iMail Limitiations?

I find Mail annoying, but I think it's better than Entourage. Yet, I would love to have some of the flexibility of Entourage. That's my backstory.

Here's my current issue: When I look at emails in the list view, Mail automatically moves to the next email and removes the bold highlighting as if the message has been read. (I have mail set to bold unread messages.) Even if I go in and mark it "unread," if I'm not careful and move quickly, it will remove the bold highlighting again.

Another question: Is there any way to use smilies with Mail?

Thank you.

Every Email program I use here on both the PC and the Mac does the same thing when you highlight a message. I personally would be quite mad it if did not do that. Some clients of recent times like Microsoft Mail in Vista allow you to set how long it takes for the bold to disappear, but otherwise everything I have used acts that way.

When you click on a message why do you want it still to be bold like you never did click on it? I don't understand why you want it that way.

Also have you tried Thunderbird by Mozilla? It has a LOT of setup options and might allow you to set it to take more time like Vista's mail.

Hi and thank you for responding.
I see that I'm not going to get what I want from the programs, and I appreciate your telling me that, so I'll stop looking for it.

What I want is for the unbolding not to kick in unless I click on the message to open it. What happens now is, if I am reviewing the emails in the list view, essentially evaluating them in preview, and I happen to want to delete the email I'm reading, but maybe not read the next one for whatever reason, Mail will automatically go to the next email in the list and unbold it. I wish it would not unbold messages until you actually open them, not when you happen across them in the list. I want to know which messages in the list I have actually opened and read, not just scrolled over in list view. Does that make any sense? Thanks, again, for informing me that this is an impossible dream.

Ok, now I know what you want. I will check around and see if I am missing something but in Mail I doubt it. Like I said give Thunderbird a try. It just might do it. Going to check now and will get back.

Ok, Thunderbird has that setting. You can set it to not mark it as read and specify a time till it does. That should solve it for you!!

Here is a screen shot of the Preferences advanced tab. Look at the 2nd option!

Hope that helps.