I'll let you play around with the other Messages setting. The defaults should work fine for you, though.
• Skip down to "Letterhead". This lets you set up Stationery-like templates for your email and news postings. They can be signature files, or they can be much more complex. If you have a rich text letterhead, you can stick in graphics, embedded links, or text styled any way you want it styled. Take a look at the standard Letterhead, and then make up your own.
• Before you Save as Letterhead (under the Message menu), make sure your cursor is in the spot where you want to begin typing. The cursor's spot is saved in the letterhead, as well.

I want to see all of the header information. Can Cyberdog do this?

It sure can. Actually, all you have to do is hold down the "option" key while double-clicking on the message. This opens the messages into a text window, instead of into the "envelope" that Cyberdog normally wraps around this information (and as a result, obscures some of it).

This also comes in handy when you need to print out all of the header information along with the email message on one sheet of paper. The only other way to do it is to set printing to "2-up" printing and check the "Print envelope" box.

How do I put stuff in different places? I want all the mail from my boss to show up in red, in a separate folder...

• This is a great way to organize your incoming mail. Go to "Handlers" in the "Mail and News Setup". Select "Add". You can set up a format for handling incoming mail. You can color code it by sender, subject line, or CC recipients, you can have them color coded, sorted into differnt folders in your mail area, or both.
• You can do the same thing to outgoing mail. For example, you can have all the mail you send to Apple decrying their decision to end Cyberdog development in one folder.

What about multiple mail accounts?

I'm not going to tell you. Instead, I'll let Blair Buscareno do so on his Multiple Mail Accounts in Cyberdog page.

I can't wait anymore...tell me about the news!

Okay, then....
While we're here, let's talk about news.

• Posting news works just like sending e-mail. You just have to specify a newgroup in the "To:" field.
• To set up your newsgroups, go to "News" in the Mail and News Setup, and "Add" a server.
• To see the offerings of the news servers you enter, select "Show News Groups" under the Mail/News menu.
• You can stick newsgroups, hierarchies, or entire servers in Notebooks. Entire servers are not recommended.
• Reading news looks a lot like reading mail. The interface is consistent. The only difference is that you cannot use the "Delete" button when reading news. It is greyed out for this reason.
• Replying to a news article is the same as replying to email, in terms of quoting materials.
• You can open more than one newsgroup at once, and even more than one news server.
• Again, watch out sending "Rich Text" messages to newsgroups. It's okay in the cyberdog.general group, but out in the world of Usenet, stick with plain text.

Back to the Cyberdog Central Page.