The owner of rtfa.net has posted a list of the things that are annoying, broken or just plain scandalous about Mail.app.

He is an unhappy Apple Mail user: “Well, if Thunderbird integrated with spotlight and OSX address book, it’d be a no-brainer. However, I’m entrenched.”

And life in the trenches with Mail.app is not good.

Three problems score the highest scandal rating — incorrect treatment of IMAP’s “seen flag”, the “lost message” problem and the “invalid pointer” problem.mail.app apple mail, bugs, problems, IMAP, flags, attachments, SSL, encryption, lost messages

The third-party Menubar utility for Google’s news reader, Google Reader Notifier, has been updated with a few nifty new features and the removal of a bug in its version check feature.

The new version (0.22) sports a new icon, adds an option to view the number of unread articles in the Menubar, and has a redesigned menu layout that matches the general Gmail Notifier style. It now also makes a sound (“ping!”) when new articles appear just like the Gmail notifier.

At the same time, a bug that prevented it from properly auto-checking for new versions has been fixed.

It’s not enough to tempt me away from the excellence of NetNewsWire , but it might help Google Reader users stay on top of things more efficiently.

Google Reader Notifier is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .google reader, gmail, news, RSS, menubar, notification, productivity

MailUnreadStatusBar, a discreet Menubar notification utility for Mail.app, has been released as a universal binary, which will run just as smoothly on Intel Macs as well as PPC ones.

Like Mail Unread Menu, MailUnreadStatusBar takes a low-key approach to notifications. Rather than popping up an alert screen as Mail.appetizer and GrowlMail do, it just keeps score in the Menubar, so that you can see how many unread emails you have without getting unduly distracted.

Its drop-down menu offers options to open, show or quit Mail and to perform an instant check for new mail.

It also lists the amount of unread mail in each of the mailboxes that you nominate in the app’s Preferences. Clicking on one of the listed mailboxes, opens that mailbox in Mail.app. (This helps me – a little – not to read Hawk Wings email at work).

The Preferences menu provides a variety of icons for the Menubar, the frequency with which to check for new mail and allows you to select which mailboxes the app should monitor (hold down the ⌘-key to select more than one):

A new option lets you choose just to have the number of unread messages displayed without any icon. This will please hardcore interface minimalists.

MaulUnreadStatusBar is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, notification, plugins, unread mail, productivity, universal binary, mail.appetizer

The promised new-look interface for .Mac Mail is here and it looks good.

A month ago Apple announced a new look for its webmail service, based on the look of Apple Mail, powered by Ajax and with some keyboard shortcuts à la Gmail thrown in.

In general, the announcement met with cautious welcome, although many wondered if it would be enough to stem criticism of Apple’s online offerings.

Now we can all see for ourselves.

The interface looks just like Mail.app except for an Address Book search field in the bottom left:

Preferences offer further options for two-pane or three-pane viewing, large or small mailbox icons, keyboard shortcuts or not, mailbox behaviours, number of messages to view at a time and more.

The most innovative new thing is the introduction of the single-letter keyboard shortcuts pioneered by the Gmail interface.

No doubt many people will find these more convenient that the multiple-keystroke combinations required in the Desktop app, both easier to remember and easier to execute.

Die-hards like me will find themselves pressing the Desktop combinations and wondering why nothing happens, but we will adjust.

Drag and drop is very smooth and welcome, especially as the webmail interface doesn’t allow for all the plugins one might otherwise use to make filing easier and quicker.

If you have a .Mac account, check in and test it out for yourself. Otherwise see Apple’s pitch on it. Is it all you hoped for?

[Derik DeLong - and just about everyone else - beat me to it]mail.app, apple mail, Dotmac, webmail, interface, gmail, keyboard shortcuts, apple

Mail keeps a list of all the email addresses for people you have emailed.

It doesn’t discriminate. Even the ones you typed in incorrectly get stored and will pop up in Mail’s auto-complete drop-down menu for ever after. That’s annoying and it slows you down.

It’s Spring in Australia, so I’ve been spring cleaning Mail (See “Spring cleaning to regain disk space”).

Cleaning out the Previous Recipients list is part of the drill. It’s a good idea to do this from time to time, not only to clean out the duds, but also because:

1. Apple Mail’s Junk Filter will not mark an email as junk if it comes from an address in your Previous Recipients list. Along with the Address Book, it functions as a de facto “white list”. Keeping it up to date helps Mail to find junk better
2. It’s quite fun to go through the list and wonder who all these people are that you have emailed at least once.

You can find it under the Windows menu.

It presents you with a list of the names, email addresses and the date of the last email sent:

I cleaned out 53 addresses this time around. I’m not sure if it actually speeds Mail up, but it feels faster and the annoying mistakes no longer appear in the drop-down list for me to wade through. mail.app, apple mail, previous recipients, spring cleaning, productivity, tips, junk

Every now and then I open up Thunderbird to remind myself why I don’t use it.

Because Mail Act-on doesn’t work in Thunderbird and the available quick-filing extensions like Nostagly aren’t quite as slick, I find myself doing much more dragging and dropping than I do in Mail.app.

A neat little tweak from Horst Gutmann makes it all easier by creating a bigger mailbox list and, hence, larger targets on which to drop the emails.

His tip changes the look of the mailbox list from this to this:

(Or, if you are not making a screenshot to demonstrate the difference, something in the middle perhaps).

You will need to add some text to your userChrome.css file, which you will find on your ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/ folder.

Open it up in your text editor of choice and add the following code:

(You might want to change the pixel size to something slightly more modest).

Save. Close. Open up Thunderbird and enjoy bigger targets and a list that is easier to read. thunderbird, mailboxes list, hack, productivity, drag and drop, filing, tips, userChrome.css

Carlo Gandolfi has developed a way to run Mail and Address Book on a memstick or USB stick, iPod or external drive.

It works as a shell script which opens the local copy of Mail using preferences stored in the external application bundle. The Portable Address Book works in the same way.

If you have a USB stick big enough, you can also store your Mail folder, com.apple.mail.plist and caches on it.

This means that take your Mail and contacts with you and get working on any Mac that has local copies of Mail and Address Book installed.

And there’s more….

However, Portable Safari, Portable Mail, Portable iCal, Portable Address Book and Portable iChat require a USD .99 donation before you can download them. Others like Portable Adium, Portable AbiWord and more are free. See the details and the scripts that makes it work on osxportableapps Sourceforge page .

The Free Open Source Mac User Group has made even more applications portable. Their stuff is free.mail.app, apple mail, address book, ichat, ical, safari, portable apps, memstick, USB stick