Web Class - Browser Basics

An Innovation Grant funded by the Georgia Department of Education

Bill Jordan, Instructor
Thomasville City Schools
Thomasville, Georgia

E-Mail: More Tools of the Trade

Objective: In this assignment you will explore the basic buttons in Netscape Mail.

Vocabulary: Most of the vocabulary in this lesson has to do with buttons in Netscape Navigator's Mail window. You have already been using some of these, so this will be a good review.

Background Information: As you saw in a previous lesson, Netscape's tool bars provide you with quick ways to do things. There is a tool bar in Netscape Mail also. The purpose of each button is easy to understand after gaining a little experience; however, there are several buttons that may require additional explanation.

Get Mail checks the web server for new e-mail.

Delete eliminates the current message (the one that is highlighted and being read) from its folder and places it in the trash folder.

To: Mail lets you compose a new e-mail message.

Re: Mail allows you to reply to the sender of the current message.

Re: All lets you reply to the sender and any other recipients of the current message. Be careful with this one! At some point you may get on a large mailing list and receive an e-mail message addressed to all of the members of the list. Before you decide to reply to the message, decide on whether you want your reply to go only to the sender or to all the members of the list. If you only want to respond to the sender, choose the Re: Mail button.

Believe it or not!

Suppose you want to know the latest information about recreational vehicles and you join a mailing list that has 1000 other people on it. Imagine for a minute that the owner of the mailing list sends a message to all 1000 members of the list with a survey to find out what kind of recreational vehicle the members want to buy. When you reply, you should use the Re: Mail button so your survey goes just to the sender on the list. Often, new users will make the mistake of sending the reply to all of the members of the list! What if 50 people made this mistake. Then all 1000 members of the list would have 50 unwanted pieces of e-mail clogging up their Inbox folder. Believe it or not, this happens a lot and it can get really annoying. I did it when I was an e-mail newbie, and you probably will too at one time or another. If you're lucky, people on the list will just grumble to themselves and delete the unwanted e-mail. If you do it repeatedly, you are likely to get some flame-mail from other members of the list. Don't be offended, just learn from your mistakes.

Forward lets send the current message as an attachment to another person. You also need to be careful with this feature. The main reason to be careful with forwarding messages is privacy. If someone sends you an e-mail message, you should not forward it toanother person with out the permission of the person who sent the message originally. All sorts of problems can result from forwarding e-mail to people the message was not originally intended for.

Previous displays the previous unread message. Basically you will move back up the list of messages unread messages in the current folder that is selected.

Next displays the next unread message in the currently selected folder.

Print prints the currently selected message.

Stop interrupts the transfer of an e-mail message.

Many of these functions performed by these buttons can also be achieved through choices in the pull down menus from the Menu Bar. For example, if you open the pull down menu under File on the Menu Bar, you will notice Print is one of the options. You can use print from either the Tool Bar or the Menu Bar--both work exactly the same way. See how many of the other Tool Bar functions have corresponding options on the Menu Bar.

Online Assignment: Experiment with each of the buttons on the Tool Bar so that you are comfortable with the way each one works. Let me know via e-mail if any of them are confusing to you.

Competencies: After completing this assignment, you should be familiar with all of the buttons on the Tool Bar in Netscape Mail.

Rose.Net, the network of the Greater Thomasville area, hosts this project.

Created: 10/10/97 00:00:00