Hawk Wings » hack

Change Snow Leopard’s Mail Icon Back Again

Tim Gaden — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:12:22 +0000

Eventually, having changed Snow Leopard Mail’s icon to something you like, you might want to change it back to the default image—perhaps you’re tired of the new one, perhaps you need a vanilla Desktop for freelance work, or whatever.

It’s not too hard.

Find mail.app in the Applications folder, highlight it and open up its Inspector pane (⌘-I).

Then follow the first two steps in the first post to unlock and change the permissions. Then all you need to do is highlight the image in the top lefthand corner, and press the Delete key. The image reverts to the previous one.

Remember again to change the permissions back at the end.

Now it’s as if you never made the change:

[John in the comments points out how an earlier version of this post used a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Thanks!]
Apple Mail, mail.app, icons, stamp, hack, tweak, customize, tipsSimilar Posts:

40 new cartoon animal mail stamp icons

Tim Gaden — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:40:34 +0000

A Japanese graphic artist has created 40 mail stamp icons, featuring various cute animals.

He provides icons for two different coloured icons of an apple, a cat, a chicken, a cow, an elephant, a golden retriever, a hawk, a horse, a monkey hearing no evil, another speaking no evil and one seeing no evil, a husky, a ladybird, a poodle, a rabbit, the weirdest looking sheep I have ever seen, a snail, a snake and a tiger.

The collection also contains two icons of a “black guy”. Here’s a taste of the overall style:

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy, and fun.

You can get the icons from his web site .

I’ve added them to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which which now contains 507 mail stamp icons (assuming all the links still work).mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, animals, cartoons, tiger, chicken, hawk, monkey, stamp iconsSimilar Posts:

New Mail Stamp Icons: Simpsons, Mario Brothers, UK stamps

Tim Gaden — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:06:54 +0000

During my five months off, some nice new alternative mail stamp icons have appeared.

As everyone knows, changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy, and fun.

First up, seven icons from the Simpsons TV show (Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, Ruprecht, Bobo and a “Simpsonised” Scully):

You can get them from deviantART where westendgirl1984 posted them.

Other nice new icons include a collection of Super Mario Brother icons , a beautifully-made First Class UK postage stamp and a collection of mail stamp icons from the movie Ratatouille

Some of them are image files that need to be run through a converter like img2icns and some are icns files but need to be run through icon.cx’s icns2icon app in order for Finder to recognise them as icons.

I’ve added them to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which which now contains 467 mail stamp icons (assuming all the links still work).mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, charlie brown, linus, snoopy, peanuts, woodstockSimilar Posts:

Wide screen plugin for Leopard Mail released

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:38:43 +0000

Dane Harnett has released a widescreen plugin for Leopard Mail, which gives Mail.app an “Entourage” or “Outlook” look.

It is not as polished as Letterbox , the first and best of the widescreen plugins developed for Tiger Mail.

Aaron Harnly is working on the Leopard version , but if you really can’t wait, and plenty of people seem to think that this is the bees’ knees of email functionality, WideScreenMailPlugin will do the trick.

In essence it shifts the preview pane from the bottom to the right-hand side of Mail.app’s interface:

WideScreenMailPlugin is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .entourage, mail.app, apple mail, outlook, widescreen, hack, pluginSimilar Posts:

Good grief! Peanuts Mail.app icons

Tim Gaden — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:57:38 +0000

Hawk Wings reader RenÃ© Boekhorst sent me a nice collection of mail stamp style icons featuring the characters from the Peanuts.

They are not tilted at 11.7 degrees (more or less) like other Mail.app icons, but they are still sweet.

All your best friends are there — Snoopy, Linus, Schroeder and Lucy. Even people I can’t recall at all get an icon (who is Marcie?).

Here they all are:

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy.

Get them from Pixel Girl’s web site .

I’ve added them to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which which now breaks through the 450+ mail stamp icon barrier.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, charlie brown, linus, snoopy, peanuts, woodstockSimilar Posts:

Get nicer looking Thunderbird labels

Tim Gaden — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:12:44 +0000

Thomas McMahon has knocked out some styles for the “Stylish” CSS-extension that produce brighter, better looking labels in Thunderbird.

The Stylish extension is a user style manager: “Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript, and unlike other methods of using user styles, most styles take effect immediately.”

When you have installed Stylish, you can follow the instructions on Thomas’s web site to download some pre-made label styles that will turn your Thunderbird labels from this in to this:

And it’s not just a Mac-only solution as Thomas notes:

The new labels code has been tested in Thunderbird 1.5 and 2.0 on Mac and works great. It should work fine under Windows and Linux too.

thunderbird, mozilla, stylish, labels, CSS, hack, extension, not apple mail, not mail.app, emailSimilar Posts:

UNO 1.5: Mail.app’s good looks for every app

Tim Gaden — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:23:01 +0000

It’s almost eighteen months since I first posted about the noticeable “Rise and Rise of the Mail-like Look” in many apps. Yojimbo, SOHO Smart Notes, ecto and many more have since followed suit, so that Fraser Spiers’ “ExposÃ© confusion” is a greater danger than ever.

If you fancy an even more unified GUI across all your apps, UNO is the utility for you.

An updated version has just been released which brings the Mail-like look of a unified Toolbar/Titlebar and lighter metal look to all the windows in your system. Its aim is “to enhance aqua interface consistency, by making all elements look and feel as one.”

UNO 1.5 has been completely rewritten. Some annoying glitches (the QuickTime window, for example) are now fixed, and the developers have produced a wider range of skins for iTunes.

The app’s main interface offers a preview of how your system will look after applying the tweak:

Notice also the Uninstall button which allows you to unwind the changes easily if you want to return to vanilla Mac OS X.

In this version, Mail.app gets some special treatment. After applying UNO, the lozenge-shaped buttons are replaced with Safari- or Finder-like rectangular buttons and the unread mail icon is “aquafied”:

This is only an option though. If you like UNO’s consistent style and the default lozenged-up look of Tiger Mail you can choose that combination in the interface option drop-down boxes on the left of the main screen.

You can read more about UNO and view the entire 1.5 changelog on the developer’s web site.

UNO is free-ware (donations not refused) and is available from the app’s website .UNO, unified toolbar, lighter metal, apple interface, GUI, brushed metal, hack, tip, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts:

Bonanza! 110+ new mail stamp icons

Tim Gaden — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:34:54 +0000

The busy beavers at deviantART have been hard at it.

In the last month or so over 110 new mail stamp icons have appeared, covering everything from celebrities to musicians such as Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, ten rappers I’ve never heard of and Iron Maiden. Half-Life, Lost and the Citadel also get a look in.

Descriptions, a link and a sample of the contents in each set follow. (Hint: Read to the end if you are new to Hawk Wings for installation instructions.)

deviantART user hellhound has created three sets of replacement mail stamp icons.

The first set is a block buster, offering forty icons, including Jessica Alba, someone called Ambrosio, Eminem, three Elvis icons, Half-Life icons, Johnny Cash, Keira Knightly, Maggie Grace, Ray Charles and lots and lots of Scarlett Johansson:

The second set contains ten pieces of Iron Maiden artwork (album covers?):

His third set features thirty assorted celebrities — among them three Bob Dylan icons, Keeley, Lohan and Aguilera et al, two Veronicas icons and, of course, lots more Scarlett Johannson:

Another deviantART user karnakhan offers twenty more celebrities , five variations on each of four images, two of Elisha Cuthbert and two of Scarlett Johansson (who is going very well in the 2007 Mail stamp icon stakes):

Lastly, TheEnvyProject offers up ten rappers in two sets.

I’m jiggy wid it, but I don’t knows their names well enough to type them out. I think my younger brother may once have liked Tupac:

Some of these are PNG or ICO image files not ICNS icons. You will need to convert them using a tool like the excellent and free img2icns utility.

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy.

I’ve added them to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which gets quite a boost out of this post and now contains 444 different icons.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, jessica alba, scarlett johansson, bob dylan, elvis presley, halflife, rap artists, iron maidenSimilar Posts:

Mail stamp icons for Canada

Tim Gaden — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:36:39 +0000

Having seen the recent post on UK and USA Mail Stamp icons, Jesse Schooff emails to share a Mail stamp icon for Canada.

He writes:

Antony Ellam’s USA and UK stamps made me envious, so I made a shiny new mail icon for myself using one of our nice Canadian stamps. As per Antony’s convention, the postmark has been changed to Markham, Ontario, where Apple Canada is located. It looks very nice in my dock so I figured I’d share it.

You can download the icon from Hawk Wings.

There is also a Canadian stamp in the “Flags of the World” Mail stamp collection.

As I posted long ago, every Mail user needs to feel grateful towards Canada.

Due to some bizarre operation of Chaos Theory (Wikipedia ), people steeped in maple syrup, lacrosse, mounted policemen, French, the Barenaked Ladies and beaver tails are particularly good at producing top quality Mail.app plugins.

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy.

I’ve added it to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which now contains 332 different icons. With glowing hearts we see thee rise.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, UK, Royal Mail, USA, stars and stripesSimilar Posts:

Frank Zappa Mail stamp icons!

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:08:09 +0000

I’m too young to remember Frank Zappa (Wikipedia ), but funky older people tell me he was very cool.

The names of his children only hint at the depths of his creativity: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen.

Duncan Moran thinks Zappa is great too. He has created two Frank Zappa Mail stamps icons using a mail stamp icon template posted a while ago on Hawk Wings:

Changing Mail.app’s Dock icon is easy.

I’ve added them to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icon list, which now contains 331 different icons. Gag me with a spoon.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips, UK, Royal Mail, USA, stars and stripesSimilar Posts: