The Hawk Wings plugin and add-on list contains over 140 plug-ins, add-ons, scripts and utilities to make working with Mail.app, iCal and Address Book smarter, faster and better.

Today it gains a new section for Leopard Mail templates.

I’ve managed to round up 122 templates, including the 111 contained in Equinux’s shareware bundle. The others are all freeware and are themed for Christmas, sober business use, New Year’s and the birth of a baby girl (oddly missing from Apple’s default list).

If I have missed any, let me know.

Of course you can always “roll your own” which is more satisfying. Tutorials abound. See The Apple Blog , The Graphic Mac and the tutorial and templates at Technosanity .

I’ve also added Eaglefiler to the section on Archiving.

The plug-in list itself is sadly in need of revision.

Some plug-ins have disappeared, the development of some like the notification utility iNotify has been stopped so that they are not compatible with Leopard and others have moved around due to web site changes. And there are many more new utilities that I still haven’t added.

I’ll work through it slowly. Promise.

Related posts

• Plugin List update: 11 new entries
• Plugin and addon list updates
• Mail Scripts gets even more leopardy
• How Mail sucks (again), TUAW-style
• Hawk Wings Addon and Plugin List Update: 10 new entries

When Tiger came out, some people noticed right away that Mail.app no longer allowed itself to be launched in a hidden state. An AppleScript fixed the problem in 10.4, but it doesn’t work in Leopard.

Martin Patfield has created a fix for Leopard users who want to launch Mail but not see it.

Installing the app is easy, and follows the same procedure as the old Tiger fix. First you need to download it, and install it somewhere on your hard drive (in the Applications folder perhaps).

Open System Preferences and navigate to the Login Items tab of the Accounts Preference pane. Select the “Plus” button underneath the list:

Navigate to wherever you saved the “Launch and Hide Mail.app” app and add it:

There’s only one problem. It doesn’t work. It launches Mail.app alright, but doesn’t hide it. At least, for me it doesn’t, although you may have better luck. I noticed that 98 people have downloaded it from MacUpdate and no one else has complained.

Try it out for yourself. It’s freeware (donations not refused!).

UPDATE: The developer has just sent me a tweaked copy of the app. Now it works! The entry on MacUpdate now points to the updated file.

Related posts

• Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates
• Letterbox (widescreen plugin) for Leopard
• Leopard Mail’s elegant exchange folder solution
• Launching Apple Mail in a hidden state
• Hiding to-dos in Leopard Mail

equinux has released a pack of 111 additional HTML stationery templates for Leopard Mail.

The templates comes with a (fairly basic) dedicated browser app which displays them sorted by keyword and allows you to search for particular themes.

Quick Look is integrated into the browser, allowing a quick, more detailed view of each template. It is also possible to launch a new Mail message from the browser.

A Window on the left displays the templates by theme and keyword:

Whatever one’s personal stance on HTML and Mail.app, there is no doubt people will use the new feature a lot. Here they will find templates that are are well-crafted and varied, and do provide clever alternatives to the defaults included in Leopard Mail. Most contain drag and drop image fields.

Here are two examples:

You can buy this stationery pack for 24.95 euros (USD 36) from the equinux web site .

Or you can make your own (see earlier Hawk Wings post ).

Related posts

• Photo Cluster: free stationary for Leopard Mail
• More Mail Stationery, for sale and for free
• Leopard Mail HTML Stationery Gallery
• Christmas Stationery for Leopard Mail
• SignatureProfiler for Leopard Mail

Adam Tow has produced a plugin for Mail.app that offers an option for quickly filing messages.

It operates on the same principle as the QuickFile extension for Thunderbird and (for old-timers) the ’s’ keystroke in Pine (and maybe mutt too, unless memory fails me).

All you need to do is select the message to be filed. Press ⌘-9 or select “Move with MsgFiler” from the Message menu, and a dialog appears into which you start typing the name of the mailboxes while it matches what you type:

The down-arrow key selects the match and the message has gone, filed neatly away.

Alex King (WordPress developer and more ) raves about it. He says it’s

an absolute must have add-on for Mail.app users that file messages. Trust me, this puppy will save you serious time every day. Go download it now, then come back here and read more of the back story.

I’m in two minds.

Whether or not this is useful for you will depend on your workflow. Mail Act-on rules for filing can be executed with a single keystroke. They are much faster than this. But I have pretty much abandoned folders. “One archive to kill them all and let Spotlight (and MailTags) sort ‘em out” is now my motto. Mail Act-on is the faster filing solution for people like me.

Still, some people like folders. I had an email from a Hawk Wings reader just the other day asking how to file things quickly into his more than 1,000 folders. This may be the plugin for him.

MsgFiler is shareware (USD 8 for a limited time, normally 12) and is available from the developer’s web site .

Bonus historical appendix

The phrase “Kill them all and let God sort ‘em out” has its origins in the Crusades.

During the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 CE against the Cathar heresy in Southern France, the forces of mainstream Catholicism were besieging the city of Beziers, defended by Cathar heretics. Finally they breached the walls of the city and prepared to storm it.

The commander of the crusade, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, pointed out that not everybody in the city was a heretic, some of them were good Catholics, so how should they treat the inhabitants when they captured the city?

A monk who was actually present at the siege recorded the answer of the Papal Legate to the Crusaders and Abbot of Citeaux, Arnaud-Amaury, as Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet (”Kill them all. God will know his own.” ) The Crusaders followed his advice.

Wait a minute… Is this history or current affairs?

Related posts

• While I was busy…
• Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates
• MailRecent updated and plugged at Macworld
• Email Nirvana with MailTags and Mail Act-on
• WideScreenMail plugin gets two-line preview

I’d love to work in Apple Mail all day, but sometimes I need to take a break for word-processing, web browsing or blogging. Mail Appetizer is for those moments. Other notification add-ons (like MailUnreadStatusBar) will tell you discreetly in the menubar how many emails are waiting for you. Mail Appetizer takes a bolder approach. Whenever Apple Mail is not the active app, it brings your email to you in a splash screen as it arrives. Here is an example:

This plug-in installs itself in the the Preferences pane of Apple Mail. You can configure the mailboxes that it watches, the fonts it uses, the level of transparency in the notification window, and so on. The splash window itself can be re-sized, and contains four little icons at the bottom enabling you to view the message in Mail, mark it as read, delete it or dismiss the window.

Some people say that productivity is enhanced by limiting the number of times that you check your email. Once every hour, or every thirty minutes, they say. This plug-in won’t help you achieve that!

It is free (donations welcome!) and you can download it from the Bronson Beta web site.

Related posts

• Weekly Update
• MailUnreadStatusBar notification app goes Universal
• Mail Unread Menu: Menubar notification app gets smarter
• Tutorial for spoken Mail.app notifications
• Thunderbird, Growl and Getting Things Done