Opera is not a good IMAP client, part 2

I detailed with problems I've found with Opera as an IMAP e-mail client, basically that it doesn't refresh the IMAP folders (not for me, not for quite a few people according to the forums, may be related to particular IMAP mail servers). This means that you don't know whether you have new mail or not.

One way to refresh your list of IMAP messages in Opera is to close it down and start it up again. The alternative is to

• make sure your IMAP account is configured to "Include this account when checking manually";
• from the menu, select "Tools | Mail and chat accounts...";
• select your IMAP account in the "Manage accounts" dialog and press "Edit...";
• now just close the "Account Properties" dialog by pressing OK;
• close the "Manage Accounts" dialog;
• press the "Check/Send" button in the "Mail" sidebar.

Not ideal, but quicker than stopping and restarting Opera. That still leaves open the question of how you know when to check for new mail. I have a few work-arounds, none of them great:

• if you have Webmail for your account and it auto-refreshes, keep it open so that you know you have new mail;
• if you can connect from your PDA/phone to your e-mail account, and it refreshes properly, use that to see when new mail has come in (I use my Nokia E61 for this, and it flashes a light when new mail comes in);
• if your mail service provides an Atom/RSS feed (as Zimbra does), you can subscribe to that feed in Opera. Set it to update every 5 minutes, and you have a reasonable indication in Opera itself of when you have new mail.

These are just work-arounds, but they do make life a little easier if you have Opera IMAP issues, but aren't quite ready to switch to something else for your e-mail.