THE GENERAL PREFERENCES

there is no need to connect to the homepage on each restart - you may actually want to go elsewhere.
So - open Blank page but set the DOIM page as Home not to be kicked out to Mozilla Home!

Here is a great feature, the tabbed browsing:

This is the greatest feature of Mozilla "borrowed" from Opera--the Tabbed Browsing!

While reading through the search results listing, you CTRL-click on the interesting links and they download in the background and place the web pages place themselves under the tabs in the same screen window. A very neat result:

Check Mozilla as the default mail application,
Check Play Sound and Show Alert on arrival of new mail

Email messages should better be written in fixed-width font:

You may also have real smileys show in the messages.

Professional messages should be sent in plain text, you are not a spammer to use HTML:

Cookies are no good for the computer's health. Yet some stupid or greedy websites will not let you in unless you accept their cookies.
So - enable cookies but make them immediately disappear!

You must (!) disable cookies in email messages.

You should remove the weak encryption that was enforced by the feds in the old days, leave only strong (long) keys. It is important when you send your credit card numbers or do your banking on the Internet.

Never disclose your true email address to anybody on the Internet:

You may also set Mozilla on the equal grounds with MS Internet Explorer enabling the Quick Launch - then Mozilla will always be preloaded in memory and will start as quickly as MSIE.

This section is very important. You must disable scripts in email messages!
To prevent annoying commercial pop-up windows uncheck "open unrequested windows".
To retain the roll-over change of images, leave "change images" checked.
To permit the bad practice of javascript in navigation, leave "open link in a new window" checked.

THE MAIL & NEWS PREFERENCES

Then you may get the email preferences from EDIT:

To work with email, the first step is to define the SMTP server (it is like deciding for yourself which US mailbox will you use for dropping your regular letters). This should be "the closest mailbox" belonging to your Internet Services Provider, in our case, the university:


After entering the SMTP address you must click "Advanced" and define this SMTP server as the default. You should also delete the ghost addresses if they show in the window. There should be only one server here!

Now save the results with pressing the OK button on the bottom edge of the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences screen and start the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences again.

Then you click on "Add Account" button and start configuring you mail receiving capabilities.

There are two types of email receiving procedures: POP and IMAP.

Old Netscape 4.xx had the IMAP type as the default and many of the faculty operate in IMAP.

IMAP is good when you have a slow connection to the mail server. IMAP loads in your computer only the headers of messages and the messages reside on the server at the mercy of the Computing Center where the disk may fail or who can very easily wipe out all your correspondence saying you are beyond the disk quota. You cannot easily work with your correspondence off-line, without the Internet connection.

The POP method downloads all your messages to your hard drive and you can take care of the correspondence with your own hands independently of anybody else in the world. You may keep several copies of your email archives on your office computer, home computer, portable computer synchronizing your correspondence.

I recommend using POP as additionally it is more stable and easily configurable.

We will describe both, starting now with POP:

Do not believe the above statement about SMTP server! You will have to check and triple-check it later.

Mozilla, as different from ancient Netscape 4, allows you to work with several different email accounts. They may be several different university mail accounts, another campus (VAMC) email accounts, your home provider's email box, etc. Whatever!

You will create different accounts in Mozilla for each of these email connections. Now we will assign the Account Name:

This screen shows an account's summary. Do not believe it regarding the SMTP server! You will have to check and triple-check it later.

As a double-check you should go to the "Advanced" button of the SMTP Server configuration and delete the ghost servers leaving only one server marked as default:

Now click on the Account Name on the left hand side and continue the configuration.
"Identity" will show in the headers of your messages, you may want to make it look neat.

Do not emulate spammers! Uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format"!

Now click on the Server Settings.
What is vitally important, is check "Leave messages on server". This will allow you to download the same messages on different computers, in the office, at home, on your laptop.
You may also want to check delete and empty unneeded message. I do not do this.
In your default office email account you may check the boxes "Check for new mail on startup" and "Check for new messages every 15 minutes".

If you work with your email in different locations, a good idea will be to send a BCC of your outgoing messages to yourself so that all your computers will have a complete collection of your own sent messages. You may filter out these messages in the SENT folder of each computer.

Now save the results with pressing the OK button on the bottom edge of the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences screen and start the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences again.

Below we will describe setting up the IMAP account.

After you have assigned the IMAP Account Name, the program will try to cheat you with this message implying that it is finished:

Now click on the IMAP Account Name on the left hand side and continue the configuration.
"Identity" will show in the headers of your messages, you may want to make it look neat.

Do not emulate spammers! Uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format"!

The next vital step in configuring IMAP account is defining where to place the sent messages and templates and drafts.
"Other" with specification must be selected:

If you skip this step, your messages will be sent out but you will be getting messages that they were not sent.

Now save the results with pressing the OK button on the bottom edge of the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences screen and start the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences again.

Now you should make sure that your accounts (POP and/or IMAP) are still properly linked with the SMTP server.

Click on the Account Name on the left-hand side and make sure that the HTML formatting is still unchecked then click the "Advance" button and make sure that the SMTP server is marked as "Always use default server".

You are almost set with the email accounts.

Now save the results with pressing the OK button on the bottom edge of the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences screen and start the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences again.

A very important source of professional information is the Usenet newsgroups.

The access to the news servers is usually restricted by Internet Services Providers. From the university we may use the VCU news server that receives its news feeds from UVA. There are several hundred thousand of different newsgroups (mostly junk). A good provider offers like 40,000, our university gives about 5,000.
I maintain a listing of Medicine and Health related newsgroups that is prominently posted on YAHOO! and receives quite a good traffic.

In the newsgroups you should NEVER show your true email address and the name because the spam machines scan the groups for scavenging target addresses. You may indicate your true identity in bodies of your posted messages, though. Do not forget to uncheck "Compose in HTML format", you are not a spammer!

Here goes the news server name:

Some of the groups are served on "secure servers" in a naive assumption that spam machines will not steal the email addresses.
To get there, check the "Use secure connection" box. The appropriate Port number will be automatically selected.

Now save the results with pressing the OK button on the bottom edge of the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences screen and start the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences again.

You should do the last check for "Composing messages in HTML format" and the links of the email accounts to the SMTP Server (delete the ghost entries) under "Advanced" button.