A simple (I hope!) email question

Now that I am in California for a year or so, I can no longer send mail through my old alaska.net internet account. I can receive emails (I am keeping the account active for a while still) but not send because (obviously) I am now connected to the internet through a different ISP.

This is not a big problem for me, because I am now using Gmail as my normal email client.

What I need to change in my Windows Vista POS system is my default email client. In other words, whenever I click on an email address in a document, it pulls up my Internet Alaska Outlook Express client, and I'll usually get most of the way through typing my response before it dawns on me that I can't send that email.

What do I change (and how) so that when I click on an email link it opens up my Gmail account instead of the Outlook Express on Internet Alaska?

tanstaafl.

I use Gmail notifier. Right-click on the task bar icon and go into the options and tick "use Gmail for Internet mailto: links"

Like Phil said, GMail notifier will do this for you, as well as notify you of new emails. It's one of the first things I install on all my computers.

Another option is this program I just heard about today. I might install that later.

Yup. That's the correct answer. Gmail notifier.


More details for ya, Doug:

Since Gmail is a web-based mail system that doesn't use any "client" at all, then the concept of a "default mail client" on the system doesn't really make sense to Windows in that situation.

This is an interesting little dilemma. There are many perfectly valid web based mail systems (including microsoft's own systems), and I think you should be able to configure Windows to say "my default mail client is a web site". Maybe you can, I'm not sure how though.

Anyway, the two ways around it are:

- Install an application that is meant to access the web based mail system, and make that application your default client. As mentioned before, this is one of the great uses for the Gmail Notifier applet. I like this applet a lot, and it works well.

- Configure your web based email so that it can be accessed with a regular mail client (I'm pretty sure gmail allows POP and IMAP access these days), and then add another account to Outlook to connect to Gmail instead of your other Alaska ISP.

Actually, Tony, Gmail Notifier can set up Gmail as Windows' default email client.

Doug, you might also want to consider having Gmail grab your alaska.net emails so you don't even have to deal with two different clients.

Check out the instructions for Gmail's Mail Fetcher. It's all contained within Gmail itself; nothing to configure on your computer at all. It also allows you to send emails using your old email address if you want. It also uses the correct address when replying, based on what email address the original email was sent to. (Though you can configure that differently if you want.)

Interesting. I thought that Gmail Notifier had to be running in order for that to function. I could *swear* that's how it worked. I know it at least *used* to work that way. It would pop up a little window and everything...

Hm. Trying it now, I see that they've updated it so that it works whether Notifier is running or not, it just launches firefox with the proper link information to set up a "compose". I'm going to look at what the necessary registry entry and URLs are to make that function, so that Douglas doesn't have to use gnotify.exe if he doesn't want to.

Ah, I was right. The registry entry for "Mailto" still launches GNOTIFY.EXE. They've just cleaned up the user interface so that you don't actually have to have Google Notifier up and running, and it doesn't look like it's doing anything special on the screen. But the truth is that they *DIDN'T* actually set the default mail client to the Gmail web site. They did like I said: They set the default mail client to GNOTIFY.EXE which in turn calls up the web site and does the necessary trickery to log in and call up a "Compose" screen.

Are you using Outlook Express to check your GMail and your alaska.net accounts? If yes, I think you just need to go to Tools -> Accounts -> Mail and set GMail as your default email account.

Yes, GMail can also be fully accessed by an external client - they provide IMAP/POP and SMTP (via authentication).

So in that case it's just a question of making it the default email account and then setting whichever mail client you use to be the default mailto: client.

This isn't really what you're asking, but just FYI: If you change your SMTP server to the one of your current ISP you should still be able to receive *and* send mails via your old alaska.net account. I've done this for three email accounts from three different IPS's at one point, and it worked no probs...

This is a good point.

There is one caveat, though. To prevent their SMTP server from being an open relay, Alaska.net might have some restrictions that prevent Doug from doing this. The possible restrictions are:

1. They might not allow IP addresses from outside of Alaska.net to send emails through their SMTP server. If that is the case, then Doug won't be able to do anything about it and he can't send mail that way.

2. They might have the SMTP server require authentication (a user name and password) in order to send mail through it. If that is the case, Doug might need to dig around in his email software to change that setting and make sure it's configured for the correct authentication before he's able to send mail that way.

Or he could just set up the account with Gmail. Even if he doesn't want to receive the alaska.net email at Gmail, they will allow him to use that email address to send email, and then he doesn't have to worry about his ISP's restrictions. Same basic setup under Settings->Accounts on Gmail.

Tony, one basic question for you: why not just keep GMail Notifier running? On my system it's only tying up 8.5MB of memory, and I can always be notified of new mail.

I think we should really keep this as straightforward as possible. Just install GMail Notifier, and follow Bitt's instructions for adding your other email account to GMail. I have two accounts set up this way myself, in addition to about eight forwarded addresses. GMail is an amazing email aggregator, and as an added benefit, your other email addresses get the advantage of Google's spam filters and search features.

Absolutely. It's the very first thing we all said. It was the very first line in my first reply.

My only point for bringing up the other stuff was to point out why you *need* the notifier program. For reasons I don't fully understand, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do it without installing a third party application to do the dirty work for you.

Really? You worked for the great satan. Surely you understand that they've already determined every problem you'll ever need solved and given you the solution. Since there's no solution for this, it's a problem no one needs solved. QED.

Yeah, I understood that, and I suggested it as well (see 3rd post of the thread). I just incorrectly inferred from your posts that you didn't like that you had to have the program running at all times. I want to have it running at all times anyway, so I guess I just don't understand why it's a big deal. But I gather you were just asking out of curiosity.

Yup, just a sense of academic curiosity, wondering aloud why it's so tough to to make a web-based mail service launch from a mailto link.

Essentially I was trying to point up a limitation in Windows, especially with more and more people going web-based with their mail. Perhaps that's an imaginary limitation, maybe it's really easy to do and I just don't know the method.

No kidding. Today I did some research to find out why Vista got rid of the "up directory" button in Windows Explorer.

It seems that the "breadcrumb bar" is supposed to be its replacement, but man, that's a real pain to use in place of the up button. More clicks, more brain power needs to be engaged to use it, more of a chance of making a mistake... Man, what a poor design choice.

Yeah. I keep wanting to press that button...

Not that I have a hotmail account, nor a windows box that I want to try on, but anyhow...

Windows XP allows you to set Hotmail as the e-mail button at the top of the start menu by going into the taskbar properties. Does that also change the mailto links somehow? And is this being done in a standard way, or (the likely answer) a MS proprietary and undocumented way?

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command

I feel very old, all of a sudden.

Peter

That is so annoying! And I think it's even more annoying that it's still there, hidden by an even more awkward keyboard shortcut. Press Alt+up to show it. That's even a bad shortcut, IMO.

No kidding. I had the same thought when I first read that.

I'm aware that that's the registry key. What would one stick into that key to make it log in to a web-based mail service and open up a "compose" page (ideally with the address and subject line filled out as indicated by the parameters on the original mailto link)?

I think you slightly misunderstood what was suggested there Tony. It was suggested that Doug could change his outgoing SMTP server to point to his new ISP's server instead of Alaska.net.

As such Alaska.net would have nothing* to do with whether doing that worked or not, his outgoing mail wouldn't be going anywhere near their SMTP server.

* if they are using SPF or domain signatures and the recipient's mail server also implements the same then their setup could prevent it from working, but that isn't very likely

Nope. Setting e-mail to Hotmail still kept Outlook as my mailto program, at least on my XP 64 box at work. And of course, clicking on the Hotmail button opened in IE, even though Firefox is set as the default browser on that machine and IE is turned off by the court mandated "Set Program Access and Defaults".

So to go back to:

It looks like MS doesn't have a way to do this built in, even when they own both the web mail service and the OS. It's odd that selecting Hotmail goes to a web site instead of trying to configure Outlook Express for your hotmail account. With .Mac, all you have to do is plug in your username and password at machine setup time, or later in one place, and every service including Mail is configured automatically.

Googling suggests something like this:

"c:\program files\google\gmail notifier\gnotify.exe" -url http://mail.google.com/a/YourDomainName.org -mailto %1

Not that I've tested that it works.

Exactly what I'm saying! Note how it's launching GNOTIFY.EXE! I'm saying, how can that be done without a third party application installed?

You're right. I missed that. I interpreted it backwards.

By telling iexplore.exe to do it instead? I'm guessing that's how the Hotmail configuration works, since (according to Tom) it bypasses the default browser setting. Windows doesn't seem to have the hook of just putting a URL there. Should it work? Yeah. Does it work? No. (That's a frequent Windows mantra.)

Regardless, you have to pass the email address (and other data in the mailto: link) to the "application". Unless the web application understood that exact syntax — I'm guessing Hotmail does; Gmail doesn't seem to, though it should — you still have to have something to translate the mailto: information into however the web application wants it presented.

What's the problem with having a 3rd party application anyway? You seem hell-bent on not wanting it, even though it doesn't have to run all the time.

Purely academics. Me, I leave Gnotify.exe on all the time. I just wonder how someone handles this for a web-based mail service that DOESN'T have an applet available. I can think of web-based mail systems, including Microsoft's own Outlook Web Access and Hotmail services, that fall into this category.

Greasemonkey? Do mailto: URLs really show up anywhere other than in a browser?

Word documents and the like.

Isn't *that* a third-party add-on application?



Although they can be used in things other than a browser, that's mainly where they show up, yeah. Which is why it's even more ironic that they don't work for web-based mail systems.

3rd party app... As best I know it, Windows needs a helper in the form a shell extension, just to do what it currently does.

This extension, handles making the connection from the context menu's sendto, various apps file>email, send link as... to the installed email application. That works because the various apps are configured to work with the shell extension. Like wise installed email apps are programmed to work with that extension.

I don't believe there is any way for a browser, like FF, to be programmed to act as an email client itself. Basically FF would have to incorporate a function like Gnotify into it, but also be able to deal with every webmail available. Not likely.

So, we have Gnotify. Which acts like an installed email client, as far as the shell extension is concerned, and interacts with Gmail in a similar way that a user would.

edit: Gnotify could have been designed, to operate like Outlook does. Loading only when called by a mail to: or such, But then it would, like Outlook, have to be sitting in your task bar in order to notify you of new mail arriving.

Fortunately, backspace still works.

For certain values of "fortunately". I always hated that shortcut, frequently going up a directory instead of deleting a file when working with a laptop keyboard.

No, it doesn't. That's the "BACK" button now. Which is a completely different thing from the up directory button, and serves a different function.

One of the things I dislike about Mac OS X is that it also doesn't have an up directory button. I can't fathom why they would remove it there, either.

Anyway, in both cases, the keyboard functionality is alt+uparrow (or in the case of the mac, swizzlestickcloverunpronounceablesymbol+uparrow). Those are the same as the up directory button.

On the mac, supposedly I can make a piece of applescript to turn that into a button. Haven't tried that yet. Would be nice if something like that could be done on Windows Explorer.

Ahhh, yep. Apparently, in my personal usage of Vista "back" has closely correlated to "up directory".

Those idiots! Alt+leftarrow already does/did that... why screw it up and delete reprioritize functionality?

"command", though there are many synonyms.


Right-click (or control-click) on the window's title. Not the title bar, the actual title text (and maybe the icon). It'll let you go up as many levels as you want. This has been in MacOS for a loooong time. At least as far back as System 8, I think.

hah! That's great. Thanks for that tidbit.