Mail improvements and changes have been implemented into the latest snapshot build of Opera 11.60. Snapshot builds are Opera versions released for testing and bug finding. While they usually work fine they are not suitable for productive environments.

Please note that the released snapshot build will upgrade existing Opera stable builds by default. Users who want to install the snapshot for testing purposes should click on Options and select a different home directory to avoid this. (One option would be to select the Stand-aline installation in the advanced options).

Probably the biggest change in this release apart from the cleaned up look is the new two-lined message list.

The new layout displays three mail columns when Opera Mail is opened. First the Opera Mail message, feeds and attachment listing on the left, then the actual messages from the selected mail folder and after that the selected message.

Users who do not like the change can switch back to list only or list and message below views easily.

Mails are now also automatically grouped by date. This can be switched as well to status, label, size or subject sorting, and grouping by read status, flag or date.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to pin important messages in Opera Mail. That’s handy if you need to reply to an important message but cannot do so right away, or if you need to access contents of a mail regularly. The pin message button appears in the message’s header and as a small dot next to the message listing.

Interested computer users can download the latest Opera 11.60 snapshot with improved mail module from the announcement over at the Opera Desktop team blog. Downloads are provided for all supported operating systems (which means Windows, Mac and Linux).

To grow accustomed to the way M2 sorts e-mails, one has to first get rid of prejudice created by most other e-mail clients about how this kind of application is meant to work. Once you get to know it, you either love or hate the way it works. In most clients, we were used to sorting messages into virtual folders where they can be moved and stored for later referenfce. By default, M2 seems to be a bit clumsy at this since it throws all your mails into one “Received” folder and as your mail database grows larger, it becomes a total mess that is seemingly hard to put in any reasonable order. This first impression is probably the main cause of people rather switching to their ol’ reliable Outlook Express or similar external application. However, a good way exists to sort messages in a convenient way, in M2 called filters.

These virtual boundaries are not much different from typical folders as we know them. They too can be used as a storage place for your e-mails with one little difference – filters are by its very substance always affected by rules that you set. These can be affected by pretty much everything that the e-mail container holds, ranging from the sender’s address to the entire message body contents. And besides that, they can be extended by the use of regular expressions. Messages then only appear in the filters they were assigned to. By default, they also still appear in the root “Received” folder but this can be easily changed by enabling the “Mark messages as filtered” option, which basically ensures that they don’t appear anywhere else but the places they are set to, which cleans up the root folder significantly.

Let’s have a simple example. Say you would like to set a filter (folder) for all newsletters. What you do is add a filter and either have it learn what messages it should draw into itself by initially moving the e-mails in it by yourself. Or, you can choose another approach. For example, you create the filter, set it to retract all messages from address news@letter.com and check the “Filter existing messages” option so that all existing mails in the root folder are re-labeled (virtually re-positioned). Assuming you also checked the option to Mark messages as filtered, all items from this address now only appear in this filter, nowhere else. And should a new one arrive from this address within a second, it’ll be automaticly assigned to this filter. Adding new addresses to filters is very easy, all you need to do is right-click the concerned item and select Show in > Filter name > This filter and add a rule. Opera asks you if you’d like to add current sender address and you can also choose to again refilter all existing mails.

My setup using this threaded technology now works like this: All incoming messages that have not a filter assigned appear in the “Unread” folder placed at the very top of the tree. From here, I can either “Read (K)” them, thus moving to the “Received” folder, delete them right away, assign them an existing filter or create a completely new category based on the unique content of that particular item. Other messages falling into one or more categories are automatically moved into their respective categories and I can read them after switching into those particular views.

This is a rather basic setup using little of M2′s strong sorting skills but it’s worked for me so far and can be further extended by applying advanced rules. Along with the quick search capability based on indexing, that is built into M2, this powerful system provides you with good options to label and very quickly locate e-mails you need to refer to at any one time. The final important thing to mention is that these filters with their rules and contents can be exported into the standard *.mbs file for backup purposed.

I do use MozBackup to backup the data in Thunderbird regularly but what if you use another client ? Amic Email Backup can create backups of the data of nine popular email clients including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft outlook Express, Opera Mail, Pegasus Mail and The Bat. The user can choose the identities, some would call it profiles, and the data that should be backed up from those profiles. By default everything is selected which means backups are created of account settings, mail folders, message rules, signatures, address books and stationery.

Backups can be password protected for increased security and scheduled so that they are created on a regular basis. It is also possible to define the amount of backups that you want to keep which would mean that older backups will be deleted eventually. Backups that are to large can be split so that they fit on a floppy disk, zip drive or CD.

The restore function can be used to restore the email account on another computer as well which is great if you have purchased a new computer or want to migrate your emails to another one. I’m not sure if the backups are compressed at all because I lack a mail program that is supported by Amic Email Backup [via Shell Extension City].

The main feature that is missing is in my opinion support for Thunderbird which is definitely one of the most popular email programs in my opinion. A way to import email backups of one program into all the other programs would be awesome as well. It’s a nice tool that is especially useful for users who do not know how to backup their emails manually and don’t want to learn how to do it.