Copyright: Copyright © 2002 ESD Software


Welcome

Thank you for choosing FrontMailer!

FrontMailer is a fast, compact but feature-packed email client, designed around the most basic need for internet users: anti-spam functionality. Using a set of sophisticated tools you can detect, trace, bounce and report with just one click, as well as perform other tasks which are common to email clients.

FrontMailer is practically immune to virusses: it simply does not support scripting, thus it will never be able to execute any damaging scripts embedded in the email, nor will it automatically open attachments. The only virus risks which are still presents are the ones we can not control: manually opening virus infected attachments for example. We recommend verifying any attachment you receive using a virus scanner, as well as asking the sender if he/she intended to send you that message.

Note: due to small differences in versions, and the limited support for skinning, the screenshots shown in this help file may be slightly different from your own configuration.


Ordering FrontMailer Pro

For more information about ordering the Pro version of FrontMailer, please visit the FrontMailer page.


Options dialog

(note: items marked with an * are either not available or have no effect in the Freeware version, but will be stored and used when you purchase the Pro version)

•	 Check for new messages every ... seconds

Use this option to let MailTicker automatically check for new email messages.

•	 Play sound when new message arrives

Whenever new messages arrive FrontMailer will play the sound specified. To select a WAV file, click the open button. To preview the sound, click the ' · ' button...

•	 Display smilies in reader

If selected, special 'smilie 'codes (such as :) and ;)) will be replaced by their graphical representation.

•	 Re-use external reader windows

When opening a message either trough the FrontMailer Bar of by double-clicking a message a new window will appear in which you can view the message. Selecting this option will use the same window each time, otherwise a new window will be opened for every message you select.

•	 Always display text*

This option ensures the 'text' part of a message is always displayed, even if the message contains HTML parts.

•	 Font

Change the font used for plain text messages and composing.

•	 Edit signature*

Edit your signature, which will be appended to messages you send...

•	 Do not add signature when replying or forwarding*

When using the 'Reply', 'Reply All' or 'Forward' option, do not add your signature.

•	 Auto-hide bar

This option makes the bar automatically hide itself when it's docked to an edge of the screen. Moving the cursor towards the bar will slide it back into view.

•	 Scroll messages after x seconds

When the bar is not used for the specified number of seconds and there are more message than will fit on the bar it will automatically scroll to display the other messages.

•	 Spam detection*

The options are explained on the screen, to further clarify the purpose of these options:

The first setting is useful when you don't receive a lot of spam or you are part of a mailing list. The second settings is useful for heavy spam or when most email you get is from known contacts. This setting is very personal, try both for a while to see which one fits your profile.

•	Send spam reports without waiting for permission*

When selecting the 'Report spam' option, spam reports will be sent immediately after an email address has been found. If not selected, you must confirm the email address and click the 'Send' button manually.


Managing accounts

After installing and starting FrontMailer, you have to set up an account first. Open FrontMailer's main menu by clicking the 'FrontMailer' button and select 'Options', the options screen will appear. Select the 'Accounts' tab:

Here you can add, edit or remove accounts. To add an account, click the 'Add' button. The account window will appear, you can enter your email server's configuration here. If you're not sure what to enter, contact your Internet Service Provider for more information.

The 'Text Color' option allows you to override the default skin's color. When you have multiple email accounts, you can easily determine on which account the email has arrived:


Composing messages

Note: composing messages is not available in the Freeware version of FrontMailer.

To send an email, either open a message and select the 'Reply', 'Reply all' or 'Forward' button, or open the FrontMailer menu and select 'Compose message'. If you are replying or forwarding, the original message (and optionally any attachments when forwarding) will be added to the message. To select recipients you can manually enter them in the appropriate field or select the address book icon next to it.

By selecting the 'Encrypt' button before sending you can encrypt the message, which makes sending emails more secure. If encrypting is selected, you will be presented with the following dialog when pressing the Send button:

•	Encrypt using PGP

This option is only available if you have installed PGP 6.5.x or higer. You will be presented with the standard PGP key selection dialog in which you can select the recipients which are able to decrypt the message.

Encrypting using PGP is the most secure option of the two, only recipients which you add to the list and who have the accompanying private key are able to decrypt the message. For more information visit http://www.pgpi.org/.

•	Encrypt using native password protection

This option uses FrontMailer's built-in encrypt/decrypt functions. They are based on a number of well-known and heavily-test encryption schemes which ensures the relative safeness of this method. You can specify a password and optionally the encryption scheme used (you can leave this settings to default if you are unfamiliar with the encryption schemes).

Encrypting using a password is less secure than the PGP option, because anyone who knows the password can decrypt the message. Although it's less secure, the only other option to decrypt the message if you don't have the password is to use brute-force (a computer will generate a large series of passwords and try them all until it finds the correct password), which will take quite some time (a huge amount of time actually) with the used encryption schemes. This option is therefore safe enough for most purposes, and definitely safer than sending the message unencrypted.

Please note that using native password encryption only works if the recipient is also using FrontMailer. The PGP message can be easily decrypted using PGPTools, which is provided with the PGP Windows installation.


Address book

Note: the address book is not available in the Freeware version of FrontMailer.

FrontMailer uses the Windows Address Book which is installed by default on most systems (Windows 98 and higher) and is included with Internet Explorer 4 and higher for Windows 95. Depending on your settings, this means that it will be shared with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express. No importing required!

To open the address book, select 'Address book' from the menu. You can add, edit and remove your contacts in the window which appears.


FrontMailer bar

1. MailTicker menu:

Click this button to access the MailTicker Bar menu, it contains the most commonly used functions for easy access.

2. Show / hide message list:

Toggle this button to show or hide the message list (the main window). FrontMailer will hide to the system tray (the row of icons next to the system clock in the taskbar), you can bring it back using either this button or double-clicking / right-clicking the icon.

3. First message:

When there are more messages than can be displayed, use this button to go to the first message. On the oposite site of the bar is the same button which goes to the last message.

4. Previous message:

When there are more messages than can be displayed, use this button to go to the previous message. On the oposite site of the bar is the same button which goes to the next message.

5. Message:

Messages will be displayed like this button. Right-click on it to get an option menu, left-click to retrieve the message from the server and read it.


Anti-spam tools

Note: the anti-spam tools are not available in the Freeware version of FrontMailer.

What differs FrontMailer from the other email clients are it's anti-spam tools. Although they may seem simple from the outside, they are the results of more than a year researching and deciding the best tactics.

The message list will show an icon next to a message if it is detected as possible spam (the tank icon). This will allow you to quickly select the spam messages. This filter will not do anything automatically, as it may result in loss of important messages. You have to decide whether or not to treat the message as being spam. You can easily select all spam messages using the Ctrl-X shortcut, of using the right-click popup menu and choosing 'Select spam'.

It works by looking at the From, To and CC fields. It will search the address book for those email addresses, and if none were found it will mark that message as spam. To prevent a message from appearing as spam the next time email is checked, add the sender or one of the recipients to the address book or use the 'Add to allow list' option. We have a good reason for not building an advanced filter or 'blacklist' based on the sender's email address; spammers rarely use the same address twice, thus your blacklist would grow to enormeous proportions, but will not detect any spammer. For this reason we build in the address book check instead, which looks at the recipients. In 99% of the cases this proved to be more accurate than blacklisting senders.

The message list and message reader both contain an anti-spam button: . Clicking this button will bring up the anti-spam dialog:

•	 Bounce

This will send an email back to the sender with a fake message that your address does not exist. The sender would receive a message looking like this:

The original message was received at Mar 28 12:38 GMT 0100

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

<spam@esdsoftware.net>

(expanded from: <spam@esdsoftware.net>)

----- Transcript of session follows -----

mail.local: unknown name: spam

550 <spam@esdsoftware.net>... User unknown

•	 Report Spam

This option will search parts of the email which cannot be faked: headers added by mail servers. Even though some of these headers can be removed/faked by forwarding-servers, others can not, FrontMailer will find those. It will use that information to track the server used to send the spam message and send an email to abuse@domain and postmaster@domain to notify them that spam is being sent trough their servers. Most providers will not like it when a user is sending spam trough their server, thus they will close down their account.

When selecting this options, a dialog will be shown:

This will show the current host being traced, and any email addresses found. If none were found, FrontMailer will dig trough any related hosts until it either runs out of hosts or finds an email address.

•	 Delete from server

This will do exactly the same as the Delete button, it's provided in this dialog to allow you to delete a message afterwards without having to click the Delete button manually.