Learning method

General points
Window
Files and Folders
The Finder
Softwares
Dock*
Apple menu*
Scanning panel
Mouse action
Internet
Electronic mail
Keyboard shortcuts
Markers
Tricks*
Preferences
System Preferences*
Researches*
Making scanning panels I*
Making scanning panels II*
Electronic mail

There are two ways of handling electronic mail. The first one is to connect your access provider’s web site (see chapter Internet), but the simplest way is to have a mail software. There are plenty of such softwares, the most known ones are Eudora, Netscape, Outlook, and Entourage (sold with Office, when you buy Word) ; in chapter Softwares, you can find the web sites where to download them. The one provided with the Mac OS X operating system, called Mail, is very good, it is the one I speake of here, as an example.

Email address : the first thing you must have to send and receive e-mails is an electronic address, provided by your access provider when you ask to be connected to internet.

Computer settings : first connect to internet as explained in chapter Internet. Second, in the Mail preferences, you must put the parameters given by your access provider into your computer. Open Mail, its icon is a stamp, that you should put in the Dock. In Keyboard and Mouse bis, its key is the second, last row. Open Mail’s preferences (either by choosing “Preferences” in the Mail menu, or by typing the Preferences key of Keyboard and Mouse bis scanning panel, third row, forth key), on top of the Preference window, click “Accounts”, then “Account information”.

Bottom of left column, click the cross “+”. A window opens that you fill in, most Account Types are “POP”, unless your access provider is Apple. Put your name, e-mail address and password given by your access provider (at any time that password can be changed on access provider’s web site), then type Return or click “Continue”. You have the “Incoming Mail Server” with your e-mail address, and the “Outgoing Mail Server", or Server SMTP, which is the access provider’s server. Then click “Mailbox Behaviors” and set them as you wish, knowing that it is often useful to come back to sent messages. Then click “Advanced” and activate or not this e-mail address (if you have several e-mail addresses, and one has lots of spams (publicity), you can undo activation). Then I recommend you set “General”, “Junk Mail” and “Composing”.

Viewer Window : when you open the Mail application, you have a viewer window on your screen. In the View menu, you can change that window’s presentation. I recommend you spend time choosing the best presentation, according to your needs.

Mailboxes : first you have six mailboxes : Inbox with all received messages, Outbox with messages waiting to be sent, Draft box with not finished messages, Sent box with all sent messages, Trash box with all useless messages and the Junk box, essentially spams. Then you can make more mailboxes to put away useful mails that you want to keep. Choose “New Mailbox” in that Mailbox menu, give it a name and type Return. To put a message in a mailbox, select the message and choose “Move To” in the Message menu, the list of all the mailboxes appears and you choose the one you want. If you have another message to put in the same mailbox, just select it and type “Option Command T”. To put a message in Trash, select it and type Backspace. In Trash it will be eliminated by the time determined in preferences. 

Receive a message : if you want to use the Mail application for your e-mails, first go to : Mail / Preferences / General, and in the first popup menu “Default Email Reader”, choose “Mail.app”. If in the second popup menu “Check for new mail”, a time is written, then automatically, when you switch on your computer, and at every time period, Mail will take in new messages, into the Inbox. If you have chosen “Manually”, to look for new messages, you have to choose “Get New Mail” in the Mailbox menu, or type “Shift Command N” () keyboard shortcut. If you want to mark a message as Junk, select it and choose “Mark / As Junk Mail” in the Message menu, or type “Shift Command J” keyboard shortcut ; it will move to the Junk mailbox and sent back to addressor. Do the same for a Junk mail that you want to mark as not junk, or click the “Not Junk” button, on the top of the e-mail. 

Junk Mail : you have the possibility of moving away undesirable messages, and send them back to addressor, they are then marked as being sent to an address that does not exist, so you can hope to be rubbed away from their list. First Mail application has to learn which messages are junk, so for a training time you have to mark them as Junk. For that purpose, you go in the Mail preferences and in the Junk Mail section, tick “Enable junk mail filtering” and “Leave it in my Inbox, but indicate it is junk mail (Training)”. When you think Mail makes the difference, you go in the Mail preferences again, and in the Junk Mail section, tick “Move it to the Junk mailbox (Automatic)”.

Send an e-mail : two ways to send an e-mail. Either by replying, choose “Reply” or “Reply All” in the Message menu, or type “Command R” or “Shift Command R” keyboard shortcut. In Mail preferences, Composing section, choose whether you want the original text to be included in the reply or not, by ticking or not “Quote the text of the original message”. If you do, then write your reply before the original message. If not, you can just rub it by typing “Command A” () keyboard shortcut (which selects it all), and then you type Backspace.

You can also write a new message. Choose “New Message” in the File menu, or type “Command N” () keyboard shortcut. A window opens, you write the e-mail address of your correspondent in the first field. If it is in your Address Book, just type the first name’s letter, a list appears and with the down arrow, select the right e-mail address, then type Return, it avoids you typing the hole address ; you can put several e-mail addresses in the same field, if you are writing to several persons, they will all receive the same e-mail. In the second field “Cc”, you can also put e-mail addresses, for persons which can be interested by that e-mail, but to whom it is not addressed. The third or fourth field is the subject, you do not have to write a subject, but it is better to have one. Of course, to pass from a field to another, you type Tab ,because using the mouse actions with SwitchXS  takes time and is boring.

Once you have finished writing and you want to send it, either choose “Send” in the Message menu, or click “Send” on the message window’s toolbar. Otherwise, the fastest way for SwitchXS users is to type “Shift Command D” (, first key, second column, third row, of Keyboard and Mouse bis scanning panel). If you have not finished writing, you can save it (“Command S” () keyboard shortcut), and close it’s window (“Command W” () keyboard shortcut) ; you will find it back later in the Draft mailbox.

Forward a message : if a received message can interest somebody else, you can forward it. Choose “Forward” in the Message menu, or click “Forward” on the message window’s toolbar, but the fastest way for SwitchXS users is to type “Shift Command F” (second key, second column, third row, of Keyboard and Mouse bis scanning panel). A window appears with the message in blue. The first field is for email address of person to whom you forward messages.

Attach File : you can send by e-mail, files, photos, music, etc…, but not more than 10MB. Choose “Attach File” in the File menu, or click “Attach” on the message window’s toolbar. However, the fastest way for SwitchXS users, is to type “Shift Command A” () keyboard shortcut (third key, last column on the red row, in Keyboard and Mouse bis scanning panel). A window appears in which you can find the file to be sent ; select it, then tick “Send Windows Friendly Attachments” (so that PC users can read it), and type Return or click “Choose File”. The file appears in your message and is ready to be sent. If you receive a message with an attached file, click the little triangle before “Attachment”, the file appears, so you can double click () it, to open it, or drag and drop it, to put it in a folder or on the desktop.

Spelling : in the Composing section of the Mail preferences, second popup menu “Check spelling”, if you choose “as I type”, when you type a word that is not in the English dictionary joined to the Mail application, that word is underlined in red. This is very convenient when you are not sure of your spelling. If you write in another language, you can change dictionary. Choose “Spelling / Spelling” in the Edit menu, a floating window appears, click the popup menu, select the language and close the window by clicking the button, top left of the window, or by selecting it (type “Control F6” (^F6) keyboard shortcut), and then closing it (type “Command W” () keyboard shortcut), which is the fastest way for SwitchXS users.