Email System
From IT Jalakam - Unofficial IT syllabus for grade 10 students
Email is a method of sending and receiving digital content or information to any part of the world. It generally consists of two parts, header and body. The header consists of the sender's information and body consist the actual message.
Of the various email clients available, here are two of the popular ones.
Contents |
Outlook Express
Outlook Express is an email/news client from Microsoft.
Introduction
Outlook Express is an e-mail/news client that was included with Internet Explorer versions Internet Explorer 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it was also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and was available for Windows 95 and Mac OS 9. In Windows Vista, Outlook Express is replaced with Windows Mail. Windows Live Mail has since been released as the successor to Outlook Express and Windows Mail. Microsoft Entourage, sold as part of Microsoft Office for Macintosh, has replaced the Macintosh version.
Outlook Express is a different application from Microsoft Office Outlook. The similar names lead many people to incorrectly conclude that Outlook Express is a stripped-down version of Microsoft Office Outlook.
History
Microsoft Internet Mail and News was a freeware e-mail and news client and ancestor of Outlook Express. Version 1.0 was released in 1996 following the Internet Explorer 3 release.[1] This add-on precedes the Internet Mail profile for Microsoft Exchange 4.0 bundled in Windows 95. Version 2.0 was released at the end of 1996. In 1997 the program was changed and renamed as Outlook Express and bundled with Internet Explorer 4. The executable file for Outlook Express, msimn.exe, is a holdover from the Internet Mail and News era. Internet Mail and News handled only plain text and rich text (RTF) e-mail, lacking HTML e-mail.
At one point, in a later beta version of Outlook Express 5, Outlook Express contained a sophisticated and adaptive spam filtering system; however this feature was removed shortly before launch. It was speculated on various websites and newsgroups at that time, that the feature was not stable enough for the mass market. Nearly two years later, a similar system, using a similar method of adaptive filtering, appeared as a feature of Microsoft Office Outlook.
Outlook Express 6 SP3 is the latest version which is part of Windows XP SP3. Extended support for Windows XP SP3, which covers security hotfixes, will end in 2014.
In October 2005, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista would exclusively include a new application named Windows Mail, based on large parts of Outlook Express source code. Microsoft was also concurrently developing Windows Live Mail Desktop (later renamed to Windows Live Mail), a mail client for its Hotmail service. Windows Live Mail was released in November 2007. In the future, support for Outlook Express and Windows Mail will be discontinued in favor of Windows Live Mail.
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser.
Introduction
Originally launched as Minotaur shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the Mozilla Firefox, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived.
Thunderbird aims to be a simple e-mail, newsgroup and news feed client. The vanilla version is not a personal information manager, although the Mozilla Lightning extension added PIM functionality. Additional features, if needed, are often available via other extensions.
History
Originally launched as Minotaur shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the latter, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.
Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives. The original Mozilla Suite continues to be developed as SeaMonkey.
Message management
Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail, newsgroup and RSS accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. On Linux-based systems, system mail (movemail) accounts are supported.
Junk filtering
Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin.
Extensions
Extensions allow the addition of features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation). One example is Lightning, the calendar extension mentioned above.
Extensions and themes (below) available on the Mozilla Update site may be upgraded through the client.
Themes
Thunderbird supports a variety of themes for changing its overall look and feel. These packages of CSS and image files can be downloaded from Mozilla Add-ons.
Standards support
Thunderbird supports POP and IMAP. It also supports LDAP address completion. The built-in RSS/Atom reader can also be used as a simple news aggregator. Thunderbird supports the S/MIME standard and extensions like Enigmail add support for the OpenPGP standard. It does not yet support EAI
Cross-platform support and Security
Thunderbird runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems:
- Windows
- Linux
- Mac OS X
- OS/2
- eComStation
- OpenSolaris
The source code is freely available and can be compiled and run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems.
Thunderbird provides enterprise and government-grade security features such as SSL/TLS connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. It also offers native support for S/MIME secure email (digital signing and message encryption using certificates). Any of these security features can take advantage of smartcards with the installation of additional extensions.
Other security features can be added through extensions. For instance, Enigmail offers PGP signing, encryption, and decryption.
Optional security protections also include disabling loading of remote images within messages, enabling only specific media types (sanitizer), and disabling JavaScript.
Practicals
1. Open a free email account with a provider of your choice. Includes walking the students through important concepts such as selecting an appropriate, not truthful, answer to a security question, and a little informaiton about Captcha.
2. How to compose and email, the use of cc and Bcc - protecting others privacy
3. How to attach files within the prescribed limit
4. How to save/recall a draft
5. The bulk mail folder, how to identify spam/genuine email, spam filtering
6. Setting up of email filters - sorting mail. Using lables as an alternative where provided.
7. How to open received mail and download attachments
8. Create an email address which has POP/SMTP support. Configure the account using different email clients. Check all functionalities and menus of the clients.
Need to review this page to expand the points--------
E-mail definition
History of E-mail
Various E-mail service providers. Free and paid services, comparison.
Plain text E-mail, HTML E-mail, attachments, CC, BCC.
Yahoo, Live Mail, Gmail - interface and functionality comparison.
Things to remember while creating/using E-mail.
E-Mail related - Phishing scams (to be included here or in online safety?), Flaming, Spam, E-mail spoofing, E-mail bombing.
E-mail clients. List and comparison. Free and paid ones.
