Growl 1.1.3 has been released, bringing with it the official Leopard-friendly GrowlMail Extra.

Long-time Hawk Wings readers will remember that a beta-version of the GrowlMail Extra emerged on the Internet late last year. This new release is the real thing.

The main Growl app gains a number of improvements, including the ability to show notifications in every one of Leopard’s Spaces, the option to set a unique sound for each app’s alerts, and some bug fixes.

GrowlMail itself has been rewritten to remove the conflict with Leopard, and can now be installed on other start-up volumes.

Likewise, GrowlSafari now works with Safari 3.0, and other Extras get bugfixes and enhanced compatibility with Leopard.

The alerts looks nice, and now seems to drag a picture from Address Book for the sender if one is available, but uses the default Mail stamp icon if not.

This screenshot features an “iPhonesque” display style from MacThemes.

GrowlMail adds a preference pane to Mail.app in which you can set the way it reports alerts for more than one new email, the mailboxes it should monitor and more:

Growl and its Extras are freeware and available from the Growl web site . growl, growlmail, mail.app, apple mail, notification, leopard, safari

Eagle-eyed Hawk Wings reader Dave Foshee emails to say that he has spotted a Leopard-friendly beta version of GrowlMail.

He found the link in a post on the Google Groups Discussion list for Growl.

The poster is offering it as a beta and asking for feedback on how well it works.

It works very well for me, so I encourage you to give it a go yourself, especially if you are looking for a slick, visual notification summary of your email.

Of course, you will need to install Growl first.

[Thanks, Dave!]apple mail, leopard mail, mail.app, growl, growlmail, leopard, notification, plugins

David Coffin has written a little applescipt that “mimics” the new mail notifications offered by GrowlMail.

When I first started using Mail.app, I loved the full-on “in your face” style of notifications offered by Mail.appetizer, GrowlMail and other apps. After a while I started to find them too distracting and stopped using them.

However, there are some emails that are worth getting distracted by — emails from your boss, from your partner, from your partner containing the words “This is your last chance”, PayPal notifications of donations to defray the running costs of Hawk Wings or whatever.

The alerts that the script generates look good. It even picks up my customised Mail stamp icon.

And because this is a script, you can attach it to a Mail rule that will alert you only when emails emails arrive that match those criteria (or more sensible ones of your own).

Setting it up is easy.

Just create a new rule in the Rules pane of Mail.app’s Preferences.

Set whatever conditions who want notifications for (the screenshot below will notify me of any email my boss sends me) and select “Run AppleScript” as the action.

Navigate to wherever you saved the script from David’s site, and select it.

All done.

Now I am much better placed to react quickly to anything my boss sends. So he knows that I am always focussed on his needs and not bunking off to write posts for Hawk Wings or playing Civ IV.

Sneaky, eh? Productivity at its best.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, applescript, notifications, growlmail, rules, tips

That’s it.

Get the new version (including the updated GrowlMail) from the Growl web site .

John Tangney tells the story of a possible plugin conflict between GrowlMail and PGP 8.x in Apple Mail and how he fixed it.