Aaron emailed me a screenshot of Mail.app taken from an episode of the TV show Weeds (Series 2, Episode 5), which you can see below. Another screenshot has been posted on Flickr. It seems to show a message preview pane in a drawer on the right.

I am suspicious. It looks like a photoshop job to me.

Tiger icons and Panther Mail drawers seem odd. The Apple menu seems to be missing, the app is identified in the menubar as “Email” rather than “Mail”, the Applescript menu is where it was positioned in Panther, whereas it is on the right in Tiger Mail. The Junk mailbox appears below Trash in Tiger Mail but these are reversed in the screenshot (and these cannot be reordered):

On the other hand, it appears to be a functioning app. I’ve not seen the episode, but Aaron tells me that “the cap comes from a longer sequence that shows the character browsing through an inbox full of mail, with multiple messages popping up in that pane.”

A puzzle. What do you think?

[Thanks to an Apple Mail demi-god for technical advice. You know who you are!]mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, panther mail, weeds, screenshot, photoshop, plugin

Merlin Mann, 43 Folders productivity bodhisattva, offers some tips on using Mail Act-on to increase productivity and handle the hackwork of filing and processing your emails.

He shows you how to make several clever Mail Act-on rules that interact with Mail’s smart folders and MailTags to create a workflow that works for him.

He also offers a sneaky tip for remapping the Caps Lock key to the Control key function. No more weirdly bent pinkies for him!

As Merlin says,

I’m really just scratching the surface on what you can do with Mail Act-On — I’m sure there are power users out there who are doing much sexier stuff with it — but I wanted to make sure people know that this is most definitely not just for geeks and high-volume email users. In my opinion, this is functionality that should (and eventually will) be included as a stock feature in Mail.app.

mail.app, apple mail, tips, mail acton, plugins, productivity, workflow, rules

Scott Morrison has released a faster, smarter, more stable and slicker public beta of MailTags 2.0, Apple Mail’s premier productivity plugin.

Public Beta 2 tweaks the plugin’s main functions. In particular, it fixes an issue with large messages, in which MailTags sometimes duplicated the message instead of replacing it with a newly tagged copy.

Syncing is smarter and the plugin now preserves and works better with IMAP keywords on the server.

Its interaction with iCal has also been improved. Unicode characters are now supported in iCal items and calendars, syncing between Mail and iCal is better and you can now link in iCal’s URL field to emails without message IDs (like drafts and sent mail items).

An expanded series of preferences give users more control over how the plugin displays its information and over message colouring.

Lastly, the application of rules is more robust, especially when rules include a filing or non-MailTags action.

Overall, the most noticeable change is the plugin’s increased stability. It’s now rock-solid for me, and I hammer it pretty hard.

Scott is now beginning work on further features will debut in Public Beta 3. You can look forward to creating iCal events as well as to-dos, possibly the option of a horizontal layout for the MailTags pane and more.

You can get MailTags 2.0 Public Beta 2 from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a support forum for tips and help as well as information on how to save money by pre-registering for the final MailTags 2.0 release.

As regular Hawk Wings readers know, I love this plugin to death. Nothing has done more to revolutionise the way I use Mail than MailTags or increased its power as a tool for getting things done.mail.app, apple mail, plugins, mailtags, productivity, IMAP, ical, the ant’s pants

Every now and then, a ripple of user bookmarking on Del.icio.us throws up a useful resource. It did today.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has written a guide to using Mail.app with IMAP which everyone can download and enjoy.

It doesn’t reveal many “power user” tips, but covers all the basics very nicely, has good clear screenshots and contains a listing of Mail’s keyboard shortcuts in the back.

I’m emailing it to my mother-in-law as soon as I finish writing this post. mail.app, apple mail, tips, IMAP, MIT

Ryos has written an AppleScript that will move emails from a dedicated mailbox in Mail.app onto an iPod.

When you run the script for the first time, it creates a “MailPod” mailbox in Apple Mail. Move any emails that you want to take with you into that folder, run the script again and it will move them into a “MailPod” folder under the iPod’s Extras menu.

Works great.

Ryos’ script is a freeware alternative to shareware apps like iPDA and MailToPod (not for 10.4) which offer greater automation and features, but cost money.

You can get the script from Ryo’s web site .ipod, mail.app, apple mail, email to go, productivity, mobility

Brian W pointed me towards some more alternative icons for Mail.app.

They feature images of “Marianne” (Wikipedia ), the national emblem of France and the embodiment of liberty and reason.

Brian likes them he says because “Mail.app is easier to hit in the dock when it isn’t the same blue color as every other Apple application!”

French site Cocoricones provides two sets of these Marianne stamps, each in blue, yellow, red, green and purple, one set in a traditional style and one with a more avant garde flavour (naturellement!).

Changing the icon itself is easy.

I’ve added the collection to the list of alternative stamp icons for Mail.app, making a total now of 295.mail.app, apple mail, icons, stamp icons, hacks

Odissefs Pantazis-von zur Gathen (very cool!) has written an applescript that will request return receipts from recipients with email clients that can handle them.

Many people look for this if they are working in an Outlook world.

Odissefs’ script creates a new message in Mail.app, prompting you for the account you wish to use:

Then you compose the email as usual and send it off. If your recipient is using a compatible client, they will get a request to send back a read receipt, which then duly appears:

It is easier to set up than Joel Nelson’s script (see an earlier Hawk Wings post) although I have found it to be a little erratic. Sometimes the request for confirmation doesn’t come through to the recipient even when she or he is using Outlook.

You can find the script on the Apple Discussion Forums or on Ody’s web site .

Personally I am glad that Mail.app can neither send nor receive these things. Nothing annoys me more than people interrupting me to ask for a confirmation that I am reading their emails, when I am in the middle of reading them.

But if you go for this kind of thing or you are in a work environment in which they are required, you will like Odissiefs’ work.mail.app, apple mail, outlook, thunderbird, read receipts, applescript, scripts, plugins, productivity,