A mailbox in Desktop Minder is a folder, with a folder inside it for each basket, and every message is a file in one of them. Mail is collected into it when you open it and every hour after that, filed into the right basket as it arrives, and kept by two rules that settle every hard question: a duplicate is merely untidy, and a lost message is the worst there is.

Setting Up

A mailbox is made by Set Up Email, a small program of its own whose icon is in the Apps pane on the Home desktop. It's a separate program because the Apps pane lists the programs in a desktop's own folder, so an icon there wants something real to run. It asks the usual questions—your address and name, the server mail comes from and the server it goes out through—and one that matters more than it looks: Copy from host or Move from host. Gmail is collected through Google's own POP service, and the program says where to find the settings Google needs. New mailboxes go in the Mail folder on the Social desktop, and Mailbox Settings... on a mailbox's menu brings the same program back to change them.

Your password is entered with Sign In..., and kept on this computer, sealed, never in the mailbox's folder, which may well be synced to other machines. Sign Out forgets it. Signing in can't tell whether the password is right without collecting mail, so it doesn't pretend to; the first check will say.

Collecting

Mail is collected by POP3. A mailbox is checked when you open it in the folder view, and every hour after that while it stays open on screen; an automatic check never starts within two minutes of the last one. And it's checked quietly, so a problem, such as a password not yet given, is mentioned along the bottom of the window rather than in a box you have to dismiss. Check Mail, on the Mail menu, checks now. Progress and the result show in the strip along the foot of the window.

Copy or Move

Copy from host leaves every message on the server too, which is what you want if another program, or your phone, reads the same mailbox. Move from host takes messages off the server once they're safely here: not at once, but at a later check, one message at a time, and only after the copy here has been found on the disk and checked again at that moment. Nothing is ever deleted from the server otherwise. A new mailbox starts on Move. And it does what it's set to, without asking each time. The first version asked; my verdict on seeing that was "Check Mail should preserve or delete messages from the host as specified in mailbox settings without further ado." People know the difference between copying a file and moving it. Gmail is the exception: mail is never taken off Google's servers this way, so a Gmail mailbox always copies. The Properties panel says which a mailbox does, in words, along with where it collects from and sends through, whether that's encrypted, and whether you're signed in.

With Copy, Delete from Host... clears messages off the server by hand: for a basket, the whole mailbox, or just the messages you've picked out. It asks first, with No as the answer if you just press Enter, and it never touches the copies on this computer. It isn't offered on a Gmail mailbox, whose server is never deleted from this way.

Never Twice, Never Lost

A message is known by a fingerprint of the message itself, not by the number the server happens to give it, and the last part of its file name is a tag made from that fingerprint. So a message is recognized wherever it has been moved or renamed, and is never stored twice. And if you delete the copy here while the server still holds the message, the next check brings it back. That's not a bug; there is no list of things deleted that the program has to keep forever, because a duplicate is merely untidy, and a lost message is the worst there is.

The Baskets

A mailbox opens as big icons, one for each basket, in this order: Inbox, Unknown Senders, Newsletters, Spam, Sent, Drafts and Outbox. Each has an icon of its own. A basket opens as a list, newest first, with From, Subject, Received and Size; since every file's name begins with the date it was written, sorting by name sorts by date as well. Unread messages are in bold, and Mark as Read and Mark as Unread set them by hand. How mail finds its basket is the subject of Contacts, Strangers and Spam.

The Mail Menu

A mailbox used to have a window of its own, with a button for each thing it could do. Now it's a folder, and a folder has no buttons, so what the buttons did is on the Mail menu, beside File, and on the right-click menu of the mailbox, its baskets and its messages:

• Always: New Message, Check Mail, Sort Mail, and, for a mailbox that copies, Delete from Host....
• On the mailbox itself: Mailbox Settings..., and Sign In... or Sign Out.
• With one message picked out: Reply, Reply All and Forward, and Mark as Spam..., or in the Spam basket Not Spam.
• With any number: Add to Contacts... (Add Senders to Contacts... for several); Mark as Read and Mark as Unread; Send Again, in the Outbox; and, for a mailbox that copies, Delete Selected from Host....

Messages Are Files

Because messages are files, everything you can do to a file you can do to a message. Drag one from one basket to another and the program follows it. Copy one to any other folder and it still opens there, as a message. Delete one with the Delete key, or the trash can on an open message, and it goes to the Recycle Bin, which is the undo. Move one right out of the mailbox, though, and as far as the mailbox is concerned it's lost; if the server still has it, it'll be collected again.