Plain Text Email Clients - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - STEP BY STEP GUIDE Manual

86 Chapter 7. Email Applications
Figure 7-7. Thunderbird Mail New Email Message 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.