NoteMe

Why not using a mail client like M2:
First I just want to say I have nothing against the Opera Mail client, but due to the amount of different computers I use during a month a mail client becomes more extra work than it pays off. I have surrendered trying to keep e-mails on one computer, it is just easier to have them online and accessible no matter where I will find myself in the world. So instead I am daily using Squirrelmail on my server to read mail. But this trick should work on any IMAP, POP, and even Gmail account if you wish.


So what does it take for Xfce to notify me:
You probably have one or more panels in Xfce. I currently have two. One on the top, and one on the bottom. To these panels you can add quite a few handy items, one of them is the Mail Watcher. If you right click on one of the panels and choose "+ Add New Item", you will be presented with a window as shown below.





Find the Mail Watcher item, and press the Add button. You will then be presented with the properties page [see the next image]. Most of it is pretty intuitive if you have set up an e-mail account before. Although this time it is not really a mail account, you have to provide the same details like what kind of account it is, the incoming mail server, as well as your mail address, and password.


What about Opera? Can it help out to ease the job:
Sure, we are not done yet. There is two more text boxes that can save us quite a lot of time. First we will look at the "Run on click" text box. When we see the icon change, and there is new mail in our mail account, we can click the icon and make Opera open up our web mail. There is several ways to do this. If you write "opera -help" in a terminal window, you can see many ways to start up opera. What you want is probably "-newwindow" which will open your web mail in a new Opera window, or "-newpage", which will open it in a new tab. So pick your choice. I like it to start in a new tab, so I added "opera -newpage http://e.noteme.com" since http://e.noteme.com is my web mail address. You have to add your mail address.





And to top it off, what about balloon tool-tip:
If you look at that next text box, you can make your own balloon tool-tip just like MSN on windows, and many other apps have these days. You can easily add text and an icon to show in the tool-tip. By doing "notify-send --help" in a terminal, you can see your options. A simple example to make a header, some body text, and to add an icon you can write "notify-send "New mail" "You got mail." -i xfce-newmail". Experiment with the parameters yourself to get your own personal touch on it. Then just sit back and relax and wait for mail. No more need to reload your web-mails inbox every other minute.






- Øyvind Østlund -