A message being written is a document like any other: it opens in the View, it keeps itself as a draft while you write, and nothing you type is lost if you wander off, switch desktops or close the program. When you press Send it goes at once if it can, and as soon as the network comes back if it can't.

Starting One

New Message is on a mailbox's Mail menu, and on the right-click menu of the mailbox or any of its baskets. Reply, Reply All and Forward are there too, and on the right-click menu of a message, when one message is picked out. Each opens a message to write, in the View, and its tab says what it is: New Message, Reply, Forward, or Draft for one taken up again from the Drafts basket. A reply puts "Re:" in front of the subject once, not again and again, quotes the message it answers, goes to the address the sender asked replies to go to, and carries the threads that let other mail programs file it with the original.

The Sheet

The message is laid out the way you'd expect. From is the mailbox it was started in; below it are To, Cc, Bcc and Subject, and then the message itself. There's a list of attachments, with Attach... and Remove and a running total—"2 files, 3.4 MB of 20"—and there are Plain and Formatted, Save Draft and Send, and a line that says how things stand.

Plain or Formatted

The message is written in the same paragraph editor as a web page's Edit tab. With Formatted chosen it shows its toolbar, for styles, emphasis and lists, and the message goes out as a formatted page with the plain words beside it, for mail programs that want them. Switching to Plain asks first, because "Plain text has no bold, lists or links: the words stay and the formatting goes." The choice is remembered for the next message, and starts as Plain; a reply to formatted mail starts formatted.

Drafts

A message being written is kept in the mailbox's Drafts basket half a minute after you stop typing, when you press Save Draft, and whenever you put it down—close it, open something else, switch desktops or close the program. Double-click a draft and you're writing it again, attachments and all. Clear a draft of everything and it's deleted, rather than left behind as an empty message.

Sending

Send looks the message over first, and says in words what's wrong, if anything is: no address, an address that can't be right, attachments over the limit. Then it puts the message in the Outbox and locks the sheet: "Sending... If the network is not there it waits in the Outbox and goes when it returns. How it went will be said here." And when the sending is over, the sheet says how it went, with the time. Every sending is also written down, with the server's own reply, in a log on this computer, which is what there is to go on when a message doesn't arrive. It goes at once, if it can. If there's no network, it waits, and goes a few seconds after Windows says the network is back; and every Check Mail sends anything still waiting, too. A mailbox nobody has signed into says so; once someone has, the mail goes with the next Check Mail, the next time the network comes back, or at once with Send Again. Once it's gone, it's in Sent.

If the server refuses a message, it isn't tried again and again on its own; the reason is given at the foot of the window, and Send Again, on a message in the Outbox, puts it back in line.

Attachments

Attach... adds files, several at a time, up to twenty megabytes in all. Files dropped on the sheet are attached too, though not yet by way of the program's shared rules for dragging and dropping, which is where a picture or a piece of text dropped on a message will eventually be taken in.

Not Yet

• Addresses filled in from your contacts as you type them in To, Cc and Bcc. It's designed; it isn't built.
• Pictures placed inside the message itself, rather than attached to it.
• Signatures, templates, sending later, read receipts and sending from another address, none of which were meant for the first version.