The Hotmail plugin HTTPMail has been updated to work with 10.5.3.

This plugin won’t work with all Hotmail accounts, only older ones. But in a clever move it tells you whether it works or not. Either it does, or it gives an error message saying that the account needs to be updated to Hotmail Plus (in which case, see Gmail )

From the FAQ and readme notes included in the disk image, it seems that there are currently two kinds of Hotmail accounts, pre-WebDAV ones (really old), WebDAV ones (less old). I think I read somewhere that 2004 is the magic date.

In any event, as Hawk Wings readers know, all Hotmail accounts will soon (but not as soon as 30 June) become DeltaSync accounts.

In the meantime, if your Hotmail account is old enough, this may be the solution for you.

I could only find an older version, 1.49, on the plugin’s sourceforge page . The most recent one is available from MacUpdate though.

[I should confess that I don't have a Hotmail account and--in breach of the usual Hawk Wings policy--haven't tested this for myself.]

Related posts

• The Death of Hotmail for Mail.app users and a new solution
• Reprieve: Hotmail for Mail.app not (quite) dead
• HTTPMail returns for Leopard: Hotmail in Mail
• Webmailer: Easily set webmail services as your default mailer
• Mail Forward 3.1.1.b1: Reading your webmail in Mail.app

Well, who would have thought? News of Hotmail’s death for mail.app users is exaggerated.

Microsoft has relented and deferred the transition from WebDAV to its own DeltaSync standard. This means that Mail.app users with HTTPMail and MacFreePOPs plugins won’t be cut off on 30 June after all.

After listening to customer feedback from the original accouncement, Microsoft told its users “it became clear that you needed additional time to evaluate alternative solutions”.

Still, this only postpones the executioner’s axe. Don’t fritter away all the extra time Microsoft has given you in making a decision.

With apologies for any distress.

[Via The Fastmail.fm Weblog ]

Related posts

• The Death of Hotmail for Mail.app users and a new solution
• Webmailer: Easily set webmail services as your default mailer
• Mail Forward: AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! to Apple Mail
• Mail Forward 3.1.1.b1: Reading your webmail in Mail.app
• MacFreePOPs 2.0: Webmail plugin gets auto-updates, goes almost universal

UPDATE: Not quite as bad as it sounds — See later post.

In April Microsoft announced that it would be terminating WebDAV access to its Hotmail accounts at the end of June this year and replacing it with a proprietary service of Microsoft’s own creation (DeltaSync).

This is bad news for Mail.app users with Hotmail accounts, who have been using utilities like HTTPMail and MacFreePOPs to access their email. After 30 June, they won’t work. (There are reports that 10.5.3 has broken HTTPMail for some users, merely hastening the inevitable).

For those unwilling to let go their Hotmail email address, another solution beckons. While the plugins might not work any more, a web-based service is offering the same function.

IzyMail , so it claims, “enables you to access webmail from major providers such as AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, Windows Live, Fastmail or Gmail with any eMail application”. It even has a special page on setting up Hotmail on the iPhone.

It provides users with incoming and outcoming servers that can be plugged into Mail.app’s Accounts preferences. IzyMail does the heavy-lifting behind the scenes, and delivers fresh Hotmail into your Inbox via POP.

It offers free accounts (with some limitations) and a paid option (c. USD 18/year):

Or perhaps it’s time to take another look at Gmail.

Related posts

• Reprieve: Hotmail for Mail.app not (quite) dead
• Mail Forward: AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! to Apple Mail
• Mail Forward 3.1.1.b1: Reading your webmail in Mail.app
• MacFreePOPs 2.0: Webmail plugin gets auto-updates, goes almost universal
• MacFreePOPs 1.6

Daniel Parnell has released an initial Leopard-friendly version of HTTPMail (1.50), a plugin for Mail.app that fools Hotmail and MSN web-based email accounts into downloading POP emails into Mail.

It basically does the same thing as MacFreePOPs, now also released for Leopard.

The plugin comes in a disk image with an installer and a detailed PDF on how to use it.

Daniel provides a handy list of how far the Leopard development has come:

He also outlines how to set up a Hotmail account in Mail.app using the plugin. He reminds users that older free Hotmail and MSN accounts will probably work but that newer one may need to be upgraded to Hotmail Plus .

HHTPMail is freeware and available from Daniel’s web site (but not yet from its sourceforge page ).

Related posts

• httpmail 1.49: Hotmail plugin finally universal
• AppleScript to fetch Hotmail in Mail.app
• Webmailer: Easily set webmail services as your default mailer
• Webmail plugins for Mail.app: The current state of play
• The Death of Hotmail for Mail.app users and a new solution

httpmail, a plug-in for Apple Mail that allows you to fetch emails from a Hotmail server, has been updated again.

The new version fixes the problem with the “Add Account” assistant. It also switches the help documentation to PDF and includes a few other minor tweaks.

You can get httpmail, which is freeware, from its Sourceforge web page or via this MacUpdate link.

Two other Mail.app add-ons, MacFreePOPs and Mail Forward, also make it possible to use Apple Mail for your Hotmail (and for many other web-based email services as well).

Related posts

• The Death of Hotmail for Mail.app users and a new solution
• Reprieve: Hotmail for Mail.app not (quite) dead
• HTTPMail updated for 10.5.3
• HTTPMail returns for Leopard: Hotmail in Mail
• Why do people call it “Mail.app”?

The 10.4.3 upgrade broke the httpmail plug-in for some people. A new version of the plug-in, which allows users to download their MSN and Hotmail emails into Apple Mail, has been released which fixes the problems some people were reporting.

And even if it doesn’t, a user has posted a work-around on httpmail’s Sourceforge bugs report page:

If 10.4.3 isn’t letting you install the plugin fill in all the details as usual but when you get to the incoming server box (normally where it freezes up) just enter hotmail and NOT hotmail.com click continue a warning will come up disregard and continue. When you have filled out all the details go into the preferences in mail to edit your hotmail account an just change the incoming server to hotmail.com and that’s it.

You can get the new version from its Sourceforge page.

Related posts

• The Death of Hotmail for Mail.app users and a new solution
• Reprieve: Hotmail for Mail.app not (quite) dead
• HTTPMail updated for 10.5.3
• HTTPMail returns for Leopard: Hotmail in Mail
• httpmail 1.47a