Leopard Mail’s stupid save attachments button
Pierre Igot takes aim 
at the behaviour of the Save button in Leopard Mail, with the rigour and vigour which are his trademarks.
In Tiger Mail, he points out, you could click on the button to bring up a “Save As…†dialog that offered a location for saving all the attachments in the message.
In Leopard Mail, however, you need to click-and-hold on the button in order to bring up an enhanced contextual menu with more options for individual attachments.
He calls this a bug rather than an improvement:
The simple and most obvious option, which is a single click on the button, no longer works—which does not make sense, because the button’s visual appearance suggests both a regular button that responds to a single click (like the “Quick Look†button next to it) and a button that brings up a pop-up menu (with the triangle). Besides, the tool tip clearly suggests that the button should respond to a simple click as well.
I’ve had more than one email from users who thought that the button was broken, because it did nothing when they clicked it., so Pierre is not alone.
Head over to Betalogue and read the whole piece.
Similar Posts:
- Quickly saving attachments in Mail.app
- Mail Attachments Iconizer: Toggling attachments on and off
- A feast of interesting macOSXHints Tips
- Five favourite time-saving Leopard Tips
- A modest Leopard Mail wish-list
Tags: Apple Mail, attachments, bugs, button, counterintuitive or what?, leopard mail, mail.app, Tiger Mail
November 29th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I disagree. My “Save”-Button works perfectly fine (Leo 10.5.1 German) and drops my attachment(s) to the Downloads-Folder – which is exactly what I expect that button to do.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Klaus, in that case the button shouldn’t carry the downward pointing arrow mark, which implies a drop down menu.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:47 am
I disagree as well. With a single click, the ‘Save’ button saves the file to my ‘Downloads’ folder. The folder then bounces on the dock, exactly as designed. I agree however that the drop-down arrow is a poor design choice.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Yes, the button works, both on single click (saves to Downloads folder) and on click-and-hold (that’s why the arrow is there). It’s OK with me.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:34 am
I have notice that Pierre often cites problems as being endemic to Leopard, but often turn out to be user error or misunderstanding, or some problem with his setup. He does find just enough UI gaffes to offset that tendency.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:50 am
This has been an annoyance for me as well. While I am coming around to liking the Downloads folder for Safari, it’s still an odd switch from Tiger. Since I don’t store anything long term in my Downloads folder, this represents multiple extra steps for me to move things to where they belong.
November 30th, 2007 at 5:33 am
He’s right – that’s a completely stupid implementation. Only this morning I hit it again and was surprised at hearing the drive do something and not know what had just happened. Then I remembered. Its idiotic – a button with a drop-down menu should pop-up the menu when you click it. And the default behaviour should be – where do you want to save it?
November 30th, 2007 at 5:55 am
I also have to respectfully disagree with Pierre and others. I think the design in Leopard works perfectly fine and is an improvement over the Tiger behavior.
I had absolutely no confusion when a single click downloaded the items to my Downloads folder. Nor was I confused by the little down-pointing arrow on the button indicating an extended click would display a menu with more options.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:11 am
It does need a GUI redesign. The triangle has to go and a gear icon and menu needs to be added. Not sure whether to add the gear to the save button or create a button with just the gear. Otherwise, I like it.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:44 am
I reckon it’s one of those implementations that’s actually confusing because of lack of feedback. It would be absolutely fine if it responded to the click with a short-timed notification that said, “All attachments saved to Downloads folder.”
If only Mail.app had built-in and customisable Growl notifications…
November 30th, 2007 at 11:47 am
…and while we’re on the subject of Leopard Mail’s ‘stupidities’, has anyone noticed that the ‘No Mail’ audio ping, after a Get Mail, has nothing to do with whether or not there’s mail in absolute terms; it pings after a short period of time, even if Mail is still checking! (In my experience at least)
November 30th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I have the same issue with Mail pinging on launch as Tycho has pointed out above – not sure if it’s widespread … Invariably I launch Mail, it makes an audible no new mail sound after a second, then checks for mail and shows I have new messages. The order of the audible feedback seems out of whack to me.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 am
I’m glad I read this thread, because I wasn’t aware that simply clicking the Save button actually saved it. I was under the impression that I needed to use the drop-down menu first. Much better.
Regarding Leopard’s Downloads folder: I dumped that immediately. I think it was a good thing for beginner who didn’t know they could create a folder in their Docs and point all applications to save downloads there (and then put a shortcut of it in the Dock). I further went and placed a separate “Mail Downloads” folder in my Downloads folder, simply to keep the clutter to a minimum and remember where things live.
I’m a just new convert from Entourage, and my list of Mail/Address Book irks is long. I won’t derail the thread, but I’ll just mention one:
1. Checking If They’re Already In Address Book. If I get an email from someone, I like to know if they’re already in my Address Book. In Entourage, you’d right-click, select “Add to Address Book” and if they were already in there, a window would pop up, saying, this already exists, would you like to add to it, or just open the contact. In Mail, there’s no such checking, so clicking on “Add to Address Book” can end up duplicating and triplicating what’s already there.
Oddly enough, sometimes a right-click on someone’s email address, who is already in ones Address Book, will bring up an “Open in Address Book” which is a very handy feature. However, it’s extremely inconsistent. My own brother’s emails don’t work like that. But odd companies, whom I rarely get email from, will show it.