The 100 most important wishes for Outlook Express 6.X

Version 118 - May 02 2003 - http://www.radikal.net/microsoft/

Changes since version 115:  Report 55, 59 and 71. Rest is unchanged
19 bug reports: 5,18,24,33,35,39,41,42,44,51,55,59,61,62,72,89,90,95,99
5 are difficult but very important to fix: 6,20,41,55,88
10 reveals stupid behavior: 5,7,16,44,54,55, 88,90,95

This is bug report (Win98 on a P100, 96 MB ram) and suggestions for MS-Word, Outlook express and Frontpage express, compared with Eudora, Forte Agent, Word Perfect and other software. For more information about how the newsreader part should behave read http://www.newsreaders.com/gnksa/gnksa.txt

Summary of microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.outlookexpress.wishlist: http://www.newsreaders.com/win/oe_wishes.html

It seems Microsoft has skipped some few very important functions which would make their product much better. For more than a year I've asked a lot people what they think were missing in addition to search for bugs and problems myself, and here is the list of the main problems:

Useful fixes/functions for Outlook Express 6.0 to make it better than Eudora and Forte Agent

  1. Preview window: Add Open link in *new* window (right click option). Eudora has this. Even Internet Explorer has it as the second choice of right-click options. Today user is forced to destroy content of current window by not having this option and that is very bad.

  2. Ctrl-f should be function for finding text in current window (preview windows, windows with subject, from name list etc... both for mail and news). It's stupid using this ctrl-f for forward. How often do we need forward compared with find text? After all forward has it's own button, and ctrl-f means find text in Internet Explorer.

  3. Filters: Add "Where the outgoing message is from account". (to save outgoing for any specified account other place than sent items. The options without "outgoing" here does not work with outgoing messages). Eudora has this possibility.

  4. Add send again (rightclick menu) for sent mail. Eudora has this.

  5. When include message on reply using html and indent, remove the | vertical thick line when pressing return and add one empty line before and after within the reply field like Eudora does. The automatic | before must be a bug. Anyway, this works in Eudora, but not OE 5

    | Somebody
    | else
    | wrote
    | this

    | Somebody

    Here goes my reply after pressing return once!

    | else
    | wrote
    | this

  6. Read mail and news from many accounts same time to save time waiting for mail. Imagine one machine does not respond and you have to wait for that until the next accounts are checked. Eudora does it!

  7. In preview or open mail, add mail address after From: and not only the name. Name (blah@blah.com) instead of only Name. Same with To: field doing reply. Always add email address and not only name. User want to be sure this is correct email address.

  8. Make folders blue for new mail, and change back to black when checking for new messages next time. This means if some older messages is unread then keep them bold black. This way it's possible to know which folder new mail is filtered to when some older mail is still unread.

  9. As long as Send/recv button has any function when choosing news, then it should have the same function as "synchronize all" (not ask with any dialog box as synchronize newsgroup does), but limit the operations to a), Only send news if "send" is choosen. Synchronize always force both, and that's sometimes bad. b) Only operate on mail (read or send) when no news server og group choosen and only on news (read or send) when any group or news server is choosen c) Only on all groups on selected server when "All groups: <groups>" choosen or the specific selected group from the drag down menu Send/Recv has for mail today.

    Example: Send/Recv for news:

    Send and Receive All Ctrl+M
    Receive All
    Send All
    All groups on news.microsoft.com
    microsoft.public.frontpage
    microsoft.pulic.outlook
    All groups on news.whatever.com
    silly.newsgroup
    another.silly.newsgroup

    This procedure is much faster and more useful, because user don't need to read when only want to send vice versa. In addition user don't need to go to the newsgroup first, then choose synchronize newsgroup and then pressing ok for the dialog box for default setting, but only choose the group from the drag down menu for Send/Recv button in case of synchronize newsgroup.

    In tools add "Synchronize all mail" when not choosing any news server or news group, and "Synchronize all news" when choosing news server or newsgroup. It's confusing and hard to understand always force mixing mail and news functions together in one operation if users don't want it.

  10. Synchronization default should be "Headers only" and not "New messages only", because not many want to download more than headers.

  11. Add View/"show details" both for mail and news which insert all the headers in the message body when viewing, reply or forward. Let key h do the same. Right click and properties takes too long time. Image you want to forward the mail with all header information. Forward function should forward with all details in the mail/post if show details has been used for this mail/post. This function should only operate once, and automatically be deactivated for next mail or news, because usually user don't want to see details.

  12. Virus warning should not only write about "not trusted persons", but also give warnings about not expected attachments and the fact that a virus could send from the account of trusted persons automatically if this account is infected.

  13. Add send later button in window for sending mail or post. This makes things more easy. Forte Agent has this

  14. Add key <w> for watch thread (if watched then turn it off) and <i> for ignore (if ignored then turn it off) and <n> for jump to next unread (faster than pressing mouse buttons). Forte Agent has this

  15. Mark only (and all) new postings or followup directly to the user of the OE (since last download of new headers) in watched thread red, and mark group or thread (before expanded) red only if there exists such new postings. Next time downloading headers make all old (which is not followup directly to user) black even if some of this messages have not been read. This way users may see what group to read quicly, instead of checking out watched threads each time there is something less important news in the group, in the case user has not read all new postings in the group since last time. Today user is forced to read all in watched threads (or rightclick every single watched thread with undread and mark all read) to make the red color in the newsgroup go away. This is nothing but silly, because user always know if some group or thread has watched items by the sign at the left side, but not if there is any new messages. Do not mark group or thread red only because it is being watched. Forte Agent does not mark anything (not even followup to user) red anymore if not last download, and that is another solution which still is much better than OE 5.5.

    A good idea may be to use color blue instead of red or black for new messages which is a followup directly to the user of the client even if the thread is not watched, and turn the group or thread (before expanded) blue. The blue color (just as the red) should not turn off before article is read, but blue has always higher priority than red color because "blue is new message(s) for you" and "red is new message(s) in thread". See report 8 for mail.

  16. On larger (more newsgroups) news-servers than news.microsoft.com, there is a damn long disk read process when selecting newsserver or switching between newsgroup. OE should never read the entire newsgroup list unless user want to add/delete some groups or refresh the group list to update it or "Notify if there are any new newsgroups" is set on in Options/General (this should not be the default). In case this notify is set the entire newsgroup list should only be read and new newsgroups checked once a day. Forte Agent is at least 100 times faster. See http://www.tomsterdam.com/insideoe5/problems/slownews.htm for more technical info about this problem.

  17. Add option for not automatically download headers when entering group. Forte Agent has this.

  18. Bug in mail: To: user@address1.com user@adress2.com does not work because it's only a space between the addresses. For news space works fine. Please let this work for both space and ",". If previous word before space is on the form *@*.* then the space equals to ",".

    If To: Fields is empty then OE adds: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
    ":" is syntax error (ftp://ftp.uninett.no/pub/rfc/rfc2822.txt). It must not write ":" and should not write ";"

  19. Do not try to send all unsent mails or posting when pressing send in edit windows for new mail or posting because this means trouble if using different accounts and logging into one to send a message and OE tries send all the others in the queue too resulting in errors. Unsent should only be sent when pressing Send/Recv button and not Send button!. Only mail should be sent when not choosing any news servers or groups, and only news should be sent when news server or groups choosen using this button. Eudora and Forte Agent does not have such bad function to send all when want to send only one

  20. Add option for another window setup with only messages to right side like this: Click here for example from Forte Agent. Each window should be possible to configure for using different fonts. Forte Agent has this

  21. When displaying new headers (for example after entering the group or pressing header button) and before selecting any posting, sorting the opposite direction (after date etc..) doesn't scroll to the opposite end of the windows. For mail this function works fine, but not for news. If anybody want it to work like today, add that as an option. Nearly all users by default want to see the newest postings first, like mail operates.

  22. Add possibility to show number of postings in each thread with [number] in front of subject (See example from Forte Agent above how this works).

  23. When unsubscribe from a newsgroup, ask if headers and message bodies should be deleted for this group. Forte Agent has this. Don't delete a subscribed newsgroups-folder, if the newsgroup is removed from the server and this result is all messages in that group get lost.

  24. Bug: If changing the news server field to another account the message "The newsgroups in the newsgroups field might not be valid on the new server. The newsgroups field will be cleared." - pops up even if the server for both accounts is the same. This message and removing of newsgroup name should never be used in this case.

  25. When reading a newsgroup first time by joining, then use a function for bringing up a dialog box to ask how many headers to be downloaded, or "all" if this selected (<Get n headers at a time> settings in tools/options should be ignored). The dialog box should display number of headers at the server. In tools/options there may be some option after <Get n headers at a time> O "Ask first time", which by default should be switched on. This function makes things a lot more easy than to change the settings for every new groups joined. Btw. "Get <n> headers at a time" in tools/option should have no limit. Image you want to download 5000 first headers in a group with 20000. Forte Agent has this first time reading from group function as default.

  26. Add possibility to delete single or all selected news header (and message if downloaded) which also includes delete on search results. This works for email, so why not for news? Delete button and possibility to drag to Deletet Items should work for both. This makes it very easy to clean up old headers and free disk space. Add keep message function (with lock symbol), to be sure important postings are impossible to delete before lock is removed. Doing delete on a group of postings ignores the locked ones and deletes the rest. Forte Agent has all this functions.

  27. Using ctrl+shift+f and clicking (once - no need to open) on one message or post found searching, this message should automatically be jumped to, thread opened and displayed in the preview window. It's very difficult to open each message if a lot is found to see which one is the right, and impossible to find where it originally was (what thread etc..) without showing it in preview. Forte Agent has this.

  28. The help text for "synchronize all" at bottom of windows should be changed to what this functions do as: "Download (for offline reading) all marked for download, watched threads and everything synhronized for each group". Now it's impossible to understand for new users (I've asked a lot, and nobody understood what it did), and the help text for this function is really bad.

  29. If user set OE to automatically disconnect after reading mail, this option should only by default be activated when OE makes the dialup process. The Send/Recv message box should still have the possibility to set it to disconnect (even if OE has not done the connection), but this should *never* be default in case OE has not made the dialup. It makes no sense uses makes the connection without use of OE and then the default is to disconnect just by reading mail. If user only want to read mail and nothing else, he/she triggers OE to make the dialup connection and then of course it could by default be set to disconnect. If some few users always want it to disconnect by default, add option for O "Disconnect even if OE did not made the call".

  30. The text and format of "<name> <email> wrote in message" with reply postings should be possible to change. Forte Agent has this.

  31. Change the text written in menu tools/options/send: "html format" to "plain text and html" because OE sends both plain and html. There is no need for sending only html because some people always want to read as plain (see 45):

  32. Add option for check each n minutes if there is any new mail, but only on specified accounts and without downloading.

  33. Bug: Try send later on a mail. Open the mail in Outbox (double click), and delete the mail in OutBox. Then press Send, and user get "The message could not be deleted", and mail editor window does not close, even if the mail is beeing sent. If user press 10 times Send, the mail is sent 10 times etc. Solution 1: OE should figure out the mail was deleted while beeing edited and then close the window after first Send (works same way as if user delete draft while editing). Solution 2: Never allow any mail edited to be deleted. Solution 3: Give warning that mail is beeing edited, and ask if user want to close the edit window and remove the saved mail in Outbox or cancel the delete. Eudora does the last, but don't ask if users want this with any warning (ooops. new mail lost!).

  34. Add option in Internet Accounts/news/properties/advanced for: When synchronize ignore messages longer than [...] Kbytes. It's a nightmare if some 100K postings appear with only crap as content.

  35. Bug: If View/Current view is set to hide messages, then watch thread only marks this viewed messages watched. By going back to show all messages and there are more in front and read before, the view thread sign would be invisible and nearly impossible to find in collapsed threads because rest of the messages in the thread (including the first) is not marked watched.

  36. Add option for automatically save new mail or postings beeing created using same system as MS-WORD does for documents while being written.

  37. Executing attachment possibility should be default be switched off, because almost nobody needs this function and it opens door for any virus. Java-script in html should by default as an option not run automatically.

  38. Add option for not grouping postings which is not a followup. Today a new thread with same name as an old is always grouped with the old one. Watch function does not catch such new postings automatically (Forte Agent does, but not OE). This means there should also be some option for the watch function to include all postings which is not a followup.

  39. Bug: Edit a new mail and insert this as source:
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
    <HTML><HEAD>
    <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
    <META content="MSHTML 5.00.3207.2500" name=GENERATOR>
    <STYLE></STYLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
    <BLOCKQUOTE
    style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px">
    <P class=MsoNormal>&nbsp;</P>
    <P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is some text</FONT></P><FONT
    size=5><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
    style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: NO-BOK; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: NO-BOK; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Try
    ctrl-a, and change font size. This line is unchanged. Try mark everything but not
    last word on this line. Try change font again</SPAN></FONT></FONT>
    </BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>

  40. Microsoft should be sure that no part of the program read or write to disk when not using it (this keeps the disk running for no reason). This is a problem with OE 5.5 today (it never stops read/write disk).

  41. Periodical bug: When receiving new mail sometimes all text/plain mails (in all mailboxes) shows up as attachments. When trying to send mail this happens:
    -----------
    This message contains some text having a character set other than the
    default character set. When sending this message you have the following
    options:

    Send As Unicode - The message is sent as a Unicode message....
    Send as is The message will be sent as a regular e-mail message...
    Cancel  Return to editing the message
    -----------

    Quit and restart OE does not solve the problem. Reboot without doing any changes in OE (nothing deleted etc.) usually makes it work again. A lot people have this problems.

  42. Periodical bug: The option to "Compact messages in background" should not be a default setting, because it may corrupt the mailbox files. Instead the default should be an automatical popup-box once a month (with don't show this message again) which ask if OE should a) compact all folders or b) Empty "deleted items" folder and compact all folders.

    Does this problem happen because OE does not use tmp files when writing, and if the program crashes while writing then file get corrupted? If so, OE should always write to a new.tmp file no matter what it does, and then a) rename the old file to old.tmp, b) rename the new.tmp file to same name as the old had, c) remove the old.tmp file. When OE starts it should look for old.tmp files, and rename them back to their original names, because then the process did stop after a) was done.

  43. The broken paper icon for "not viewed news-message" should be removed to make it more easy to see difference between downloaded and not downloaded items. Forte Agent has no such icon for "not downloaded", and there is no need for it. It only make things confusing to have more icons than needed.

  44. Bug: It should not be possible to reply with anything else than English headers because this breaks standards (remove this option in Internationl Send Settings). Even if English header is set as default it does not work anyway in some versions of OE because when reply to text for email and news which starts with "Re:", in Norwegian (or maybe other languages) this may be perverted to "Sv:" instead. This makes OE incompatible with other clients which use the standard "Re:", and is *wrong* to change (see: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1036.html). Only "Re:" should be possible to use in reply for mail or news no matter language.

  45. Add in Tools/Options/Read: Mail read format: o Html o Plain Text (like mail send format), and News read format: o Html o Plain Text. Html should be default for mail, and plain text default for news. Some users want to read the plain (if exist - else view html) and not the html (if plain text exist). Add Plain Text in View toolbar (view current message as plain text), and key 'p' for a shortcut to this.

    Add in Tools/Options/Send: Auto Detect, which should be the default for mail and sets plain text if html is not needed (Netscape 6.0 has this)

  46. Add option (in Internet Accounts/news/properties/advanced?) for adding new common headers like for example: "X-No-Archive" for "not archieve public on www forever".

  47. Add read option for "Start a New thread when a followup subject changes". Forte Agent has this.

  48. Add hotkey for toggle "Group messages by conversation".

  49. Add function for removing only attachment of email and keep the rest.

  50. Options/Maintenance, and "clean up downloaded messages" should specify that this is news messages. New users may think it's mail too, and that's pretty confusing.

  51. Bug: Edit a new mail and insert this as source:
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
    <HTML><HEAD>
    <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
    <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4522.1800" name=GENERATOR>
    <STYLE></STYLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
    <DIV><EM><U><FONT color=#0000ff><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial
    size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV></FONT></FONT></U></EM></FONT></FONT></DIV></DIV>
    <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
    style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><U>Some link</U></FONT></DIV>
    <DIV>
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><U></U></FONT></DIV><U><FONT
    face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></U></DIV>
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><EM>Ctrl-a +ctrl-c + click above the link to
    paste in: ctrl-v. Now this line turns into a link
    too!</EM></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>

  52. Add: If a message header has already been retrieved in one group, perform the following action in all subsequent groups or same group on a different server: O Retrieve the header normally O Mark the header read (Should be the default) O Skip the header (do not retrieve content even if watched). Crossposted messages and copies in the same newsgroup on two different servers should be looked for when retrieving new headers as default, and should be detected by message-id. Forte Agent has this feature (but not support severale news-servers) in addition to make it possible to detect by Subject, author, date and lines, because some user may post the same severale times to different groups, thus get different message-id. Usually this is not a problem because it's crossposted followups to severale groups which is the main problem.

  53. When sending or reading messages, the text to be replied to (starting with quote mark ">" for both mail and news) should have some option (user may choose to make it operate on plain text or html or both formats) to choose the color he/she wants for different levels of quoting if and only if writing a reply (for example blue or red as default on level 1), making it more easy to see who is writing what. Lines starting with double quotes (level 2 and up) could be set to this color (128 128 255) or blue, making it easy to see what to reply to and not confuse earlier replies with the last. If someone manually edit a new mail/post and insert ">" (or "|" if this is set) in front of a line, the line should automatically turn into this colors when moving to next/previous line. ">" (or "|" if this is set) should as well automatically be changed to the vertical line format when send format is html. Forte Agent makes the plain text replied to blue color as default, but does not change lines starting with double indent to another blue color, which makes it hard to see who is writing what when doing the reply.

  54. This is a test done in Win98 and OE 5.5 comparing the speed of Forte Agent against OE using an old Pentium 100Mhz with 96 MB RAM. The newsgroup microsoft.public.windowsme.general on server news.microsoft.com with 50000 headers with no bodies was used for this test. compact all folders, and groups was not subscribed to before this test. Downloading of 300 headers was off.

    Mark all read used from 30 minutes in best case to 4 hours and 40 minutes in worst case in OE. Forte Agent used 25 seconds, means Agent is 72-650 times faster here.

    Catchup used from 50 minutes in best case (no mark all read was done) to 3 hours if all messages had been marked read first. Forte Agent used about 1 second doing the same - means it was 10000 (ten thousand) times faster in this case

    Delete header function is too slow. Forte Agent used less than 30 seconds to delete all 50000 headers, while OE used 300 seconds.

    OE should not reload anything from disk each time when entering a group, but load index for all groups when entering any newsgroup after starting OE and keep them in the datastructure in memory at least until going back to reading mail to avoid loading from disk when switching between them. OE use 60 seconds, and Forte Agent use less than 0.2 seconds in this test, means hundreds of times faster!

    Forte Agent use almost no time (a second or two?) to read the newsgroup folders from disk. OE used about 2.5 minutes if messages had been marked read.

    OE use more than 2.5 minutes to leave this large newsgroup and switch to mail or another group. Forte Agent use less than 0.2 seconds.

    Syncronize all would in this case use at least 5 minutes only because if this single large group, even before start checking for any mail or headers.

  55. For sending plain text for both mail and news:

    Lines with quote mark should be wrapped down to equal or less than 79 characters + SP = 80 characters total. Forte Agent does not wrap quoted lines at all unless longer than 998 characters and that's better than ugly wrapping which ends up with one single word at a lot lines. Notice: There is no need to always wrap too long quoted lines down to for example 75 characters, because then some lines would still be close to 80 and need to be wrapped soon anyway.

    There is a fix for this at http://flash.to/oe-quotefix/ (in Download menu)
    a) Add in option/send: "Send format=flowed (wrapped lines are separated by space + linebreak)" which by default should be on or much better; do not have this as user option but always do it (Like Eudora and Netscape 6.0 does) because it can't do any harm. If sender use format=flowed and option to reply with the same format is set on, then format=flowed should always be used. When sending a new mail or doing reply to something identified as format=flowed it wraps all lines as explained in http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2646.html   Even if this option is off  this method should always be used to parse quoted lines received with format=flowed even if new lines are not sent with format=flowed (gnus software do parse this format).

    b) Add in option/send: "Unwrap quoted lines longer than 80 characters if not flowed format". This should be default on.
     
    This function identifies a received mail or news message as not format=flowed and after replied to it then process two quoted lines at a time. First line means the first part of the line which may be reconnected or not with the next line. If first line > 80 characters, it counts the number of SP at end of line, and if the number > 1, all except for one SP are removed. If line still is > 80 characters it wraps down to 80 characters and rest of the line has CRLF changed to SP (unwrapping) and inserted in front of the next line if same quote level. Then the same process is repeated for this line. Unwrapping (change CRLF to SP to connect two lines) has exception if any of this 3 cases are true;
     
    Exception 1: First line happens to end with SP as in format=flowed. Then remove CRLF and do not change to SP (else there will be double SP). This is the same way format=flowed is handled. In this case ignore exception 3 but not 2 (it may be program source with one SP at end which should not be there)
     
    Exception 2: First character at next line after the quote characters is SP or CRLF or TAB, and this means new paragraph so do not try to connect this line with the previous by unwrapping.
     
    Exception 3: Next line start a list. A list is on the form with lines starting with xy+SP, where x is a numerical value 0-999 or character a-z or A-Z and y is ")" or "." and x increment the value for each new line (may start at any value). In case the first line ends with "," it is not a list, because 1) blahblah, 2) blahblah, 3) blahblah is on the same line. Example when this may happen (here sender wrapped after "," but all should be at one single line):
     
     1) dsifjdsifjsdifj sdfjsoifjid fjisdfjo fjiojidsfj fjiojihjijffidfs,
     2) dsifjdsifj difjisdfjsoifj dofjisdfjodfjiojidsfjdfjiodifjjefe,
     3) dsifjdsifjsdif isdfjsoif idofjisdfj dfjiojid fjdfjiojsfjijffidfs
     
    If unwrapping can't be done and line need to be wrapped then make a new line for the rest of it, but when wrapping quoted lines do add the same quote level as previous line in front.
     
    For the new not quoted lines use and send the mail/news as format=flowed if this is set as option for send format, because this makes it much more easy to wrap.


    Today OE wrap all quoted lines even if they are shorter than 79 characters using the same lenght as for new lines and does it the most ugly possible way without inserting in front of the line the same level quoting it had before (this is a very nasty bug in OE), and it even saves the ugly wrapping to the folders making it impossible to reopen and edit more.

    #-------------------- Start editing in OE 6.0 where wrap is set at 70 characters ------------------------
    >> Wrap the new lines user write in the reply instantly, and not after message is saved or sent,
    >> btw. previous line ended with a space after word "sent,"
    > Um that was a good idea, but what about this ugly line here. What should we do
    > about this line which had no space after "do"?

    Now I'll try send this, and read the result in Sent Items as you can see here below...
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    #----Ugly result in     Drafts, Outbox or Sent Items in OE 6.0 -----
    >> Wrap the new lines user write in the reply instantly, and not after
    message is saved or sent,
    >> btw. previous line ended with a space after word "sent,"
    > Um that was a good idea, but what about this ugly line here. What
    should we do
    > about this line which had no space after "do"?

    Now I'll try send this, and read the result in Sent Items as you can
    see here below...
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    This is how it is done the nice way:

    #-- Start editing with show soft line breaks set on, and light blue/blue option set for viewing --
    >> Wrap the new lines user write in the reply instantly, and not after message is saved or sent,
    >> btw. previous line ended with a space after word "sent,"
    > Um that was a good idea, but what about this ugly line here. What should we do
    > about this line which had no space after "do"?

    Now I'll try send this, and read the result in Sent Items as you can
    see here below...
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    #--- Reading mail sent with     reply to format=flowed and light blue/blue option --
    >> Wrap the new lines user write in the reply instantly, and not after message
    >> is saved or sent, btw. previous line ended with a space after word "sent,"
    > Um that was a good idea, but what about this ugly line here. What should we
    > do
    > about this line which had no space after "do"?

    Now I'll try send this, and read the result in Sent Items as you can
    see here below...
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    #--- Same as above but sender did not reply to format=flowed but unwrapped --
     >> Wrap the new lines user write in the reply instantly, and not after message
     >> is saved or sent, btw. previous line ended with a space after word "sent,"
     > Um that was a good idea, but what about this ugly line here. What should we
     > do about this line which had no space after "do"?
     
     Now I'll try send this, and read the result in Sent Items as you can
     see here below...
         #---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    c) The default wrap for new not quoted lines should be at 70 (or max 72) characters as in Forte Agent and not 76 as OE5.5 default because there may be a lot >>> in front of a line after severale followups or replies. This number may as today be possible to change, but should only be used for new lines and not the quoted lines received from others where 79 characters (counted after new quote mark has been added in reply) always should be set as limit if there is no SP at end of line, else 80 with SP. Exception for reply to quoted printable or base64 with only one quote mark which should have has a limit of 70-72 characters if wrapped (see j), because the other user don't wrap the new lines he/she write, so the receiver has to do this job instead. Another exception is words longer than 79 characters and shorter than 998 characters which should never be wrapped. A wrapped link for example damages it.
    d) Add in Options/Send "When reply, show soft line breaks for new lines". This function wrap the not quoted new lines user write in new mail instantly on the screen (at 70-72 chars as default). It's may be a good thing to see where most of the soft line breaks will be when writing the mail, and therefore make this the default setting. Remember not to save this line breaks in any folder. Forte Agent has this option.

    For the quoted lines there could be an option (default off) for "Wrap quoted lines before reply" (means lines have to be wrapped twice - before reply and before sending) - or much better an option for "Wrap quoted lines instantly" which may be the default if it's fast enough.

    e) When reply do not add space between quote characters. "> > blah blah" is nasty. ">> blah blah" is nice. Forte Agent use >> and not > >. Remove (also when reply) spaces other people have inserted between quote characters. To identify what quote characters is beeing used, do f) first.

    f)      Only ">"should be possible  to choose as quote character.

    g) Do never add hard line wrapping for not quoted lines (i.e do not add line breaks) in Drafts, Outbox or Sent Items etc, because user may need to edit the mail later or copy/paste into another mail. Eudora and Forte Agent does not damage the text doing this.

    h) Do never wrap before the quote character(s) if it happens to be used in a line. For example "If a > 50" should never be wrapped so ">" ends up in the beginning of a line, because then it is taken for quoting when someone receives the mail. Go back and wrap before the previous word instead (or until it is no common quote character).

    i) Remove ":" and "|" as quote characters in plain text settings. Practically nobody use themanyway, and the more quote characters people use the more trouble it gets. Only ">" should be identified as quote character in received mails/news.

    >|:>|:: This doesn't look very good, does it huh?
    ::||>> Nope, It sure doesn't :)

    j) Add in option/send: "When reply wrap lines with quoted printable or base64 format" like Forte Agent do as default. If this option is choosen, then the quote mark ">" will be used (if option to use it has been set). In OE 5.5 messages with MIME format: quoted printable is missing the quote mark on reply (because lines don't wrap?), but still base64 has this character. Do not use quote marks for base64 unless lines are wrapped. It's nasty to indent 500 characters long lines with one single ">" in front.

    k) Converting Format/Rich Text to Plain Text should add quote marks if HTML format is set on send. Today even not quoted printable received format result in no quote marks using this method.
     
  56. In options/Send there could be a good idea to add a button for "Restore all Send settings to default values". In addition to this or alternative, it should be a "Restore Defaults" button for "Message format" in HTML and PlainText Settings, because today it's almost impossible for users to undertand this and set back to the default which works for almost everybody.When installing a new version of OE and the old version does not have any of the fixes in this report, the install program should set all send settings to default values to clean up all the bad settings from old versions, and give warning that it has done so. a) Default for "Reply to message using the format in which they were sent" should default be off (because the client receiving should have the option to choose read format and not only send format, and send format should always include plaint/text as done in current version. See report 45). b) Default for International Settings should use english headers or better not possibility to use anything else (see report 44). c) Default for News Sending Format should be Plain Text. d) Default for News (both for HTML and plain text settings) should be MIME + Encode text using: None + allow 8-bit characters + indent the original text + wrap at 70-72 characters (See report 55). All news servers today handle 8 bit and no encoding, but for email japanese and some few other may get problem with not using quoted printable e) If option in report 55 j) is implemented: "When reply wrap lines with quoted printable or base64 format" should by default be set on. f) OE should not look for new newsgroups as default, because this takes a lot time and almost never needed.
  57. If the folder dbx file is corrupt (happens with lot users making no mailboxes visible) there should be a popup dialog box asking to rebuild it. If this may damage filter rules, OE should use Filters.dbx instead of everything in one .dbx file
  58. Add some reset option for "Don't show this message again" - boxes (if user want to get questions back)
  59. Bug: if From: field in received mail has "," as character in real name before mail address in <>, then a reply split To: field in 2 users, where one is a false user which do not exist (or by random exist). Example below is one user, but after reply Nobody is added as new user in To: field

    From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=22Nobody=2C_=C5some_B=E5name=22?= <test@blah.com>
  60. "Include this account when checking for new messages" option is confusing. Please be more specific in the text actually what is does (relevant only to background checks etc...)
  61. Bug: Edit a new mail and insert this as source:
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
    <HTML><HEAD>
    <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4611.1300" name=GENERATOR>
    <STYLE></STYLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
    <DIV>&gt;&nbsp;Press&nbsp;return below this line to make an empty line and then
    write a word on next line . View source, go back to Edit. Word is now one line up?!<BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>
  62. Bug: If OE is going to use a news URL, then it should go all the way and escape the appropriate characters and regardless of whether it uses the url scheme or not, the brackets should NOT be left out (they tell you when to stop).
  63. When reply remove everything below signature mark "-- ". If any text is marked, do only reply to such text. Forte Agent does all this steps.
  64. Add "paste as quoted" item to edit menu with and a hot-key for this (CTRL-Q). Forte Agent and Netscape has this.
  65. Allow redefinition of the most important hotkeys. This has been standard for even simple action games for 15 years. So it's bad OE does not have this fundamental function but force everybody to use the same keys.
  66. OE should stay in fixed pitch font mode (View/text size/fixed) after putting it in that mode (now it automatically switch off going to next message).
  67. Add redirect function for mail. Eudora has this.
  68. Add ability to export mail rules to a file, and then later import them. People who set up OE on a lot of computers do have a problem copying the mail rules.

    Add ability to export all data (mail + news + folders + rules + everything in the registry for OE), to a single file, and then import it later (for example to move from one machine to another, take backup etc..).
  69. Add rightclick/New folder for newsgroups too (same system as for mail). This makes it possible to manually delete messages older than a specified time for a large number of newsgroups in this folder. Not all newsgroups are important to save messages long time, but some are.
  70. Add Edit/paste as unformatted text (as if copy from notepad) when sending html mail/news.
  71. Add spam filter. Not everybody are advanced users who know how to set up message rules for such cases. A spam filter could work like this: Create a fast hash encoded file based on email addresses in all folders except user itself. by reading a) From: field, b) Last part of Message-ID: field after @ and c) domain name in last Received: line. If a new email has an unknown user not found in this hash file,  then  automatically mark it read, put it in trash and send a mail back to this user with From field and return path set equal to sender with a tracking number in Subject. This mail has in GMT the start of day and year unknown mail was sent and ask the user to reply to the mail and set the correct To: field as shown in an attached black/white and small as possible gif picture with date and correct email address only a human beeing can understand. It does not matter if this email address is almost impossible to understand 100% correctly, because if a real user has sent the mail he/she could check the correct email address in his/her Sent folder.

    If outlook receives an error mail saying user does not exist, then both this reply and the fake email is automatically deleted even from trash.

    If outlook receives a verify request with a tracking number in subject and one single gif picture with correct height and black/white color- all text is removed and all Sent addresses to user not in the hash encoded file at the specified day is inserted below the picture where user simply click the correct email address as shown in the picture above to send a reply with his/real real from name and tracking number in Subject. If no addresses found for that day, the verify request is deleted before even showing up.

    To get no more than a text-sized black/white spam picture into the mailbox this way, the spammer must fake a verify message by putting the spam inside a fake email picture, and hope the user receiving the mail  has sent a mail to an user not in the hash encoded file at the specified day to make this fake verify message even show up. This makes it a true nightmare for spammers to get into the mailbox without (in best case) ending up in trash.
     
  72. Bug: New mail icon does not dissapear after new mail is read.
  73. F11 should maximize the screen as in Internet Explorer.
  74. Add warning dialog-box (with not show this message again) when trying to to move folder to another folder. It's pretty easy to do this by error when switching between groups. Another good solution could be edit/undo.
  75. Add possibility to revert black and white only in large window areas (white areas turns into black, and black text same place turns into white).
  76. New Post window and View/All Headers turned off should show Followup-To instead of Cc: because followup is used all the time and *needed*, but Cc: is almost never used and should almost never be used (makes people usually angry to get a copy of news message in mail, and I base this fact on sending more than 7000 postings to usenet myself for several years and I've never used Cc: one single time).
  77. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1036.html, section 2.2.3: If the keyword poster is present, follow-up messages are not permitted. The message should be mailed to the submitter of the message via mail. Forte Agent has solved this by putting up a dialog box to ask if reply only in mail, followup or both.
  78. Add option for getting messages which arrive out of order if the server has such problem. Forte Agent has this possibility.

  79. Add View/Attachment Inline O Sounds O Pictures O Mails O News O Text O HTML. In OE but not Outlook 2000 pictures are already shown as default inline, and default on here is a good idea because pictures usually are something people want to see immediately. Default for rest should be off.

  80. Add option "Enable threading by subject." because new messages may hide in older threads. This should by default be off and not always on and impossbile to turn off as in OE. Forte Agent has the choice.

  81. Add new button on toolbar: "New headers" instead of "Headers" (which may be possible to customize if someone still want it). New Headers should also download all watched items and be the default settings as it is in Forte Agent, because old headers are something user almost never want.

  82. OE must always display in preview the article's Followup-To list, if this is different from the Newsgroups list. It's very important to know what newsgroup replies are posted to.

  83. OE must warn the user about posting articles consisting entirely of quoted text and should prevent doing it. OE must not allow postings with no subject.

  84. In case newsserver allow posting more than 30 hours in the future (which they should not), then do not display such messages. This may be an option in OE.

  85. Add rightclick/"Retrieve limited number of headers" where user may write how many headers to be downloaded (Microplanet Gravity has this). This in combination with "New headers" button (report 81) maked a much better solution than today.

  86. In preview add column for "Subject/From" to show Subject or From field where subject is shown only once (first posting in thread collapsed or not), and then not show subject in the thread list until it changes to another subject. There is not enough space to show both Subject and From in case of window setup in report 20. Forte Agent solves this by setting only Subject at first message in the thread, and all followups From instead. This is logical because no need to repeat the same Subject 100 times, because the first message in the thread tell what the subject is about anyway. The function could be even better than Forte Agent version, because sometimes in the same thread subject changes but Forte Agent still show from and not the new subject. In this case subject should be shown instead of from field. Subject/From should be the default setting if user choose the window setup in report 20. Gravity has also this window setup option but shows Subject and From same time, and that's very bad layout which need 1280x1024 screen (see the thread list at http://www.radikal.net/microsoft/gravity.gif )

    Add a column for score field in the message thread like Gravity (http://www.microplanet.com/) has (shift-ctrl-g in that program to get the score list). If using this instead of From, Subject etc. then messages is sorted based on keywords given by Phrase (wildcard allowed), Score (user choose a number for the score), where to search (Subject, From, Body or all), and expire number of days of the score or no expire. First newsgroup (wildcard allowed) should be added to a score-list, and then any number of words added to the newsgroup. There should also be possible to set different colors for different scores. Do not make more than one single window for all the scores i.e do not force to open one window for each newsgroup to get the score list. This makes it hard to view all scores, edit, do changes etc.

  87. Ability to choose what name to display for each newsgroup (because they may be very long names)

  88. OE should use index files for From:, Subject: , Date: and Message-ID: based on for example the 5 first characters + flags (read/unread/deleted etc) fields for all .dbx files to speed up read/delete/search/catchup (see report 54), and by this method only read the relevant parts of .dbx file which contain the indexed information. When scrolling up and down read only a part of the file +- some few headers. Forte Agent use index files, and scrollling up and down shows red light on the HD all the time, but it's *very* fast.

    In case more than a few messages will be scanned for text (using wildcards etc.) or compact folder is done, then load the entire file into RAM and do not write before processing has been done for all messages. Today when OE for example compact folder it reads some few bytes and then writes, making heavy load on the HD and waste a lot of time. Forte Agent is at least 10 times faster on this because it does not read that little each time a large part of a file should be processed. Computers today indeed have more than 8 MB RAM.

    In fact the entire datastructure in OE 6.0 should be rewritten from scratch to something much faster and more reliable (binary format is generally not reliable. See http://chattanooga.net/~scochran/DBXtract.htm). In case of index files they should not be in same file of the .dbx, because error in index file would then corrupt all of the .dbx file. When doing compact a folder, new index file for it should be made (if possible). If error is detected in some index file (does not point to expected bytes), it should be generated from scratch.

    The mailbox format in Mozilla (http://mozilla.org/) shows how things can be done better. Here all accounts have their own folder with Sent, Draft, deleted etc. This makes things much more structured and easy to find messages. To avoid opening the entire folder only to check for new mail (or news), the unread items may always automatically be visible below the folder name if user has set "Always show items with unread messages".

  89. Bug? When clicking apply now in the Message Rules dialog box, and "local folders" is choosen, then message rules are applied to Draft, Outbox, Sent folder and Deleted folder even if they only in normal use handle received messages. Only filter for "outgoing" (see report 3) should be used for Sent Items no matter if this or local folder is choosen. Outbox, Draft and Deleted folder should not be included when "local folders" is choosen, but only included if directly choosen, and a warning windows should tell that by choosing this folders the filter would include messages which normally is not filtered. It is not logical and messy when someone want to filter all from him/herself in all folders like the filters would do in normal operation, and suddently a lot deleted items, drafts and sent are filtered too which is not expected behaviour. Such behaviour is almost never needed, but running all filters on all messages like they would do in normal operations is a very important function because new filters may be applied often, and we do not want them to filter more than in normal operations when choosing "local folders" + specify every single folder takes too long time.

  90. Bug: Signatures should be inserted after and not before the original text in quoted replies, else everything written is gone when other people reply to this again (report 63).

  91. Filter "Where the message was sent more than days ago" should be valid for mail and not only news, because then old messages in any folder could be deleted by a filter rule.

  92. Edit/redo is missing even if ctrl-y works as redo in composer.

  93. Insert/signature show signatures which is not specified for the account beeing sent from (advanced setting). Only relevant signatures should be possible to insert.

  94. Add possibility to use wildcards (*/?) in filter rules.

  95. Bug: When reply with 7 bit quoted printable or base64 to headers with 8 bit characters, "Re:" is encoded, and that's incompatible operation, because "Re:" is part of the header information and should *never* be changed to anything else. See report 44 for related problem.

  96. For each mail/news account add possibility to set different outgoing mail and news servers for each dialup connection used + ethernet. Today everybody are forced to use the same connection every single time to make make the server accept the message. Not everybody use news.microsoft.com as server >:)

  97. When composing a message with format plain text, copy and paste formatted text does not convert to plain text. This is nonsense, because this has to be converted to plain text when sending the message anyway. It should be converted to plain text at same time as pasting into the new mail.

  98. Add different font settings for plain text and html both for composing and reading. This is two different formats, and therefore should have possibility to set to different default fonts.

  99. Bug: Find Message In This Folder (Shift-F3) does not find any messages in sub-threads (Just try search for Re:). Find messages should of course search in all sub-threads too.

  100. There's no way to expand or collapse all threads today. Add View/Expand All Threads and View/Collapse All Threads

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