Big news! We have released a beta version of Laszlo Mail 1.3. Import Contacts and Filters have been top requests amongst people sending us feedback, and while we were working on those a host of smaller improvements snuck into the release. Filters is my personal favorite since I now read all of my mail with Laszlo Mail. I have 2239 messages in my inbox and receive hundreds of messages every day. It has honestly been a lovely experience using Laszlo Mail day-in and day-out.

Flash 8 is now required. Some of our new features below rely on features introduced in version 8 of the Flash player. For most people this will not be an issue, but unfortunately Macromedia has not released a version of Flash 8 for the Linux platform. We have no desire to keep anyone from using our products, so for the time being we will be automatically forwarding Linux users to an older version of Laszlo Mail.

Right Click Menu (control-click for you Mac folks): Right-clicking on the message list will invoke a menu that can be used to perform several common message actions. Included on the lists is one option not available anywhere else, mark as read. The mark as read, and mark as unread options can be used on groups of messages.

There is, however, one menu item that you should never select. DO NOT CHOOSE SETTINGS FROM THE RIGHT CLICK MENU. This is a Flash menu item which invokes a dialog box that may appears underneath the message pane -
effectively locking a user out of the application. (sigh) We are working on a solution to this issue, but until we have implemented it we strongly recommend that you just pretend that menu item does not exist.

Import Contacts : You can now import contacts from a CSV (comma separated value) file into the Laszlo Mail contacts list. The system is directly compatible with Yahoo mail, GMail, EarthLink web classic, EarthLink total access, Outlook, and Outlook Express. Our converter is equipped with a “catch all” template that will scan any CSV for contact information and attempt to assign it to the correct category. This functionality is easily accessible on the contacts tab in the application, and is represented by an index card icon on the bottom edge of the tab. You can have up to 1500 contacts in your contact list.

Multiple Select Contacts: You can select one or more contacts from the contact list using the standard control-click and shift-click methods. You can use this functionality address messages, delete contacts or create a new group.

Drag and Drop Contacts: You can now address messages by dragging contacts to the address fields in a compose view. This functionality replaces the address buttons that are present in previous versions of Laszlo Mail.

Windows Firefox HTML emails: Laszlo Mail now supports HTML email in Windows Firefox. This feature is accompanied by the standard “Show Images” button that by default hides the images in a HTML email for the users privacy. This “show images” default behavior can be set as a preference in the settings panel.

Filters: You can now filter email based on rules configured in the settings panel. Filters can be added, edited, duplicated, and deleted. You can disable a filter by unchecking the box next to the filter name. Rules can be based on “any” or “all” of several conditions. Mail can be directed to any existing folder or the user can create a new folder directly from this dialog. Mail can also be marked as “Read” and/or redirected on to another email address.

Rich text changes Based on user feedback, we have temporarily removed the paragraph formatting options in the rich text editor. These features were the root cause of a bug that detracted from the overall user experience. We
are hopeful that we can reintroduce this feature as soon as we have figured out a workable solution.

Why this is a beta? Not all of the improvements we are planning on putting into version 1.3 have made it into this build. We have new stuff already being tested by our dedicated QA department, but we didn’t want to keep these oft-requested features from you! Also, your feedback on this beta will help us make the next release the very best it can be.

If you have any questions or comments about what you see in Laszlo Mail 1.3, please use the feedback button to let us know what you think. Your input has helped to make Laszlo Mail what it is today, and will help us decide what it should be in the future.

Your feedback inspires us; your praise thrills us; your critiques drive us to
relentless improvement.

The Laszlo Mail Team

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 5:00 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.