Hunting around on DeviantART has turned up another ten icons.

The first is slightly racy, and an extra pleasure to feature as the creator used a previous Hawk Wings post (“Roll your own Mail stamp icon“) to make it.

“Sub-pop” says that the photo he used is called “chrome disguise”. Download it from DeviantART.

Another nine assorted mail stamp icons were posted by ZorgZ:

These are PNG image files not 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 now contains over 300 different icons. Knock yourself out.mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, tips

Robert Coleman has bravely made a commitment to compile and host the latest builds of Thunderbird with the patch applied that integrates with Address Book.

Many people hope that Thunderbird will one day support Address Book access, but although an Address Book patch has been created, movement on improving it or building into official Thunderbird builds has been slow.

In an email, Robert writes that he is now “hosting more up to date (ideally weekly) Universal Binary builds of trunk Thunderbird with the Address Book patch applied”.

The latest build on his site (3.0a1) was compiled on 6 December.

He also includes on his web page instructions and screenshots (and warnings and caveats) for adding the required preferences to Thunderbird’s pref.js file.

He warns that access to Address Book is currently read-only, that the code is a little unstable and that the build is not an official Mozilla one, so is not packaged with the usual Thunderbird branding.thunderbird, address book, hack, patch, universal build, email, mozilla

A quick cruise through deviantART tonight produced two new collections of mail icons.

The first is by far the better find.

This set of five black and white Bob Dylan Mail stamp icons is very cool. They come from a range of periods in the great man’s music wide enough to satisfy any fan:

I also came across a collection of six traditional letter and envelope icons that are perfect for that “Ye Olde Worlde” look:

(If you—like me—carry the secret shame of teenage years immersed in Dungeons and Dragons, you might like to go the full hog and use scrolls and tomes for your retro look. Or maybe not.)

These mail stamps are PNG image files not 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 both sets to the Hawk Wings Alternative Mail Stamps Icons list, which now contains 292 different icons. mail.app, apple mail, icons, dock icon, hack, bob dylan, ye olde worlde, tips

Several posters have pointed out that the Hawk Wings Mail Icons List is now out of date and that many of the links are dead.

I’ve gone through it tonight and tidied up the links. The implosion at ResExcellence.com hit the list especially hard.

As a result, 24 icons on the list are longer freely available. If you are desperate for one of them, drop me an email. I’ll probably get a copy to you if I am not too busy Getting (other) Things Done.

On the up-side, I found another ten assorted pastel-coloured icons:

They’ve been added to the list, making a total now of 281 alternatives to the default icon for Mail.

Changing the icon is easy.

Or get in touch with your artistic inner self and roll your own.mail.app, apple mail, icons, hack, mail stamp icon

Every now and then I open up Thunderbird to remind myself why I don’t use it.

Because Mail Act-on doesn’t work in Thunderbird and the available quick-filing extensions like Nostagly aren’t quite as slick, I find myself doing much more dragging and dropping than I do in Mail.app.

A neat little tweak from Horst Gutmann makes it all easier by creating a bigger mailbox list and, hence, larger targets on which to drop the emails.

His tip changes the look of the mailbox list from this to this:

(Or, if you are not making a screenshot to demonstrate the difference, something in the middle perhaps).

You will need to add some text to your userChrome.css file, which you will find on your ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/ folder.

Open it up in your text editor of choice and add the following code:

(You might want to change the pixel size to something slightly more modest).

Save. Close. Open up Thunderbird and enjoy bigger targets and a list that is easier to read. thunderbird, mailboxes list, hack, productivity, drag and drop, filing, tips, userChrome.css

The developer of the widescreen, 3-pane plugin for Mail.app, Letterbox, has been busy.

He has just released version 0.16, which offers an installer, a new icon, some visual enhancements and some minor bugfixes.

Running the installer a second time offers an “uninstall” option, which is handy for people who don’t like digging around in their Mail folder.

He has also written a FAQ, a future features list and a list of known bugs.

You can get the updated plugin from the developer’s web site .letterbox, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, widescreen, GUI, hack

Speaking of the Rise and Rise of the Mail-like Look, the GUI hack UNO can bring the unified Toolbar/Titlebar and lighter metal look to all the windows in your system. UNO’s aim is “to enhance aqua interface consistency, by making all elements look and feel as one.”

Here it is with (from the back), Mellel, a word processor, Apple Mail (Mail 2.0 with the odd new buttons removed), ecto and Script Editor:

UNO can be installed and uninstalled by running it from the disk image. You can see more screenshots and download the hack from UNO’s website.UNO, unified toolbar, lighter metal, apple interface, GUI, brushed metal, hack, tip