The Mail Explorer Home Page

Introduction

What is Mail Explorer?

Well, first, let me get one thing straight: I dig Windows 95. Microsoft may be the software equivalent of the borg, but they are indeed bringing much more of the power of computing to the masses by bringing so many of both new and borrowed (embraced?) capabilities that were previously the sole domain of other computer architectures, to the lowly PC.

That being said, Win95 is far from perfect. A glaring example of this is the Exchange mailreader. While the idea of a single-spot inbox is a pretty good one, the result is a very slow, relatively inflexible, bloated system.

So, in the interest of perfecting the world, and allowing me to easily keep track of some 100-200 mail messages per day, I have set about to improve this area.

The basic problem with Exchange, and with other mail readers, is that, in fact, they all attempt to re-invent the wheel. They all try to create their own interfaces with 'folders' in order to hold mail 'files' in proprietary folder formats, and then define their own methods of working with these files.

Why bother?

There already exists an interface with folders, files, and methods to act on those files. It's called Windows Explorer. It provides for extensions to files to allow various actions upon them, it provides a number of methods for reorganizing files within the folder hierarchy. There is relatively little overhead, so it's fast, and you can safely assume that it's been tested by a few people, so chances are that it's relatively bug-free.

Why not use it?

In short, Mail Explorer is the program that interfaces your mail to the Windows Explorer, where you may act on your mail using a powerful, robust interface. By making use of Windows 95's long file names, you can see everything you need to work with your mail, right from the Explorer.

This means that all of the Windows 95 shell utilities are at your disposal for use with your mail. Want to find some old mail file that mentioned something about "Elvis' current whereabouts", but you forget who sent it to you, or what the subject was? Just select Start, Find, and search over your mail directory with Advanced, Containing Text: set to 'Elvis', or any other message text you wish to search for (subject or sender can be found using the Named: field, as well).

Want to compress your mail folders so they take up less space? Use Drivespace, which ships with Windows 95. Want to compress only one folder, or compress some at different ratios than others? Use the MS Plus Pack's Drivespace 3 with Compression Agent. The Plus Pack's System Agent can also be used to schedule regular mail downloads!

Mail Explorer filters your mail based on criteria that you define, into as many different folders as you wish. The order that you define for filters will change how your mail is actually stored.

For example, you always get mail from Joe, so you filter mail from Joe into your "People\Joe" folder. However, Joe also subscribes to a mailing list you read, the Wild World of Wrestling Forever mailing list, and postings Joe makes to the list are more relevant to the mailing list than personal mail from Joe. Thus, you put a filter for your "Mailing Lists\Wild World of Wrestling Forever" folder before the Joe filter, so that mail Joe sends to the mailing list will go to the mailing list folder, rather than Joe's folder.

• 32-bit!
• Address book with auto-add
• Multiple Document Interface (MDI) for browsing several mail messages at once.
• support for POP mail servers
• SMTP mail delivery
• mail filtering into a folder hierarchy
• mail filter editing with specific ordering of filters
• conversion to and from the Unix Pine mailreader and Netscape Mail format
• mail message file open/save/print/move/delete
• replies can be sent, spooled, or postponed. If send fails, the message is automatically spooled for later send attempts.
• signature file support

Version 1.24

Version 1.23

Version 1.22

Version 1.21

Version 1.20

Version 1.11

Version 1.10

Version 1.04

Version 1.03

Version 1.02

Version 1.01

Version 1.00

This also means that the mail viewers within Mail Explorer are subject to old 16-bit limitations, so you can't currently view mail messages larger than 32KB within Mail Explorer but.. they're text files! So, the same as with 32-bit Notepad, you are prompted to use Wordpad, or you can use your favorite text editor to take care of those huge files. Then you can hop back into Mail Explorer to fire off a nasty note in reply to that mail-bomb! Once again, Delphi32 will erase this limitation.

I don't have an installer (although it doesn't really need it; to install it, execute it! To uninstall, delete it!), so copying files to your "Program Files" (and to your "Start Menu", if you wish) directory will need to be done by hand for the moment. Delphi32 should include an INF generator, so Win95 will eventually be able to install for you.

What I'd eventually like to do is extend the explorer interface to have separate fields for subject and from, rather than the current handling of mail files merely as a bunch of files with really long names, plus some extra sorting features with multiple criteria (File Type sorting with Dates as a secondary sort), and ultimately, a version of the Windows Explorer that supports file type filtering (to display only new mail files, for example).

Mail Explorer requires Windows 95 or later, running with long file names enabled.

A quick guide to Mail Explorer is included in the distribution in Readme.rtf, which can be read with Wordpad. This guide includes all information you need to set up Mail Explorer on your system, and a quick tutorial on the program itself.

Well, here's the deal: Mail Explorer is available free for anyone who wants to use it. I wrote it for myself, and basically intend for it to be useful to me, and to other people who do things like I do.

What this means is: I've written a POP/SMTP mail interface, and import/export facilities to and from Unix Pine and Netscape Mail mailreader folder formats because that's all I need. There are numerous other possibilities on those few features alone: other mail protocols/post office types, other mailreaders that folks might use.. but I don't use anything else, so I don't need it. There are an infinite number of other possibilities, as well.. wizards to automate various types of mail, listservers, etc.. but again, the point here is simplicity.

• tighter integration with Windows, including date stamping mail files using time zone information, message deletes using recycle bin, Windows common dialogs, and multiple-user support.
• listserver support (this is actually just a address book entry with multiple users, but automated subscribe/unsubscribe would be great! Death to majordomo! :-) )
• MIME support, although this already exists in the form of programs that work on text files.
• MAPI, support for other common mail protocols
• Import/Export for other mailreaders
• Wizards and form letter support for commonly-used letter types

The Mail Explorer Home Page has reportedly received hits since February 25, 1996.