The Tools Menu

The tools menu is comprised of ten menu selections. For a more detailed explanation for each of the first five menu items click on the link for the menu item. The remaining five menu items are explained on this help page.

Address books...

Fonts

Mail filters...

Personas...

Polarbar Settings...

Download an internet file...

Provides a quick way of doing simple file retrievals from the internet via the FTP and HTTP protocols. First, you specify the host and pathname/filename of the file to retrieve. If you don't specify the filename under which to store the file on your local system, the program will use whatever comes after the last slash character in the host filename and put it into the directory from which the program was started. Or you can type the local path and filename.  The Find button will give you a file selection dialog to let you find the pathname and specify the filename. Specify whether you want to retrieve the file via the FTP or HTTP protocol. For FTP, you must specify your userid and password. The program will remember the userid you used the last time you used this dialog.  It will also remember the password if you turn on the Remember Password checkbox. The Options button will let you change the default parameters for the port numbers, time to wait for a connection, and maximum idle time to allow between packets received.

Popper message retrieval center...

When you use the Retrieve mail automatically every [ ] minutes setting in an account without opening the Popper window, the automatic retrieves happen only while that account is open. When you open the Popper window, the old style of automatic retrieval which only works on the open account is terminated, and will not be activated again until you close the Popper window. When you turn on the Popper window's Retrieval Center is Active checkbox, automatic retrievals will be performed not only for the open account, but also for all of your accounts that are configured for automatic retrieval. If the Popper window is open when you close the Polarbar Mailer, then it will automatically open the next time you open the program. If the Popper is active when you close the Polarbar Mailer, then it will automatically activate the next time you open the program. Otherwise, after you've connected to the internet, turn on the Retrieval Center is Active checkbox and the retrievals will begin.

The first account in the Popper window will do its retrieve and each of the others will wait until the previous one is done.  (Not only to spread the CPU usage out over time, but also in case you have two Polarbar Mailer accounts which access the same POP3 account.  Most POP3 servers won't allow the same account to be accessed by two client processes at the same time.) The Popper retrieves the mail into a holding directory for each account (below the POPPER subdirectory of your Mailer directory).  New mail for the active account is filtered into the account after the Popper retrieve is finished for that account.  The mail for the other accounts is left in each account's holding directory and the count of messages in each holding directory is displayed in the Popper window. When you open any account, the program looks to see if there there are any messages in its Popper holding directory. If so, the mail is filtered into the account and the Popper window's holding directory count is updated for that account.

If the Popper window is open when you switch to another account, any Popper activity is halted and the Popper window is closed. Once the new account is active and ready to have message retrieval begin, the Popper window is reopened. If the Popper was active before you switched accounts, then the Popper is also reactivated, which restarts the retrieval cycle for all of the Popper accounts.

Turning on any account's Retrieve mail automatically every [ ] minutes setting will add that account to the Popper window if the Popper window is open.  Turning off that setting in an account will remove that account from the Popper window, even if that account is currently being retrieved in the Popper window (the retrieve is halted first). Turning off the Retrieval Center is Active checkbox in the Popper window halts any retrieval that is currently taking place and prevents any more retrievals from starting until you turn the checkbox on again.

Turning on any account's Popper retrieves to another account setting will cause the Popper to retrieve messages from that account into the other account's Popper holding directory. As a result, those messages will be filtered into the other account, when the other account is active.

Browser window style

This submenu lets you choose from a text browser, the ICE HTML browser and the HotJava HTML browser.  The HotJava HTML browser was distributed in the earlier versions of J Street Mailer and is currently not distributed with the Polarbar Mailer. See the FAQs at http://www.polarbar.org/ for up-to-date information about where to get the HotJava component.

Logs

This submenu allows you to display the Message Transaction Log, which lists all messages sent and received by the current account (the Transaction.Log file in the account subdirectory), the Java Console Log, or the Status Message Log.

PGP

This submenu allows you to View Public PGP IDs or Clear PGP Passphrase.

Main Menu Bar