Pegasus Mail v4.3 Released |
Well, it's been a long, long time coming, but Pegasus
Mail v4.3 is now finally fully available. I have a suspicion that
some people may be a little disappointed by what they see
when they install v4.3, because on the surface it doesn't
look hugely different from v4.21, but looks can be deceiving...
V4.3 has been through nearly 60 betas and 14 release candidates, far more than any
previous release of the program, and I can count well over 1500
changes in the code. V4.3 is largely about modernizing the
Pegasus Mail codebase as a platform for future development,
and represents the last version 4 release there will be;
from here, our efforts are focused on v5, which will have
a number of very important new features.
Thanks to the sterling efforts of Sven Henze (who is
also responsible for many of the high-colour bitmaps in
the program and its beautiful new icon), a full German translation
is also available simultaneously.
A list of the most obvious changes in the program is shown
below. Or, if you're impatient, click
here to go to the downloads page to get the v4.3 installer,
in either English or German.
- Completely new HTML renderer Pegasus
Mail now has a completely new HTML renderer that does
a dramatically better job of displaying HTML data, and
which is vastly more robust than the renderer used in
previous versions of the program. The HTML upgrade is
the result of extensive collaboration between Pegasus
Mail's author and Martin Ireland. The new renderer retains
the levels of security and privacy assured by previous
versions of the program - you cannot be compromised
or infected by reading HTML mail in Pegasus Mail, just
as has always been the case.
- New automatic picture-loading options In
the past, Pegasus Mail has made a point of not automatically
downloading remote-linked graphics in mail messages
because of the security and privacy issues associated
with the process. We accept, however, that people will
have some sites and newsletters whom they trust and
from whom they are happy to accept messages with remote-linked
graphics: a new option in the message reader preferences
page now allows you to specify particular addresses
for whom it is OK for the program to retrieve graphics
automatically.
- Anti-phishing protection An increasing
trend on the Internet is a form of criminal fraud called
Phishing, in which people are duped into revealing banking
logins or credit card details by convincing-looking
messages purporting to be from legitimate financial
institutions. Pegasus Mail now has a number of internal
checks that will attempt to warn you if you appear to
be falling into a phishing trap.
- Character set handling totally overhauled
Pegasus Mail can now handle mail messages
in a much wider range of character sets, including the
unicode variants (UTF-8 and UTF-7), Cyrillic variants, and
many Asian character sets. The program can now also
generate mail in UTF-8 and a much wider range of source
character sets as required.
- Look and feel changes The program now
sports more XP-like buttons, and many of the program's
icons and bitmaps have been upgraded to appear more
modern. There is also a beautiful new program icon designed
by Sven Henze.
- Multipart/Related message generation The
program now uses a special format called multipart/related
when sending HTML mail messages containing formatted
text and graphics. This format is more widely-accepted
than the format generated by previous versions of the
program, and will allow Pegasus Mail's messages to be
viewed transparently on programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird.
- IMAP fixes The IMAP module in the program
has had a number of fixes made to it - in particular,
it now properly keeps connections alive, and problems
with cache files becoming damaged during abnormal program
termination should be completely resolved. It is now
also possible to have Pegasus Mail automatically clear
its cache files on disconnection for selected IMAP profiles
(for reasons of privacy or to preserve space).
- Searching completely overhauled The
program's tools for Searching through your folders have
been totally overhauled, offering a wide range of new
capabilities and constraints. Searching is much faster
and more flexible, and results now open in their own
folder, which you can manipulate just like any other
folder.
- New folder format: Link Folders You
can now create a new type of folder called a Link
Folder: these folders do not contain messages, but
instead hold links to messages. They allow you to put
together collections of messages from any folders anywhere
in your system and manipulate them as a single folder.
Link folders are primarily used by the new search engine
(see above) but you can also create them manually (as
to-do folders or whatever) if you wish.
- New workstation setup utility A new
tool called WSSETUP.EXE is now provided with the program;
this tool makes it easier to use a shared copy of Pegasus
Mail on multiple workstations (i.e, when running a copy
of Pegasus Mail installed on a file server or shared
volume) by allowing the user at each workstation to
create desktop icons and program groups, and to enable
the program for browser link handling. Once the shared
copy of Pegasus Mail has been installed, simply run
WSSETUP.EXE once from each workstation where Pegasus
Mail needs to run to complete the setup process.
- Simplified setup for shared and memory stick
installations In situations where the Pegasus
Mail program and mailbox data are stored on the same
drive, it is now much easier to install the program
so that it will run on any system, regardless of the
drive letter by which the system accesses the shared
volume. In the past, you could run into problems if
drive letters changed from workstation to workstation,
but this no longer happens. A side-effect of this is
that a complete Pegasus Mail installation can now be
put onto a memory stick and used on any computer, making
a wonderfully compact and portable way of taking all
your mail with you wherever you go.
- Ability to read HTML directly into the message
editor A new right-click option in the
message editor now allows you to read pre-formatted
HTML directly into the message body. Most HTML styling
options are supported by the import facility.
- Much improved handling of copies-to-self
Copies to self containing formatted (rich
text) content now reflect that content in the folder,
and can be re-sent preserving the formatting. Character
set handling in copies to self has also been markedly
improved..
- Support for much longer lines Pegasus
Mail can now display unwrapped messages with lines up
to 1000 characters long, and can handle malformatted
messages that incorrectly use MIME encodings as paragraph
wrappers out to 8000 characters in length (this fixes
a particularly ugly error in messages generated by Novell
GroupWise).
- Corrections for Secunia exploits
Secunia Research has discovered two potentially
exploitable bugs in Pegasus Mail v4.2 and the v4.3 public
beta (click here
for more information). Both these bugs are corrected
in the v4.3 full release.
Click here to go to the downloads page and download the v4.3 installer.
[ Page modified 23 January
2006 | Content © David Harris
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