R-Comp has made available a new version of Messenger Pro, a ‘point release’ that brings it up to version 8.01, and which is free to download from !Store for existing customers using version 8.
One of the changes that make up this very small version number bump is the resolution of an (unspecified) issue that can occur when de-batching email.
Minor bug-fixes are usually what you can expect in a small point release – but according to R-Comp this release also brings with it a “significant new feature” – albeit one that may lead to facepalms when you consider how obvious it is. As R-Comp’s Andrew Rawnsley put it himself, it’s very much an “I can’t believe it never had it” feature – and one that has long been present in other news/email clients such as Pluto, or the separate news and email clients found in ArgoNET’s Voyager suite, which date back to the 1990s, and for which Pluto was a popular replacement.
That feature is the ability to fetch and/or send emails automatically when the program starts up – apparently something that neither R-Comp nor Messenger Pro’s actual developer(s) had considered before, until the subject came up in a conversation.
The software’s documentation has also been updated with instructions on how to use it to access both Hotmail and Gmail, two popular webmail services1, allowing you to access them more easily from your RISC OS desktop, and using a proper email client, rather than a web interface.
As well as being available from !Store, Messenger 8.01 is also available on CD – which also contains the Windows/Mac Messenger Pro2 – and visitors to the London Show on 27th October will be able to buy a copy there.
- Strictly speaking, they are only ‘webmail services’ if you are accessing them via a webmail interface – behind that interface is a normal mailbox which, depending on how its set up (and whether the details of how to do so are available), can be accessed either using POP3 or IMAP (and in both cases SMTP for sending email). The webmail interface itself is often using IMAP to access the actual mailbox.
- To avoid confusion, the Windows/Mac version of Messenger Pro is not the same as the RISC OS version. It is a different product, and not built from the same sources as the RISC OS version. The reason it has the same name is because its developer is Mark Sawle the original developer of Messenger on RISC OS – and, of course, it performs the same basic function; it is a fully featured news and email client.
