Simple mail program for Mate

[john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org]

Hello,

I've been using fetchmail and mutt at the command line to handle mail, but this leaves something to be desired if the mail is html or containg links. 
It would be nice to have something like this in Mate. I've tried Thunderbird on Windows, but it tries todo much more than I want, and i find it confusing. 
I would like something simple like fetchmail-mutt in a GUI environment that handles html and links in 
firefox.

How do I set html files to open automatically in Firefox?

Thanks,
John

-- 
John J. Boyer
Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
Status: Company dissolved but website and email addresses  live.
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Mission: developing assistive technology software and providing STEM services 
        that are available at no cost