Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / October 2007

Try reading the thread starting at 3'rd of september by PeterG. (Eudora
8.0b1 / Penelope)

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9151

Hello everyone. Yesterday evening I downloaded the much-anticipated
first beta of Eudora 8 for Macintosh, and I wanted to offer my initial
impressions, along with some suggestions for improvement.

Appearance-wise, Eudora 8 is obviously more pleasant to the eyes, and
has a more modern feel to it, compared to Eudora 6.2.4 and earlier
versions, which basically maintained the same general appearance for
many years. I can't even remember when I first began using Eudora, but
I know that it was in the mid to late 90's.

At any rate, while appearance is important, as a long-time Eudora user,
what is even more important to me is functionality and ease of use.
Upon first opening the application, I must say that I was quite
surprised by the large paned window. I wasn't expecting it, and it will
take me some time to get fully used to having everything together. I do
prefer separate windows for everything, so that I can move things
around on my screen as I see fit.

I had no problem redirecting the app to a new location on my hard drive
for the "Local Folders" setup. Likewise, importing all of my mail and
addresses from Eudora 6.2.4 went flawlessly without any errors.

However, trying to import my 300+ filters from Eudora 6.2.4 resulted in
quite a few errors in the console window, and in the end, absolutely
none of them were imported. Please don't ask me what the errors were,
because I don't remember now, and they are no longer there.

I operate a small private mailing list, and it was in this area that I
discovered that Eudora 8 has a way to go before it will fully meet my
needs. For one thing, with 6.2.4, I created a stationary file with our
mailing list banner at the top. Each time I send a new message to our
list, all I have to do is click on the button on the Eudora 6.2.4 dock
that I mapped for that particular stationary, and a new editor window
would pop up with the banner already there.

In addition to having our list banner at the top of each message, I
also had set up a signature which was automatically appended to each
outgoing message, unless I told Eudora not to.

Well, I searched high and low all over the place, and unless I am
missing something, Eudora 8 for Macintosh doesn't seem to have either
of these two functions yet; i.e., no stationary, and no signatures. If
I have somehow simply missed finding these two functions in the various
menus and windows, I'd appreciate some help.

Another annoyance: With 6.2.4, whenever I write to our mailing list
using BCC, all I have to do is open the address book, grab the little
book icon for the list, and drag it over to the BCC field, and all of
the names and addresses are automatically entered into the field. This
obviously doesn't work with Eudora 8. I repeatedly tried to do it, but
the little book icon just doesn't drag.

At this stage, Eudora 8 for Mac is just not as user-friendly as 6.2.4. Compare:

With 6.2.4:

1. I click on the new message button on my Eudora button dock, and a
new message window opens with the banner already there.

2. I click on the address book button in the dock, and the address book
opens in a separate window, and I push it to the side.

3. I drag the mailing list icon from the address book to the BCC field
of my message, and all addresses are automatically entered for me in
the BCC field.

With Eudora 8 it requires more steps to do the same thing:

1. I click on the new message button on the Eudora menu bar, and a new
message window opens, but with no mailing list banner, because there is
no stationary yet to make one, as far as I know.

2. I have to manually create a BCC field using the pull-down menu,
because there is none there by default, as occurs with Eudora 6.2.4.
Why this extra step?

3. I have to click in the address book pane to activate it, and then I
have to shift-select all of the names in the mailing list, and drag
them to the BCC field. Again, I should be able to just grab the list
icon, and drag that to the BCC field.

Another Annoyance: As some other users have mentioned, aside from the
filters I have created in Eudora 6.2.4, I rely heavily upon SpamSieve
to keep my in-box 99% spam-free. At this point, it appears that
SpamSieve will not work with Eudora 8. Whether the author needs to
update SpamSieve, or there is a problem with Eudora 8's internal
architecture being incompatible with SpamSieve, I don't know.

Another Annoyance: While incoming mail filters can be made in Eudora 8,
it appears that there is currently no way to make filters for outgoing
mail. In my 6.2.4 setup, I have different message filters set up to
send messages to different folders after they are emailed out. With
Eudora 8, it seems that I am forced to have all out-going messages sent
to the "Sent" folder, whether I like it or not.

I will probably discover other things, but that is it for now.

On a final note, I realize that this is just an early beta, so I am
hopeful that Steve Dorner and the crew will listen to the end users,
and ensure that the new Eudora fully retains, and improves upon, the
feature set found in Eudora 6.2.4. I think it is great that Eudora has
gone open source. While that presents its own unique set of potential
problems, at the same time, having so many new minds and new ideas
feeding its development can only be a good thing for Eudora, I hope.  :)

Finally, I also agree with others who have stated that many of us just
want Eudora to be a good email client, as it has been. We don't want it
to be a newsgroup reader, RSS reader, web browser, or anything else. We
already have good apps for that. I feel that if any new features are
considered which do not relate directly to receiving, composing and
sending email, then they are probably unnecessary, and will only bloat
the product. Let's keep Eudora for email, and nothing else.

I look forward to the next beta release. Thanks to the developers who
are giving their time to keep Eudora for Macintosh alive!  ;)