We want to let everyone know that we are extending the Pre-Registration offer again. We’ve been hard at work over the last week and half adding in the remaining features that the first two betas were lacking.

As a result, and since we decided to take the extra time to implement these features rather than release another build last week, we’re extending the pre-registration.

We want to let everyone know that we are extending the Pre-Registration offer to August 18th. While tremendous progress has been made in the last couple of weeks, in terms of adding both features and polish, there’s still too many things left to do to warrant ending the pre-registration on the 11th.

The good news is, this week will see some significant updates to Odysseus that should make some serious headway toward closing the gap to 1.0 Final...

We’re pleased to announce Odysseus 1.0 Beta 2! Here’s a list of what’s new in this build...

What’s Improved:

• Improved Search (Fixed an issue that could lead to duplicate results)
• Improved HTML Email (Fixed multiple issues that could cause malformed HTML emails to crash Odysseus)
• Fixed Unrecoverable Error on Check
• Improved Compatibility With Yahoo! / AT&T/ SBC
• Fixed Tab Order on Message Composition Window
• Fixed Tab in Message Body on Message Composition Menu (No longer tabs back to header fields)
• Improved Mailbox Menu (New mailboxes show up immediately)
• Improved Transfer Menu (New mailboxes show up immediately)
• Streamlined Account and Account Extras Preferences
• Improved Incoming & Outgoing Port Selection (Odysseus will not automatically select ports based on user input)
• Approximately 1 dozen minor bug fixes

What’s left to do? There are a number of features left to implement... although in comparison to what’s been do so far, they’re relatively minor features. These include Timed Sending and Receiving, Printing, Delete Messages From Server options, etc. In addition to those features, some existing features, such as Preferences and Importing, need to be improved and expanded. Aside from that however, the majority of the remaining time will be spent fixing bugs, improving performance, and generally enhancing the application as much as possible.

What, though, if a feature you’re accustomed to from Eudora® doesn’t appear to be making it into Odysseus 1.0? Not to worry. As we stated last year when we first announced our plan to develop Odysseus, our primary goal for 1.0 was simply to duplicate the most common functionality in Eudora®, with the more advanced features and abilities coming in subsequent releases. So if a particular feature isn’t in 1.0... look for it in 1.0.1. If it’s not in 1.0.1... look for it in 1.0.2. If it’s not in... well you get the idea. With Odysseus under active development, if something you like is missing, it’s only a matter of time before we get it added in. And more often than not, it’ll be added in sooner rather than later.

What about IMAP? At present, there are two things to remember about IMAP in this build...

1. When setting up an IMAP account, Odysseus will (like most IMAP clients) create a local copy of whatever mailboxes are residing on the server. Once the email has been retrieved, there is no way to manually move a message out of those mailboxes, whether it be into another IMAP mailbox, or a local non-IMAP mailbox. This ability will be enabled in Beta 2.
2. Although there is no way to manually move a message out of an IMAP mailbox, if you have a filter setup to do it, Odysseus will successfully move the message in question to the assigned mailbox. Per the IMAP specification, Odysseus will then REMOVE the message from the ONLINE IMAP MAILBOX. This is in stark contrast to how Odysseus currently handles POP3 email, as Odysseus NEVER deletes email that it has retrieved from a POP3 account... and will not even feature that option until 1.0 final. Unfortunately, due to the inherent differences between POP3 and IMAP, it was necessary to build this functionality in from this stage.

In case you missed them, the Download Links are located here...

To discuss this build, please see this Forum Posting...

We want to let everyone know that the window to Pre-Register Odysseus for $19.95 officially expires 12:00 AM August 11, 2008. Starting 12:01 AM August 11th, Odysseus will be the standard $39.95. Given that we’ve said from Day One that pre-registration would be available until 1.0... well... we’ll let you come to your own conclusions about that...

In all seriousness though, we would like to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who pre-registered Odysseus. By helping to support the project early on, you helped to reinforce what we were counting on... that the market for a Eudora® style email client is alive and well!

Let the countdown begin to 1.0 Final!