One reason for the latest pause on Hawk Wings is the new Zimbra test server at work.

Finally, work’s steam-powered SquirrelMail web interface is set for replacement with Zimbra, ushering in a Brave New World of Blazing Collaborative Productivity.

As a “fairly knowledgeable amateur” the IT Department has given me the job of trying to break it by doing stupid things. I haven’t succeeded yet.

Webmailer offers a way to remove one of the annoyances in using a web-based email service. It lets you set Zimbra (or Joyent’s webmail or Yahoo! or Roundcube or whatever) as the default email client, so that clicking on an email address opens a new message in the web-based interface of your choice.

After installing it, you need to add Zimbra to its list of options.

The string that works for me is:

https://SERVER/zimbra/mail?view=compose&to=[to]

Click a mailto: link and, as if my magic, Zimbra makes you a new message:

Nice.

Also nice are Zimbra’s new filing and tagging keyboard shortcuts, which make leaving Mail.app (temporarily) less of a wrench. By allocating numbers to the most-used tags and folders, it is possible to get close to the Nirvana that only a Mail.app GTD nut truly knows. mail.app, apple mail, GTD, Zimbra, webmail, default email client, productivity

Sarah sounds off in the uk.comp.sys.mac Usenet group:

Could someone please explain to me (if, indeed, it can be explained) why one has to go through the palaver of setting up one’s email account in Mail.app in order to be able to change the global email preference to the application of one’s choice?

Okay, I can see it from one pov, in that a new user, getting hold of a Mac for the first time, will set up Mail.app and then change to something else if their needs change but, as a ‘seasoned’ user, I resent having to wait 10-15 minutes (and that really is the total amount of time it takes) whilst it queries my ISP’s servers.

I’ve always felt there should be an (additional) option to do this in the Sys Prefs somewhere, though I’m damned if I know where, maybe as a separate section?

Fair enough. It is the kind of propriety behaviour that one expects from another large software company.

Still, utilities exist that can change the default email client without opening Mail.app at all. They also allow users to set a different default email client quickly, which is useful if you need to switch from one client to another. Or if you just like to. (There are people like that.)

IC-Switch is a menubar-based solution which provides a drop-down menu for setting a default email client, Web browser or news reader in one click:

It’s a bit long in the tooth (last update 2003) but gets the job done.

More Internet is a donation-ware System Preferences pane that manages a large number of helper apps for various internet protocols, including “mailto:” links:

Webmailer is another Preferences pane. Designed to set a webmail service like Gmail or Yahoo! or whatever as the default client, it also lists Desktop clients and allows one of these to be set as the default:

Webmailer is freeware.

It’s not the easiest of work-arounds. You need to find, download and set up some of these options, but during that time you get space to think carefully about whether you really want to use some other email client. Some people believe that Mail.app’s few peccadilloes are far outweighed by its many charms. tips, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, default email client

One common complaint made against Mac OS X is the need to open Safari to set a default browser and to open Mail to set a default email client.

It feels like an unnecessary “Microsoft-like” proprietary tie-in.

A LiveJournal user asked recently if there is a way to avoid this. And there is, as one of the comments on the post points out.

RCDefaultApp is a System Preference Pane that allows you to set you default apps for browsing and email, for URLs, MIME types, file extensions and more:

RCDefaultApp is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .default email client, mail.app, apple mail, safari, system preference pane, RCDefaultApp, setting defaults

Gmailto No. 2 is a little app that allows you to set Gmail as your default email client in Mail.app, so that any email link you click opens a new email in Gmail’s web-based interface.

Download it, put it wherever you like and then open Apple Mail’s General Preferences. Select Gmailto (2) from the list like this and you’re all done:

As you can see from the screenshot, two Gmail notification utilities — GmailStatus and GmailNotifier — allow you to do the same thing, but if you don’t want to use either of them, this little app will get the job done.

It’s donation-ware and available from the developer’s web site .Gmail, default email client, mail.app, apple mail, mailto: links, notification, GmailStatus, GmailNotifier, email, web interface