MailFX: New Mail Notifier for Mail.app
MailFX is a new notification utility for Mail.app that displays a Quartz Composer animated graphic on the Desktop when new mail arrives.
This is the sort of thing that will please people looking for a notification utility between the complete pop-up MailAppetizer offers and the minimal approach of menubar utilities like MailUnreadStatusBar.
It installs itself as a classic bundle in your Mail Directory, with its own preference Pane in Mail.app’s Preferences:
Here you can select which of the included graphics you want it to display, how long it should display and how transparently. It can also play a sound when the notification is shown (Nostalgic readers should check out the Eudora new mail sound in the dropdown box).
You can also opt to reveal Mail.app when you click on the notification.
The plugin crates a rule that controls which emails will trigger a notification. By default it is set to trigger for all new mail:
Obviously, tweaking the rule can reduce this and make the alerts more useful (for example, set the rule to trigger only on emails from your work account and not emails from your blog, or only from your boss, or whatever).
In addition, it claims to restore the ability to hide Mail.app on start-up, a feature broken in Leopard (and Tiger too, IIRC).
MailFX is freeware and only works with Leopard Mail. It’s available from the developer’s web site 
Excursus: An Ethical Blogging Dilemma
Every now and then an app or plugin comes along that sharpens the difference between being a journalist and a blogger. The bouncy, bouncy notification madness of NotifX was just such an app. This one is another.
When you are a journalist, you just write what your editor tells you to, and don’t ask (too many) questions. And then you get a paycheck in the mail.
When you’re a blogger, it’s more complicated (for one thing, there are no paychecks).
On the one hand, you want to be comprehensive. That’s the point of the blog. On the other hand, there’s the question of good taste. The blog is “mine” in a way that the IT articles I once wrote are not. To be honest, this utility offends my aesthetic sensibilities. I would rather cut my heart out with a teaspoon than use it.
To post or not to post?
I resolve this dilemma as follows: Smack myself on the back of the head for being a snob, and post.
Tags: a question of good taste, animation, anti-productivity applications, Apple Mail, mail.app, notification, notifx, plugins, quartz composerRelated posts
July 8th, 2008 at 1:11 am
You are not a snob, this utility is really… really not ‘Apple’.
We don’t think any less of you for blogging about it though.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:21 am
I agree that the aesthetics of this plug-in are pretty heinous. In today’s computer grx era, this looks like it was designed in 1985.But it’s still somewhat of a cool idea.
This reminds me of every movie where the main character sits down at his computer and the whole screen is playing some sort of cutsie animation that says, “You’ve got new mail!”.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
You should put disclaimers at the top of the articles. Impatient as I am, I nearly downloaded the application before reading to the end of the article. Only a glance at the screenshot you kindly provided made me think twice.