Pegasus Mail & Mercury

Despite repeatedly un-ticking Folders/Preview Mode I can't disable the Message Preview Pane. I would like to see just the folder list on the left and the message list on the right. I never want to see a message preview pane. How can I achieve this? TIA William

---

http://www.twenty4ten.com

Does clicking the 'List' button at the top of the folder window do what you want?

Reading your message, I'm not sure if what you require is the traditional 'classic' view, or a 2-pane preview mode.  You can change a 3-pane view into something like a 2-pane view by repeatedly moving the dividing bar between the message list and the message preview until no preview is shown.

PaulW:

Does clicking the 'List' button at the top of the folder window do what you want?

Not exactly.

You can change a 3-pane view into something like a 2-pane view by repeatedly moving the dividing bar between the message list and the message preview until no preview is shown.

This is the best compromise I can come up with too. It doesn't solve the problem; the option is there and it does work but it just doesn't stick :-( Thanks for the reply.

---

http://www.twenty4ten.com

magiric:

... it does work but it just doesn't stick

I think it will if you don't have the folder window maximised. 

PaulW:

I think it will if you don't have the folder window maximised. 

Really? That's a weird one. I'll try it when I get to the office tomorrow. Thanks for that, Paul.

---

http://www.twenty4ten.com

magiric:

This is the best compromise I can come up with too. It doesn't solve the problem; the option is there and it does work but it just doesn't stick :-(

To be honest, it never even crossed my mind that anyone would ever want this option to be sticky.

You have to understand that the option is really only there to allow you to turn preview ON; although it can be used to turn preview off, that wasn't really what it was intended for. If this sounds a little odd, you have to remember that before Martin Ireland gave us the BearHTML renderer, Pegasus Mail's default TER-based HTML renderer was depressingly prone to crashing when presented with HTML it didn't like. This could lead to the situation where if the first message in the new mail folder was the faulty message, the program would simply crash every time you started it up, which was clearly not a good look. To get around that, I would disable message preview automatically after any crash, and the user could select this option to turn it back on: this gave the user an opportunity to move or delete the offending message without the program crashing around him. These days, BearHTML makes HTML-induced crashes much, much less common, but they still happen occasionally, so I've left the option there... But from this description, it should be clear that the option was never really intended as a way of disabling preview - as I've said, it never even occurred to me that anyone might want to do that.

It may be possible to provide a "two column" view without preview - I'll look into that during development for v5.

Cheers!

-- David --

That's very generous, David, and thanks for the background. William

---

http://www.twenty4ten.com

Add me to the list of people who prefer the two pane window with preview permanently disabled. I have also used the trick of moving the divider so the preview pane has zero height and so not visible, works but not ideal.

Dave

magiric:

Really? That's a weird one.

It happens with some settings - just a quirk.

(Just to be certain that there's no misunderstanding - this is the setting of moving the dividing bar down the window which sticks for me. Not the other setting - Folders/Preview mode, which has also been discussed :)

That's right, Paul.

---

http://www.twenty4ten.com

Yes, I would love a "two panel" view as well.  I simply don't have the screen real estate available to make a preview panel useful (especially since I prefer to read email in a large font in a full-screen window, it helps me avoid eyestrain after long hours on the PC).

Another STRONG vote here!!!  I am looking for an alternative to MS Outlook, and not being able to get rid of the preview pane is a serious (for me) annoyance.

Do you have this planned as an enhancement for any time in the not too distant future?

Thanks!

dh

Well, to provide a different viewpoint, I prefer preview to remain open.

However, I'm seeing a slightly different (although not as major) "lack of stickiness" issue. I can set my buttons to "text only", arrange the message list columns to the relative widths I like, etc., etc., and have "save desktop state" enabled, but when I get and and back in, everything is set back to where it was (defaults). With my small monitor and low resolution (17", 1024x768), I'd like to get as much "client area" as possible.

I'm currently "re-evaluating" Pegasus mail again (after a 2-year tryout of Thunderbird which itself followed years of prior Pegasus usage) and I'd like to figure out how to make my minor customizations stick, if possible. It's probably just something I've overlooked and if someone can point me in the right direction, that would be great. Pegasus is an amazing and and feature-rich package - I'm sure there's a way to do most anything (within reason, of course! :-)

Thanks.
 

---

Len Philpot
http://philpot.org

David Harris:

To get around that, I would disable message preview automatically after any crash, and the user could select this option to turn it back on:

 

So the workaround is :

Cause Pegasus to crash then don't push the button, hey presto - no preview  

 

Now just need a toolbar button to crash the program !