6.12. E-mail

E-mail allows you to quickly transfer messages and files to a specific recipient and provides access to any other Internet resources.

There are two groups of protocols by which email works:

1) SMTP and POP (or POP3) protocols. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) helps with sending messages between Internet recipients and allows grouping messages to one recipient, as well as copying E-mail messages for transfer to different addresses. The Post Office Protocol (POP) provides the end user with access to e-mail messages sent to him. When a user requests to receive mail, POP clients are asked to enter a password, which ensures increased confidentiality of correspondence;

2) IMAP protocol. It allows the user to act with letters directly on the server of the provider and, therefore, to spend less time working on the Internet.

Special e-mail programs are used for sending and receiving e-mails. Such programs are used to:

• compilation and transmission of messages in the form of text messages, and in HTML format, adding directly to the text of the message in the form of graphics, animation, sound;

• adding files of any kind to the messages (creating attachments). Attachments are depicted as icons that are placed in special areas of the email. Icons include the name of the attached file and its size;

• decryption of a message received in various Cyrillic encodings;

• management of the priority of sending messages (urgent, normal);

• reduction of communication time when you need to view received mail. At the same time, only the headers (summary) of the message are issued and only the specially requested messages are sent in full;

• automatic spelling and grammar of messages before sending;

• storing in the address book the necessary E-mail-addresses of the authors of the messages for the further use of these addresses when sending messages.

Preparation and sending of messages on the screen of the mail program is filled using the following fields:

1) To. This field contains the E-mail address of the main correspondent;

2) Copy. The addresses of correspondents who receive a copy of the message are entered in this field;

3) Bcc. The purpose of the field is similar to the previous one, but even if the addresses are present in it, the main correspondent is not aware of the availability of copies sent to these addresses;

4) Subject. This field contains a summary of the message. The text is given in the form of a message header when the recipient views the received mail;

5) Messages. The text of the message is typed in this field. Mail programs use a text editor for this.

Attaching a file is done by a menu command or using the tool button; this opens the usual Windows window with the directory tree to select the file to be attached. The prepared message is sent by the command Deliver mail. The message in this case falls into a special outgoing mail folder. Sending a message to the network is determined by the specified degree of urgency. An urgent message is sent immediately. In some programs, sent messages are sent to the Sent Items folder, where you can then view or delete them using the mail reader. If the delivery of the message for some reason turned out to be impossible (due to an error in the address), then the sender is automatically notified of this. The notification has the form of an email in a folder.