Organization This book is divided into two parts, with several appendices. The first part is a guided tour, which will explain how to use Evolution. If you are new to Evolution or to groupware in general, this section is for you. The second section, covering configuration, is targeted at more advanced users, but anyone who wants to change the way Evolution looks or acts can benefit from reading it. Typographical conventions In this book, we'll mark some words with special typography: Applications Commands you type at the command line Labels for buttons and other portions of the graphical interface Menu selections look like this: Menu Submenu Menu Item Buttons you can click Anything you type in Text output from a computer Words that are defined in the . We'll provide assorted bits of additional information in tips set off from the rest of the book, as well. Tip Tips and bits of extra information will look like this. Examples are also set off from the rest of the text. They look like this: Example Example This is what an example looks like. We'll provide examples for some of the more complicated tasks you might be performing. Lastly, we'll have warnings, in cases where you should be careful: Example Warning This is what a warning looks like. If there's a chance you'll run into trouble, we'll warn you beforehand. Additional Help Sources You can find additional help in three places. For information about command-line options, open a terminal window and type man evolution or evolution --help. For support, late-breaking news, and errata, visit the Ximian support center at support.ximian.com. What's New in Evolution &appversion; If you're already familiar with Ximian Evolution 1.2, there are a number of new features in this version. Most of the changes, however, have been made behind the scenes, as we moved to the GNOME 2 platform. Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange also has new features, described in . You can find a complete list of bugs fixed and features added in the Evolution release notes at the Ximian Developer Website. Some of the features include: Better Fonts Ximian Evolution &appversion; uses the same font smoothing technology as the rest of your GNOME 2 desktop. Cleaner Shutdowns We have fixed several bugs that caused Evolution to continue to occupy system resources when it was not running. Mail Composer HTML Improvements The message composer has continued to improve. New Graphics and Icons We've added new graphics and icons. Introductory Tips for Experienced Users This section has a few tips for experienced users of Linux or UNIX systems: Backups and File Locations To create a backup of your Evolution data, copy the ~/evolution/local/ directory to your backup disk. To access data you have backed up, use the Import tool to restore individual files as needed. Default Browsers To set the browser that opens when you click a link in an email, open the GNOME preferences tool (SystemSettings or gnome-control-center) and start the File Associations tool. There, look under Internet Services, select World wide web (http), and select the browser of your choice. If you wish to use a browser other than the ones suggested, you will need to enter the full shell command. For example you might use mybrowser "%s" to start the mybrowser program at the right page. Making Evolution Your Default Mail Client For GNOME desktops, you can set Evolution to be the default mail client, so that it opens when you click a mailto: link in web pages and help tools. To do that, open the GNOME preferences tool and start the File Associations tool. There, look under Internet Services, select Electronic mail transmission (mailto), and select Evolution from the drop-down list. For applications such as Mozilla and Netscape, which do not use the GNOME preference tools, you will need to find the protocol handler preference tool for that application and enter evolution "%s" as your choice for handling mailto links.