A number of people now believe that the new Entourage is significantly better than Mail.app.

Smallerdemon adds himself to that list, writing a five part series comparing his experiences of using Mail.app to life with Entourage.

The verdict: “Mail.app was given a good, fair shake I think, but Entourage’s interface and features drew me back.”

Part one addresses the new features in Entourage 2004 11.2.3 like Spotlight and sync support.

Parts two and three consider how the interface of Entourage is nicer than Mail’s.

In parts four and five he talks about how the Project Center is one of the key things that drew him back to Entourage.entourage, mail.app, apple mail, interface, project center, spotlight, isync

A month ago Joshua Bryant posted a mock-up of Mail.app with an Outlook / Entourage preview pane on the right.

Scott Dunlap sends in another mock-up:

Click for the full-sized image.

He writes of Joshua’s: “I think he made it too Entourage-like by making messages 2 lines. That’s probably needed for laptop usage, but this is what I want.”

Which one would you prefer if — entirely hypothetically — a clever developer were thinking of producing a hack to do this? Or would you not touch either one with a ten-foot pole?mail.app, apple mail, hacks, interface, GUI, entourage, outlook, preview pane, mock-up

User reports on the beta version of Microsoft‘s Hotmail replacement, Windows Live Mail, are beginning to filter out. It is part of a wider online revamp by Microsoft called Windows Live.

You can see some pictures of the interface on Vinny Carpenter’s blog and at Tipmonkies.

Reviews range from “awesome” to “pretty good” to cautiously welcoming and mixed to damning (There must be one. I just can’t find it).

Two Mad Geeks compare it to Yahoo! Mail and Zimbra.

AddressBookQuickEntry is a stand-alone app that offers a streamlined and easier-to-use interface for entering contacts into Address Book.

The developer created it after finding that “Address Book’s interfac for creating and entering new information is clunky, accident-prone, and very non-Apple.”

The interface is certainly clean and clear:

Hitting “Add One” will quit AddressBookQuickEntry after creating the card. If you want to add multiple cards, use the “Add” button, then click the “Clear” button to clear the data and do it again.

It’s clever too: If you enter an organization name without a person’s name, the new card will default to a “Company” card.

The developer recommends putting AddressBookQuickEntry into your dock, next to your Address Book icon (although you could just as easily set “ABQE” as a match in QuickSilver).

The only thing I will miss is a URL field.

What I like about this especially is the option to add contacts to a group, something I often forget to do in Address Book’s own entry template. Later when navigating in Address Book by groups, I wonder where the person has gone!

AddressBookQuickEntry is freeware and is was available from the developer’s web site [DEAD LINK]. (UPDATE: 20 June 2009 The app is now available again at a new site ).

[I read about this in Ed Eubank's article on Address Book]Address Book, contacts, catds, interface, new contact, Quiicksilver, template, groups

So, you’ve replaced Mail’s Dock icon and got some shiny matching new mail badges, but you are still thirsting for more Apple Mail interface customization?

VK4DX shows you how to replace the inbox icons in Mail.app with the icons from Thunderbird, so that your Mailbox Drawer will look like this:

Wanting to make Thunderbird look like Apple Mail I can understand. This one, I’m still thinking about.

Of course, the real value of this tip is that it shows you how to replace tiff files inside Mail.app’s Resources folder.

Using this method, you are not restricted to changing the icons to Thunderbird ones. You can use any image you want:

icons, hacks, interface, mail.app, apple mail, mods, mailboxes

As well as changing Mail.app’s Dock icon, you can change the little red “unread mail” bubbles.

The result looks like this screenshot below, sporting my own very elegant blue bubble.

Here’s how:

1. Quit Mail.
2. Open up your Applications folder in Finder and locate Mail.app.
3. Command-Click on Mail’s icon, and select “Show package contents”. Open the “Contents” folder and then the “Resources” folder.
4. Locate the four badge files – newmailbadge1&2.tiff, newmailbadge3.tiff, newmailbadge4.tiff and newmailbadge5.tiff – and make copies by Option-Dragging them to the Desktop (just in case and to return things to the default state if you want to later).
5. Replace them with four identically named files of your own.

   I’ve knocked up two quick and dirty sets in blue and green. You can probably roll your own nicer ones in Photoshop. Apple’s originals have a light shading in the bottom right-hand corner. There’s also a multi-coloured set on ResExcellence.

6. All done. Launch Mail and enjoy.

apple gui, apple mail, mail.app, notification badges, hacks, interface

When Tiger was released, Mail’s new interface was a shock to many people. New lozenge-shaped buttons appeared in the toolbar, which some thought were not only ugly in themselves, but out of step with the rest of Tiger’s interface. They wanted to wind back the clock, and return to the look of Apple Mail in Panther.

If the new look bugs you, three applications can return you to the Panther look. Mail Stamps will replace the lozenge-shaped buttons with the icons from Panther. An uninstaller painlessly returns Mail to the new look if you want to later. Running Mail Stamps turned my Mail’s appearance from this:

to this:

Cagefighter and Debuttonizer are two other apps that will do the same job. Both are freeware.

Mail Stamps 2.0.1 was released on 15 September 2005.
Mail Stamps 2.1 was released on 5 December 2005.

Updated 5 December 2005icons, mail.app, apple mail, lozenge-shaped buttons, panther, apple GUI, hack, interface