# Preferences

Note: The buttons at the top and bottom of the screen are common to all the preference screens.

- The top row contains the preference categories:-
  - General - (this screen)
  - Display - concerned with the appearance of the interface.
  - Compose - includes settings for personal name and whether a signature is included or not.
  - Extra Compose - use of the sent-mail folder, the size of the text area for the body part and the spell check language.
  - Folder - options concerned with the use of, and actions on, mail folders.
- The bottom row controls the duration of the changes:-
  - Cancel immediately cancels any edits.
  - Change for this session applies only to the current session.
  - Change for this and future sessions applies for each session until the change is altered.
  You are returned to the Account Management screen after selecting any of the choices.

## General Preferences

The General Preferences screen is the default. When you first enter the screen it will look like this:-

## Preferences

### General Preferences:

Main theme: |
Help theme: |

| Enable welcome screen
| Confirm expunge
| Confirm logout
| Use persistent marks (slower, sometimes useful)
| - Zoom automatically after search
| - Unmark messages after aggregate operation

## The individual preferences

In the screen above the Webmail default preferences are shown.

- Main theme and Help theme set the colours that are used for the main Webmail pages and the help text pages respectively.
- Enable welcome screen controls whether or not the initial screen "Welcome to the Webmail Service" is displayed when you log in.
- Confirm expunge - if this is checked then attempts to expunge messages will generate a screen asking you to confirm or cancel.
- Confirm Logout - if this is unchecked then selecting "Logout" on any screen will log you out immediately, otherwise you will see a screen asking you to confirm or cancel your logout.
- Use persistent marks - The Webmail default is to use non-persistent marks. This means that while you can mark more than one message on a screen you must take action on the marked messages, for example copying them all to a folder, before you move to another screen. If you change to another screen, for example listing the next screenful of messages, the marks are not retained.
  If you enable Use persistent marks then each time you mark a message a connection is made to the Webmail server. Because of this interaction with the server working with persistent marks is slower and is only recommended if you are working over a fast connection, for example within the University. Using persistent marks you can work on a whole mail folder rather than just the current screenful of messages. If this option is enabled then the following options can also be used:-
  - Zoom automatically after search controls what happens with the results of a search on a mail folder. If this option is selected then, as well as the messages being marked, the mail folder listing changes to show just the selected messages.
  - Unmark messages after aggregate operation controls what happens after an action has been taken on a group of marked messages, for example saving them to another mail folder. If this option is checked then, on return to the mail folder listing, the mark is removed from the relevant messages.