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	<title>Snipe.Net &#187; email</title>
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		<title>Funky characters in HTML mail using PHPMailer</title>
		<link>http://www.snipe.net/2009/10/funky-characters-in-html-mail-using-phpmailer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.snipe.net/2009/10/funky-characters-in-html-mail-using-phpmailer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:44:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>snipe</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.snipe.net/?p=2223</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While working on a client project, I ended up having to send HTML email notifications to users. During testing, I discovered some stray characters at the beginning of the email. If you have to send HTML email, there are certainly lots of good libraries available for download to make your life easier. I opted to [...]]]></description>
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<p>While working on a client project, I ended up having to send HTML email notifications to users. During testing, I discovered some stray characters at the beginning of the email.</p>
<p><span id="more-2223"></span>If you have to send HTML email, there are certainly lots of good libraries available for download to make your life easier. I opted to use <strong><a href="http://phpmailer.worxware.com/" target="_blank">PHPMailer by Worx International</a></strong>, since it&#8217;s one I have used in the past, and getting up and running with it takes about 3 minutes, tops.</p>
<p>What makes it particularly nice is that you don&#8217;t have to do anything special to format your HTML to be ready for mailing. If your workflow is anything like mine, you design an HTML email and code it into HTML, and then post it somewhere for the client to review. Since this HTML file already exists on your server, using PHPMailer is a breeze, since all you have to do to start sending HTML email is point the program to the HTML file you already created.</p>
<p>After you upload the PHPMailer library, all it takes is a few lines of code, and you&#8217;re done:</p>
<pre class="brush: php">require_once $_SERVER[&#039;DOCUMENT_ROOT&#039;].&#039;/phpMailer/class.phpmailer.php&#039;;

$mail             = new PHPMailer(); // defaults to using php &quot;mail()&quot;
$body             = $mail-&gt;getFile(&#039;../invites/email.html&#039;);
$mail-&gt;From       = $from_email;
$mail-&gt;FromName   = $from_name;

$mail-&gt;Subject    = &quot;Test email subject&quot;;
$mail-&gt;AltBody    = &quot;To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!&quot;;
$mail-&gt;MsgHTML($body);

$mail-&gt;AddAddress($to_email, $to_name);		

if(!$mail-&gt;Send()) {
	echo &quot;&lt;li&gt;Mailer Error: &quot; . $mail-&gt;ErrorInfo;
} else {
	echo &quot;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Message sent!&quot;;
}</pre>
<p>One thing I noticed while sending out the test emails is that there were weird characters, specifically <strong><em>ï»¿</em></strong>)  showing up at the very beginning of the HTML email, despite there not being any stray characters or empty spaces at the top of the HTML email source file.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2225" title="email" src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/email.gif" alt="email" width="540" height="595" /></p>
<p>I  verified that the HTML email file was in UTF-8 with Unix line endings &#8211; still those funky characters remained. They were appearing in the emails regardless of email client &#8211; Entourage, Thunderbird, Postbox, everything.</p>
<p>I removed the encoding and doctype declarations from the HTML email file. No joy. Googling led me to lots if interesting articles on encoding and character sets for PHPMailer, but nothing particularly useful.</p>
<p>Finally I happened upon an FAQ article on the W3C website related to &#8220;<a href="http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-utf8-bom" target="_blank">Display problems caused by the UTF-8 BOM</a>&#8220;. Of course! The byte order mark. I haven&#8217;t had to send out HTML emails in a long time and had just switched from using Coda to BBedit for code editing, and completely forgot about that.</p>
<p>Some applications insert a particular combination of bytes at the beginning of a file to indicate that the text contained in the file is Unicode. This combination of bytes is known as a signature or Byte Order Mark (BOM). Some applications &#8211; such as a text editor or a browser &#8211; will display the BOM as an extra line in the file, others will display unexpected characters, such as ï»¿.</p>
<p>The BOM is always at the beginning of the file, and so you would normally expect to see the display issues at the top of a page. However, you may also find blank lines appearing within the page if you include text from a separate file that begins with a UTF-8 signature.</p>
<p>After further investigation in BBedit, I realized that BBedit offers an encoding type of &#8220;Unicode (UTF-8, no BOM)&#8221;, I switched to this encoding for the HTML source email file, re-saved, sent another test, and all was right with the world.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/editor-560x392.png" alt="editor" title="editor" width="560" height="392" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-2227" /></p>
<p>(Pardon all the blurring &#8211; this project was for a high-profile Facebook application, and I am paranoid about exposing database or file structures to the outside world.)</p>
<h3>Some additional notes from W3C</h3>
<p>If you have an editor which shows the characters that make up the UTF-8 signature you may be able to delete them by hand. <strong>Chances are, however, that the BOM is there in the first place because you didn&#8217;t see it.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Check whether your editor allows you to specify whether a UTF-8 signature is added or kept during a save. </strong>Such an editor provides a way of removing the signature by simply reading the file in then saving it out again. For example, if Dreamweaver detects a BOM the Save As dialogue box will have a check mark alongside the text &#8220;Include Unicode Signature (BOM)&#8221;. Just uncheck the box and save.</p>
<p>You will find that some text editors such as Windows Notepad will automatically add a UTF-8 signature to any file you save as UTF-8.</p>
<p><strong>A UTF-8 signature at the beginning of a CSS file can sometimes cause the initial rules in the file to fail on certain user agents.</strong></p>
<p>In some browsers, the presence of a UTF-8 signature will cause the browser to interpret the text as UTF-8 regardless of any character encoding declarations to the contrary.</p>
<p>So there you have it. Not exactly rocket surgery, but it was frustrating for the short time I was trying to troubleshoot, so I&#8217;m putting it into the internet ether to hopefully save someone else a few minutes.</p>
<h3>Related Links</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href=http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-utf8-bom">W3C UTF-8 Byte Order Mark FAQ</a>
	</li>
<li><a href="http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html">Unicode.Org UTF-8 Byte Order Mark FAQ</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>


<p>Possibly related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2002/06/sending-htmlplain-text-mail-simultaneously-using-php/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Sending HTML/Plain Text Mail Simultaneously using PHP'>Sending HTML/Plain Text Mail Simultaneously using PHP</a> <small>Although I expect this article to cause a few ruffled...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2009/01/upside-down-text/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Confuse and Impress Friends with Upside-Down Text'>Confuse and Impress Friends with Upside-Down Text</a> <small>˙ǝʇɐpdn ʞooqǝɔɐɟ ɹo ʇǝǝʍʇ ɹǝʇʇıʍʇ &#8216;ʇsod ƃoןq ʇxǝu ɹnoʎ uı...</small></li>
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</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>First Look: Postbox Beta</title>
		<link>http://www.snipe.net/2009/02/first-look-postbox-beta/</link>
		<comments>http://www.snipe.net/2009/02/first-look-postbox-beta/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:51:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>snipe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.snipe.net/?p=1247</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Postbox is a new cross-platform for both Mac and Windows that promises to finally deliver what so many email clients before it have promised. Advanced functionality like Outlook, without, well, Outlook. More native features and intuitive interface than Thunderbird. Conversation threading and tagging like Gmail, without the inelegant webmail interface. Can it be so? Well, [...]]]></description>
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<p>Postbox is a new cross-platform for both Mac and Windows that promises to finally deliver what so many email clients before it have promised. Advanced functionality like Outlook, without, well, Outlook. More native features and intuitive interface than Thunderbird. Conversation threading and tagging like Gmail, without the inelegant webmail interface. Can it be so? Well, mostly, yeah.<span id="more-1247"></span></p>
<p><strong>I was lucky enough to try out the <a href="http://postbox-inc.com/" target="_blank">private beta of Postbox</a>, beginning last week. </strong>I should mention that although I am a long-time Thunderbird user, Thunderbird is not perfect. It has been the best fit for me for quite some time, and leagues better than bulky old Outlook, but there has always been room for improvement. Some of these improvements can be faked using addons, but I&#8217;ve found addon support for Thunderbird is not nearly as fanatical as it is for addons for Firefox, so I&#8217;m always hesitant to come to rely on them too much.</p>
<h2>My Setup</h2>
<p><strong>My situation (and therefore my needs) may not be the same as yours, so I think it&#8217;s helpful if you have some idea how I use my email, and where Thunderbird leaves me wanting.</strong> I have around 7 unique IMAP email accounts, totaling well over 400k messages combined. I have emails from the past 9 years or so in these accounts (and if I could find ones from further back, I&#8217;d pull them in, too), as I need to maintain access to old emails at all times. I use Thunderbird for all of my non-work email, and I use Mail.App for work stuff. (I like to keep them separate, so I can check personal email on weekends but avoid getting sucked into work in my off-hours.)</p>
<p><strong>Unlike some people, having very old emails at my fingertips is actually a critical issue for me. </strong>It is not at all unusual for me to have to search through email to find out if someone with a specific email address has ever sent me an email before, and if they have, it&#8217;s not unusual for me to require immediate access to their entire email history. Additionally, I get all of my voicemails emailed to me as mp3, which I hang on to indefinitely for the same reasons I don&#8217;t get rid of emails. Since the caller&#8217;s phone number comes up in the &#8220;from&#8221; field, I need to be able to plug in a phone number and quickly determine whether an individual has ever called before, and have immediate access to their voicemail message.</p>
<p>Up until now, that meant either keeping them in my inbox (gah!) or creating special filing folders within my IMAP account and hoping I remember to right+click and move them when I&#8217;m (mostly) done with them. What I&#8217;ve ended up doing is more or less a combination of the two, filing things when I remember to, but generally letting them pile up in my inbox, where I put them off to come back to them and eventually completely forget about them. Certainly not ideal. (And, uhm, if I was supposed to reply to you and you haven&#8217;t heard back &#8211; now you know why.)</p>
<p><strong>I also have one IMAP account that is shared between multiple people.</strong> This account currently has over 20k messages in the inbox, and as various people deal with messages, the messages get moved to a &#8220;completed&#8221; folder so that multiple people don&#8217;t work on an email that has already been dealt with. It&#8217;s sort of like a helpdesk system, only it&#8217;s not a helpdesk system, so please don&#8217;t give me recommendations on a better way of doing this. I&#8217;ve looked into them all, and none fit just right &#8211; this system, although it may seem awkward, works very well for my purposes. The unfortunate part is that every time I deal with an email to completion, I have to right+click, go to Move Message, and then pick the IMAP folder from the list of accounts and folders that are set up in Thunderbird. While this doesn&#8217;t sound like that big of a deal, it starts to wear on my wrists after handling a hundred or more emails in a day.</p>
<p>Postbox makes my life much easier in this regard. Rather than having a separate, normal IMAP folder called &#8220;completed&#8221;, I can send completed emails to a special folder called Archive, using just one click &#8211; or even a hotkey. Given the fact that marking an email as completed right now costs me 2-3 clicks, this will save me hundreds of mouse-clicks a day, and a lot of wear and tear on my wrists. (Can Postbox save me from the <a href="http://tinysong.com/eeY" target="_blank">wrist-hurt-disease</a>?)</p>
<p><strong>I am working towards Inbox Zero.</strong> I don&#8217;t know how long this will last, or whether it will work, but the Postbox features lend themselves nicely to exactly this sort of thing, so I think it&#8217;s worth trying. If you&#8217;re not familiar with the concept of Inbox Zero and want to learn more, check out <a href="http://www.43folders.com/izero" target="_blank">these fantastic resources on 43folders</a>. If you&#8217;re not familiar with the concept of Inbox Zero and could give a <a href="http://www.lundegaard.com/catalog/rats-ass-coin-p24.html" target="_blank">rat&#8217;s ass</a>, that&#8217;s perfectly fine too. Postbox makes achieving Inbox Zero easier, however the features that make it easier will not prevent you from using it normally if you have no desire to go that route. (I do encourage at least looking into it, however &#8211; the idea has a lot of merit.)</p>
<p>Getting my inboxes down to zero won&#8217;t happen overnight. I need to go through and tag+archive or delete 400k messages, after all &#8211; but I believe it will result in an ability to find things faster and prevent losing track of emails that needed my attention.</p>
<h2>Importing from Thunderbird</h2>
<p>Importing went off without a hitch, with all accounts, passwords, signatures, and RSS feeds pulled in perfectly. I have seen reports that others have had some issues, but it worked like a charm for me.</p>
<h2>Caveat: Not Intended for Exchange Servers</h2>
<p>Postbox is not meant to be a replacement for Outlook if you&#8217;re using an Exchange server. Postbox supports IMAP, POP, and SMTP protocols, and is set up to grok Gmail settings right out of the box, but it is not an Exchange client replacement. If you&#8217;re using Exchange in your office (and intend to continue to do so), I&#8217;m afraid you&#8217;re still stuck with Outlook (or Entourage if you&#8217;re on a Mac).</p>
<p>Postbox does not currently integrate with calendars, but it is a feature that is being discussed by beta testers and employees. Personally, I&#8217;d settle for CalDAV support to integrate it with Google Calendar, but they&#8217;ve done such a bangup job on the mail aspect, I would welcome an actual calendar module as well.</p>
<h2>Cool Features</h2>
<p>I&#8217;ve included the full feature set from the <a href="http://postbox-inc.com/quickstart.html" target="_blank">quickstart guide on the Postbox website</a> (which is fantastic and gives a great primer on features) beneath this section, but here&#8217;s my short list of things that rock my socks:</p>
<p><strong>Conversation view </strong>- messages can easily be grouped by conversation and displayed within one pane, so you can see an entire conversation from start to finish. This is a big one for me, since I get a lot of email, and have a mind like a sieve. I always request that people include the email history in replies to me, so I can remember wtf we were talking about, but many people don&#8217;t listen. With conversation view, I don&#8217;t need to rely on them to keep my train of thought.</p>
<div id="attachment_1277" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 570px"><a href="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/postbox-inaction.png"><img class="size-large wp-image-1277" title="postbox-inaction" src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/postbox-inaction-560x451.png" alt="Conversation View in Postbox" width="560" height="451" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Conversation View in Postbox</p></div>
<p><strong>Note the inspector pane to the right of the conversation</strong> &#8211; this little pane packs a punch, displaying a quick web search box, thumbnails of all of the images used in the entire conversation, a list of attachments, a pin on any addresses mentioned in the conversation, and a list of all of the links used in the conversation. It&#8217;s a perfect quick-summary that puts the most important parts of your conversation in one compact place. Nine times out of ten, when I come back to an older email, I&#8217;m looking for an attachment, a link, or an address, not the text of a specific message &#8211; so this saves loads of time.</p>
<p><strong>Native topic tagging </strong>- similar to Thunderbird, you can create custom topics (or labels) for messages, and assign multiple topics to any message.</p>
<p><strong>Tabbed Messages/Inboxes </strong>- I can&#8217;t stand having 900 windows open &#8211; or, to be fair, even 3-4. Postbox allows you to open multiple messages in tabs within the application, or even open each of your account folders in separate tabs for easy access.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;Archive&#8221; button/hotkey that allows you to archive messages with one click. </strong>The messages are not altered or compacted, simply moved to an archive folder. Without tagging, this would be a disaster, as all of my carefully crafted folders would be lost. This functionality, combined with tagging, allows me to simplify my older messages without losing the ability to find all related messages.</p>
<p>What I&#8217;ve done is to go through all of my old IMAP folders, tag them as needed, and then archive them. They now live in one archive folder, which makes searching much easier, but between the robust search features and the tagging, I can instantly pull up all messages related to a particular topic.</p>
<p><strong>Media/Attachment/Contact View </strong>- This is seriously very cool&#8230; Not only can you search your attachments and images, Postbox gives you a media viewer that allows you to visually scan attachments and images &#8211; with the option to upload directly to your Picasa account from your email. (I would suspect they&#8217;ll be adding support for additional third-party photo sites in time, but I&#8217;m speculating.)</p>
<div id="attachment_1279" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 570px"><a href="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/postbox-img-search.png"><img class="size-large wp-image-1279" title="postbox-img-search" src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/postbox-img-search-560x451.png" alt="Postbox Media View" width="560" height="451" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Postbox Media View</p></div>
<p><strong>To-Dos</strong>- Using the quick To-Do button, you can mark messages in any folder as messages that require some sort of additional action, or you can create new to-do items from scratch.</p>
<p><strong>Pending flag </strong>- this is another big one for me. You can flag a message as pending, implying it needs some sort of follow-up in order to move forward. When a new reply to that conversation comes in, the flag is automatically removed.</p>
<p><strong>Twitter Integration</strong> &#8211; I&#8217;m a Twitter junkie, that&#8217;s no secret, and I&#8217;ve <a href="http://www.snipe.net/tags/twitter/" target="_blank">written extensively about Twitter here on Snipe.Net</a>, so it&#8217;s not a surprise that I really dig this well-hidden but nifty little feature. While it doesn&#8217;t work like a standalone Twitter client, what it does is make it incredibly easy for you to take text or links from your email and post them to Twitter without switching apps. Simply highlight the desired text or links in your email message, right+click, and select Post to Twitter. (<a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox/topics/twitter_integration_would_be_the_icing_on_the_cake" target="_blank">more info here</a>)</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 472px"><img title="Postbox Twitter Integration" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/satisfaction-production/s3_images/26363/Picture_3_inline.png" alt="Postbox Twitter Integration" width="462" height="147" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Postbox Twitter Integration</p></div>
<p><strong>Facebook Integration </strong>- Regardless of how I feel about Facebook (and that changes daily, depending on whether or not I&#8217;m working on any Facebook applications), there&#8217;s no denying that it has become a big part of many people&#8217;s lives. To hook Postbox into Facebook, go to <em>Tools &gt; Login to Facebook.</em> The first time you do this, it will pop up a window asking you if you wish to authorize Postbox to be able to access your Facebook account. Once you&#8217;ve agreed, click on your <em>contacts</em> tab, and you&#8217;ll see the profile photos and status of your friends on Facebook. Spiffy! (<a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox/topics/what_does_login_to_facebook_acheive" target="_blank">more info here</a>)</p>
<div id="attachment_1303" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 568px"><a href="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/contacts-tab.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1303" title="contacts-tab" src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/contacts-tab.jpg" alt="contacts-tab" width="558" height="117" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Contacts Tab</p></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">
<h2>The Full List</h2>
<h4>Automatic Indexing</h4>
<p>When Postbox™ first accesses an existing email account, it lists all the messages in your account for you to see. For those of us with huge amounts of mail, we generally rely on search to find information in those old emails. Postbox enhances search by indexing. Indexing allows Postbox to grab all that basic information about the mail in your email account to make searching fast and accurate.</p>
<p>The Postbox indexer must run before email messages and content can be searched for and used. The indexer will run automatically when it detects that your computer is idle.</p>
<h4>Manual Indexing</h4>
<p>If you would like your message content to be searchable right away, you can manually start the indexing process by selecting Index All Messages from the Tools menu. Or, you can index the current folder by selecting Index Messages in Folder from the Tools menu.</p>
<p>Please note that Postbox requires messages to be downloaded before they can be indexed. Postbox will automatically download messages when your computer is idle, or when you manually index your messages.</p>
<h3><a id="content" name="content"></a>Content Search and Handling</h3>
<p>Postbox has made it easy for you to find things like documents, pictures, attachments, URLs and contacts by providing you direct access to these pieces of content</p>
<h4>Content Tabs</h4>
<p>Now that you&#8217;ve indexed your inbox, you can quickly search for content by clicking on a content type within the Tab Strip. When you click on a content type, a new tab opens, and the most relevant content will display. It&#8217;s time to start searching!</p>
<h4>Searching for Content</h4>
<p>You can narrow your content search by entering terms into the Search Bar, located in the toolbar. Or, you can click the Advanced Search button to the right of the Search Bar</p>
<p><img src="http://postbox-inc.com/images/quickstart/search-button.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>to search by specific criteria such as subject, sender, or date.</p>
<p>Clicking on a contact in the message header will bring up a Contacts Panel<br />
<img src="http://postbox-inc.com/images/quickstart/contact-panel.png" alt="" /><br />
where you can search for messages, attachments, images, and links from that person.</p>
<h4>Using Content</h4>
<p><img src="http://postbox-inc.com/images/quickstart/actionbar.png" alt="" width="608" height="53" /></p>
<p>While viewing attachments, images, or links, you can use the Action Bar at the bottom of the screen to perform actions on selected content.</p>
<ul>
<li>Save will save the content to your hard drive</li>
<li>Send will attach the selected content to a new message</li>
<li>Upload will connect the selected content to an online service</li>
</ul>
<h3><a id="rich" name="rich"></a>Rich Message Composition</h3>
<h4>Finding Mail Content</h4>
<p>During message composition, you can search for attachments, images, and links within your mail store by clicking on a content icon within the Compose Sidebar, located on the right-hand side. Use the search bar at the top to narrow your search, or click the advance search button to search by a specific criteria. Attach content that you’ve found by double-clicking on the content element, or through drag-and-drop.</p>
<h4>Share Links to Popular Web Resources</h4>
<p>You can also search for and share links to popular resources on the Web. Click on a content type, select a service from underneath the search bar, type in a search term, and then drag-and-drop a search result into your message. There’s also a References tab that provides access to an online dictionary and thesaurus.</p>
<h3><a id="inspector" name="inspector"></a>Inspector Pane</h3>
<h4>Content Summarization</h4>
<p>The Inspector Pane sits to the right of the message preview window, and makes it easy to find and use message content. When Postbox detects a content element, it is summarized within this pane along with a set of useful actions. Selecting two or more messages within a conversation will summarize the content for all selected messages.</p>
<p>Right-click a content element to bring up a contextual menu that contains a set of services to help you to connect your email content element to the Web. For example, right-click an address to perform a search within an online mapping application.</p>
<h4>Integrated Web Search Bar</h4>
<p>Postbox contains an integrated Web Search Bar, to make it easier to initiate a web searches while viewing message content. Select your preferred search engine, type in a term, and press the Enter/Return key. You can also drag a contact from the message header into the search bar to quickly look up a contact on the Web.</p>
<h3><a id="topics" name="topics"></a>Topics</h3>
<h4>Assigning Topics</h4>
<p>Quickly organize your messages by Topic by selecting a message and clicking the Assign Topic button in the toolbar, clicking the Topics button in the message header, or by pressing the letter “t” when viewing a message. The Topics Panel will allow you to type in a new topic, auto-complete from a set of previously used topics, or select a topic from a list of favorites. When assigning a new topic, check “Make the topic a favorite” to add the topic to your list of favorites.</p>
<p><img src="http://postbox-inc.com/images/quickstart/topics.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>When you assign a topic in Postbox, all related messages within that conversation inherit the topic as well, in addition to all future replies. Thus, you only need to assign a topic to a conversation one time.</p>
<h4>Favorite Topics</h4>
<p>Your Favorite Topics will appear in the Folder Pane on the left, just below your mail folders. Select a favorite to view your messages by topic within the selected folder. This allows you to focus on one thing at a time, while minimizing interruptions from new messages, because the only new messages you’ll see are those that relate to the topic in view.</p>
<p>If you compose a new message while viewing a favorite topic, the new message will automatically inherit the currently selected topic. When a reply to your message arrives, it will automatically inherit that topic.</p>
<h4>Topics and Content Search</h4>
<p>You can also combine topics with content search. Select a favorite topic in the folder pane, then click on a content type within the tab strip, such as attachments. In this view, you’ll only see content that relates to the currently selected topic. Try clicking on Contacts within the tab strip to see a prioritized list of people that you’ve been communicating with inside a topic.</p>
<h3><a id="nav" name="nav"></a>Message Navigation, Viewing, and Handling</h3>
<h4>Conversation View + Gather</h4>
<p>Postbox displays messages in the Thread Pane by Conversation. Each conversation contains a Summary Row, with individual messages displayed below. When the Summary Row is selected, Postbox displays a summary of all messages within the conversation.</p>
<p>For conversations with messages stored in multiple folders (such as Archive, Sent, Inbox, etc.), the Gather button will bring them altogether, independent of location.</p>
<h4>Archive</h4>
<p>You can move messages from the inbox to a dedicated archive folder by clicking the Archive button in the toolbar, or by typing the letter “a” when viewing a message. Combine the use of the archive folder with advanced search to keep your inbox clean, but quickly find what you need when you need it.</p>
<h4>Tabbed Mail Browsing</h4>
<p>By default, Postbox opens messages in a new Tab, which allows you to quickly switch between messages and folders. You can open any folder in a new tab by right-clicking the folder, then selecting Open in New Tab from the contextual menu. You can also reorder your tabs via drag-and-drop.</p>
<h3><a id="todo" name="todo"></a>To-Dos</h3>
<p>We often leave messages in our inbox because they represent things we have to do. Postbox provides a set of features to help you use your email messages to get things done.</p>
<h4>Tagging a Message To-Do</h4>
<p>To tag a message a To-Do, select the message and click the To-Do button in the message header. A to-do icon will appear next to the message in your Thread Pane.</p>
<h4>Create a New To-Do</h4>
<p>Not only can you convert existing messages to To-Dos, but you can create new ones too. Just click the New To-Do button in the toolbar, and enter a subject and note if appropriate. This places a new To-Do in the currently selected folder. Create as many new to-dos as you like.</p>
<h4>Annotate</h4>
<p>You can also annotate a message by pressing the Annotate button in the message header. This is particularly useful when you wish to update the status of a to-do, without having to send a message to yourself. You can change the message subject or any part of the message body. After you have annotated your message, you’ll have the choice of saving your changes, or creating a copy of the message if you wish to preserve the original.</p>
<h4>To-Do Pinning</h4>
<p>Click the to-do column header in the Thread Pane to toggle on/off To-Do Pinning Mode. This pins to-dos to the top of your message list, so that new messages to appear below. This helps to keep new messages from pushing important to-dos out of view.</p>
<h4>Pending</h4>
<p>The Pending flag within the read/unread column can be used to mark messages that are pending a response. Once a reply arrives, the pending flag is removed and the message is marked “unread.”</p>
<h2>Quick Tip</h2>
<p>Tip: If you prefer to have Postbox advance to the next message after you delete one, instead of the default, where it jumps back to the previous message in the folder, follow these steps (thanks to the Postbox guys, who jumped on this question and gave me a solution within moments of me posting it):</p>
<blockquote><p>Bring up the <em>Preferences</em> window. Click on Advanced then <em>Config Editor</em>.</p>
<p>Type in: <em>mail.delete_matches_sort_order</em></p>
<p>in the text box and then toggle that value to <em>false</em>.</p>
<p>Restart Postbox and you should be all set.</p></blockquote>
<h2>Bugs</h2>
<p>This software is in BETA &#8211; which means there will be bugs. I&#8217;ve run into several since I installed it a week or so ago, but none have been bad enough to make me give up. I&#8217;ve noticed some hanging issues when trying to take actions on large groups of messages, specifically when trying to tag many messages at once. I&#8217;ve reported the bug at their <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox" target="_blank">bugtracking site on GetSatisfaction</a> (as should you, if you&#8217;re trying out Postbox &#8211; that is the whole point of beta testing, after all) and they were understanding of my frustration and quick to open an official bug ticket for me.</p>
<p>None of the bugs have been worse than what I&#8217;ve gone through with Thunderbird during testings phases.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I&#8217;m seriously in-like with Postbox so far. To me, it brings the best of Thunderbird together with the best of Mail.App and Outlook, in an app that is lightweight and feature-packed, without feeling overwhelming. Each feature is subtley placed, convenient if you want to use it, easily ignored and unobtrusive if you don&#8217;t need it.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m very curious to see how progress moves on this project, and I congratulate the Postbox developers for a great beta product. I like it enough to actually stick with it, instead of switching back to Thunderbird, despite Postbox&#8217;s BETA status.</p>
<p><strong>Want to give Postbox a try?</strong> Tough patooties &#8211; Postbox is in private beta right now, but you can <a href="http://postbox-inc.com/" target="_blank">sign up to be notified when you can download their beta</a>. (I signed up just a few weeks ago, so you likely won&#8217;t have to wait long.)</p>


<p>Possibly related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2008/10/is-imappop3-gmail-or-gtalk-periodically-rejecting-your-password/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Is IMAP/POP3 Gmail or Gtalk periodically rejecting your password?'>Is IMAP/POP3 Gmail or Gtalk periodically rejecting your password?</a> <small>I have run into this many times: my Gtalk password...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2002/06/sending-htmlplain-text-mail-simultaneously-using-php/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Sending HTML/Plain Text Mail Simultaneously using PHP'>Sending HTML/Plain Text Mail Simultaneously using PHP</a> <small>Although I expect this article to cause a few ruffled...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2009/10/twitter-launches-beta-lists/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Twitter launches groups in BETA for some users'>Twitter launches groups in BETA for some users</a> <small>In what seemed out-of-left field, when I logged onto the...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Is IMAP/POP3 Gmail or Gtalk periodically rejecting your password?</title>
		<link>http://www.snipe.net/2008/10/is-imappop3-gmail-or-gtalk-periodically-rejecting-your-password/</link>
		<comments>http://www.snipe.net/2008/10/is-imappop3-gmail-or-gtalk-periodically-rejecting-your-password/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:52:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>snipe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips & Tricks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bugfixes]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[gtalk]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.snipe.net/?p=322</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have run into this many times: my Gtalk password is stored in my email program (Thunderbird as an IMAP account) and my Gtalk password is stored in Adium, and every now and then, when I start my computer, Google tells me my password is wrong. I can&#8217;t login to Gtalk, I can&#8217;t check my [...]]]></description>
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<p>I have run into this many times: my Gtalk password is stored in my email program (Thunderbird as an IMAP account) and my Gtalk password is stored in Adium, and every now and then, when I start my computer, Google tells me my password is wrong.</p>
<p><span id="more-322"></span></p>
<p>I can&#8217;t login to Gtalk, I can&#8217;t check my email. Accessing Gmail via the web interface works fine, so I know Google isn&#8217;t down, but every time I check mail in Thunderbird, I get a password error. I faithfully retype my password, only to have it reject it anyway.</p>
<p>Using Adium, I can logon to AIM, Yahoo, even LJ Chat (tho I don&#8217;t know why I ever would), but every moment or two, I get a password prompt. If I pull up the Accounts screen and try to manually connect, it gets to &#8220;Authenticating: 75%&#8221; and then hits me with another password box.</p>
<p>While I have no idea why this works, it does:</p>
<ol>
<li>Quit/close your email client (Thunderbird, in my case)</li>
<li>Quit/close your chat program (Adium in my case)</li>
<li>Go to <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha</a></li>
<li>Complete the captcha prompt there and submit the form</li>
<li>Restart your email and chat clients &#8211; all should be well.</li>
</ol>
<p>It would seem some of sort of authentication bug with Google. The captcha gets all of the services back on the same page.</p>


<p>Possibly related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2009/02/some-notes-on-moving-to-mosso/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Some Notes on Moving to Mosso'>Some Notes on Moving to Mosso</a> <small>It&#8217;s been over a month since I opened my account...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2008/05/more-on-plaxo/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: More on Plaxo'>More on Plaxo</a> <small>As part of my seemingly never-ending quest to get data...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2010/02/use-your-own-domain-for-openid-logins/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Use Your Own Domain for OpenID Logins'>Use Your Own Domain for OpenID Logins</a> <small>I&#8217;m a big fan of OpenID, and the concept of...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Sending HTML/Plain Text Mail Simultaneously using PHP</title>
		<link>http://www.snipe.net/2002/06/sending-htmlplain-text-mail-simultaneously-using-php/</link>
		<comments>http://www.snipe.net/2002/06/sending-htmlplain-text-mail-simultaneously-using-php/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 29 Jun 2002 15:31:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>snipe</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[PHP/mySQL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[email]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[html mail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[php]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.snipe.net/?p=142</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Although I expect this article to cause a few ruffled feathers amongst the programming community (since most of them are against HTML email), there are times when the client will ask for it anyway, so you have to know how to do it. We had run into difficulty finding a straight answer on this topic, [...]]]></description>
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<p>Although I expect this article to cause a few ruffled feathers amongst the programming community (since most of them are against HTML email), there are times when the client will ask for it anyway, so you have to know how to do it. We had run into difficulty finding a straight answer on this topic, and many of the articles we had found on it gave us bizarre results in the HTML mail&#8230; so once we figured out what worked, we decided to post it.</p>
<p>We have tested this on several different email clients (including but not limited to: Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook Express, Outlook, and various text-only email clients such as Mutt).</p>
<p>In the email clients that render HTML (ie &#8211; not text-only) the only real difference we found was that Outlook (regular Outlook, not Express) showed the background color from the BODY tags, but not the background image. Yahoo and Hotmail stripped out the background color and images, but if your HTML mail is designed with this in mind, you can easily design around that.</p>
<p>Make sure the email will still look nice if the background color and/or images are stripped out of it.</p>
<p>Obviously, you would change the email addresses and messages to fit your own needs.</p>
<p><strong>NOTE: <a href="http://pear.php.net/" target="_blank">PEAR</a> has <a href="http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_Mime" target="_blank">some libraries</a> that make this even easier. (This article is old.)</strong></p>
<p><code><span style="color: #000000;"> <span style="color: #0000bb;">&lt;?php<br />
</span><span style="color: #ff8000;">/* ---------------------------------------------- */<br />
/* ------------ BEGIN PHP SNIPPET ----------------*/<br />
/* ---------------------------------------------- */</span></span></code></p>
<p><span style="color: #0000bb;">$headers </span><span style="color: #007700;">.= </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8220;FROM: invites@yourbigevents.com\n&#8221;</span><span style="color: #007700;">;<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$headers </span><span style="color: #007700;">.= </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8220;Reply-To: invites@yourbigevents.com\n&#8221;</span><span style="color: #007700;">;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff8000;">// This is the important part!<br />
// This content type identifies the content of the message.<br />
// The boundary delimits the plain text and html sections.<br />
// The value of the boundary can be anything &#8211; you can even<br />
// use the same one we used here<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$headers </span><span style="color: #007700;">.= </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8220;Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\&#8221;&#8212;-=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0\&#8221;\n\n&#8221;</span><span style="color: #007700;">;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff8000;">// Now begin your message, starting with the delimiter we specified in the boundary<br />
// Notice that two extra dashes (&#8211;) are added to the delimiters when<br />
// They are actually being used.<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$message </span><span style="color: #007700;">= </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8216;&#8212;&#8212;=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0<br />
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii<br />
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit</span></p>
<p>Your plaintext email content here.&#8217;<span style="color: #007700;">;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff8000;">// Now begin your HTML message, starting with the delimiter<br />
// Also notice that we add another content-type line which<br />
// lets the mail client know to render it in HTML<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$message </span><span style="color: #007700;">.= </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8216;&#8212;&#8212;=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0<br />
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii<br />
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit</span></p>
<p>Your HTML email here</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0&#8211;&#8217;<span style="color: #007700;">;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff8000;">// Now send the mail.<br />
// The additional header, &#8220;-f invites@yourbigevents.com&#8221; is<br />
// only required by certain server configurations.<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">mail</span><span style="color: #007700;">(</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$v</span><span style="color: #007700;">, </span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8220;2002 Winter Games Invitation&#8221;</span><span style="color: #007700;">, </span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$message </span><span style="color: #007700;">,</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">$headers</span><span style="color: #007700;">,</span><span style="color: #dd0000;">&#8220;-f invites@yourbigevents.com&#8221;</span><span style="color: #007700;">);<br />
</span><span style="color: #0000bb;">?&gt;</span></p>


<p>Possibly related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2009/10/funky-characters-in-html-mail-using-phpmailer/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Funky characters in HTML mail using PHPMailer'>Funky characters in HTML mail using PHPMailer</a> <small>While working on a client project, I ended up having...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2004/06/dynamic-watermarkstext-overlay-on-images-in-php/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Dynamic Watermarks/Text Overlay on Images in PHP'>Dynamic Watermarks/Text Overlay on Images in PHP</a> <small>This code can be useful for a number of things,...</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.snipe.net/2009/01/upside-down-text/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Confuse and Impress Friends with Upside-Down Text'>Confuse and Impress Friends with Upside-Down Text</a> <small>˙ǝʇɐpdn ʞooqǝɔɐɟ ɹo ʇǝǝʍʇ ɹǝʇʇıʍʇ &#8216;ʇsod ƃoןq ʇxǝu ɹnoʎ uı...</small></li>
</ol></p>]]></content:encoded>
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