Hawk Wings » badges

MailBadger 0.3: Dock Icon Badge Bonanza

Tim Gaden — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:24:00 +0000

MailBadger is a nice little plug-in that offers the ability to create multiple counters on Mail.app’s Dock icon. Hawk Wings has covered it before.

It adds a pane to Mail’s Preferences with options to choose the colour, shape (standard “starburst”, heart, star or circle) and font of additional counters displaying the emails in particular accounts or folders:

Earlier this month, the developer updated it. The new version (0.3) is Leopard only (earlier versions still work in Tiger) and offers a number of enhancements. First, it provides a proper uninstaller, which will please people who are nervous about adding plugins and whatnot to Mail and not being able to get rid of them again.

Secondly, it now respects customised Mail.app icons. Earlier version reverted to the default icon when extra counters were added. Now it draws them on top on whatever icon you have in Mail’s application bundle — good news for tweakers like me.

Thirdly, it now offers options to count the unread, read or all messages in a particular account.

Unlike Dockstar and Docktopus, MailBadger is freeware. The developer’s site is down for renovation, but this link from MacUpdate worked for me.mail.app, apple mail, plugins, dock icon, badges, productivitySimilar Posts:

Mail Badger 0.2: Extra smart badges for Mail

Tim Gaden — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:23:54 +0000

Mail Badger offers users the ability to set more than one new mail badge on Mail.app’s Dock icon.

It is cheaper and more flexible than DockStar, although the eye-candy is not quite as well developed.

Mail Badger installs itself as a bundle in your ~/Mail/Bundles folder. (Uninstalling it again is as easy as deleting the Mail Badger.mailbundle file from that folder.)

Once installed, new badges are created in Mail Badger’s preference pane within Mail’s Preferences:

Options are provided for the shape of the new badge (spiky or smooth circle, star or heart, or you can add your own images), its size and colour and for the size of the text on each badge. You can also choose where to place it on Mail’s Stamp icon.

The count for each new badge is controlled by the user-customizable rules that operate very much like the Mail’s native rules. Here is the combination that gives me instant notice of the new mail from my wife in a pink love heart:

Beautiful!

New mail from my boss also strikes my eye at once with a black star badge:

You can probably think of even better uses for the extra mail badges in your own context.

You can also use Mail Badger as an easy way of changing the existing single “spiky circle” mail badge, giving it a different shape, size or colour.

Mail Badger is donation-ware and available from the developer’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, notification, dock, badges, roll your own, tips, pluginsSimilar Posts:

DockStar 2.0: A fistful of notification badges

Tim Gaden — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:28:12 +0000

A new version of Dockstar, a utility that offers super-charged notification badges for Mail.app’s Dock icon, has been released.

Dockstar installs itself as a plugin with options in Mail’s Preferences that let you assign up to five different notification badges. You can choose different badge shapes, set the size of each badge and select the colour you want for each mailbox.

The result is a riot of notification badges, undeniably more colourful and possibly more informative:

The new version adds support for nested mailboxes and the ability to set the counter for unread, flagged, junk, or total messages:

It also offers the option to play a sound when each the count increases for each badge and comes with a screensaver and Dashboard widget.

DockStar is shareware (USD 8). A demo version is available from the developer’s web site .

[Thanks, Tyler]mail.app, apple mail, notification, badges, Dock, widget, pluginsSimilar Posts:

Docktopus 1.0.2: Mail badges everywhere!

Tim Gaden — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 13:55:07 +0000

Docktopus is an app that allows you to place “Mail.app-style” badges on a number of Dock icons.

The available icons range from disk and memory usage badges for each app to app-specific badges like an iCal events badge.

Badges can be dragged onto Dock icons from the app’s badge interface:

Two of the badges — the Mail badge and iCal events badge — double as notification screens.

The Mail one offers a smoked glass listing of unread emails by sender, topic and account:

The updated version released today includes a number of bugfixes and adds support for Entourage 2004′s Dock icon.

MacWorld gave Docktopus a “Best of Show 2006″ award. It is shareware (USD ) and is available from the developer’s web site .badges, mail.app, apple mail, dock, icons, notification, ical, entourage, docktopus Similar Posts: