Hawk Wings » Mail 2.0

Tiger Mail skin for Thunderbird updated

Tim Gaden — Tue, 02 May 2006 12:48:18 +0000

Toyo Snow has updated his Tiger Mail theme for Thunderbird, which aims to give it the look of OS 10.4′s Mail.app.

The new version (2.1) uses system fonts for cross-platform compatibility and will now highlight a selected header.

In keeping keeping with its attempts to reproduce the Mail 2.0 look, it now follows Mail.app’s default behaviour of bolding new messages.

A number of other small display glitches have been fixed.

The end result is not an exact match:

You can get the latest version from the Mozilla Thunderbird Add-ons site .thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, mail 2.0, skins, themes, Tiger MailSimilar Posts:

Fix for AppleScript in Mail.app’s signatures

Tim Gaden — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:34:14 +0000

Zak Bedell has posted a patch for Mail.app that fixes the broken “applescriptability” of signatures in Mail 2.0.

Prior to OS 10.4, it was possible to set signatures by applescript, allowing for dynamically-set sigs containing system information, random quotes and so forth.

This patch restores that ability. In theory, it should allow you to run applescripted apps like Bushisms (random pearls of wisdom from George W. Bush) and possibly even MailTunes (currently playing iTunes track as signature).

I haven’t tried this out, but would be glad to hear reports from anyone who has.

UPDATE: The developer of MailTunes, Tomas FranzÃ©n, emails to confirm that MailTunes does work in Mail 2.0 after this patch is applied. Good news!Tiger, mail.app, apple mail, mail 2.0, applescript, signatures, hacksSimilar Posts:

Mail Archiver X: Archive and clean your emails

Tim Gaden — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:28:33 +0000

The last time I blogged about Mail Archiver X, it was not compatible with Mail 2.0‘s new file system.

A new version was released today which offers full support for Mail.app emails in 10.4, a new interface, support for Filemaker 8 and other improvements.

Mail Archiver X works with Mail.app, PowerMail, Eudora, Mozilla, Netscape, Thunderbird, the standard mbox format and Entourage.

Its functions are controlled by a main toolbar:

It archives your emails using a database called Valentina by Paradigma Software. The speed of this database and a reduced reliance on AppleScript make Mail Archiver X run faster than comparable apps, the developers claim.

Backup options include the ability to select with mailboxes are archived. The database can be exported in Filemaker, Text, Valentina or xml format.

It also also allows you to browse and search the email in the database.

Mail Archiver X’s main competitors are MailSteward and FastMailBase.

In contrast to these, Mail Archiver X promotes itself as “the only mail archival application, which also offers cleaning of mails”. This means the ability to strip HTML, control tags and various other characters out of your emails, so that only clean copies of the useful material are retained:

Mail Archiver X is shareware (USD 34.95), five dollars more expensive than Mail Steward but much cheaper than FastMailBase (USD 97).

Which one is the best? MailSteward offers more sophisticated searching. Mail Archiver X offers cleaning. It depends on your needs.

Mail Archiver X is available from the developer’s web site.Similar Posts:

iListen ScriptPak for Apple Mail 2.0

Tim Gaden — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:04:40 +0000

MacSpeech has released a ScriptPak for its iListen software that enables you to control almost every aspect of Mail.app with voice commands.

iListen is MacSpeech’s Dictation, Transcription, Editing, Formatting and Speech Navigation software. Among other things, with iListen “you can press buttons, control the mouse, navigate the Finder and File Dialogs, open and close files, print, etc… all by voice.”

It is not cheap. The most basic, software only option starts at USD 99, with many bundles available which include a microphone headset.

The Mail 2.0 scripts cover a comprehensive list of Apple Mail‘s functions.

The scripts cost USD 10 and are available from MacSpeech’s web site.

[Via TUAW]

Similar Posts:

Betalogue: Two more Mail.app annoyances

Tim Gaden — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 00:38:27 +0000

At Betalogue, Pierre Igot reports two more annoyances in Apple Mail:

Mail 2.0: ?¢‚Ç¨Àú0 messages, 3 unread?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢ — By doing several complicated things at once, he brings Mail.app‘s multi-threading ability to its knees.

It shouldn’t happen, it shouldn’t be so hard to discover that the app has stalled and it shouldn’t be so difficult to unstick it.

This leads to some reflections on how Mail.app might be better designed so that things like this are more transparent for average users.

Mail 2.0: ?¢‚Ç¨ÀúUndo Mark as Junk?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢ doesn?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢t undo anything — Pierre has an email incorrectly-marked as Junk. If the Junk filter is on automatic, it will move the message to the Junk folder.
But going to the Junk folder and selecting the message to “un-junk it”, he notes that clicking the “Undo Mark as Junk” option in the Edit menu or selecting “Mark as Not Junk” from the Message menu doesn’t do anything.

I can’t reproduce this behaviour. When I do this, the message does get “un-junked”. And I guess that Apple Mail’s Spam database is updated in the background, but I agree it would be useful if Mail.app automatically restored the message to the mailbox from whence it came. (like Entourage does…Grrrr!!)

As always, excellent holiday reading!Similar Posts:

Mail Stamps goes universal

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 08:59:00 +0000

Mail Stamps, a utility for Mail 2.0 that removes the odd lozenge-shaped buttons in Apple Mail and replaces them with Panther-style ones, has been updated.

It is now a universal binary, meaning that it will run on the familiar PowerPC Macs and on the much anticipated Intel Macs of 2006 and beyond. Mail Stamps is the first Mail.app-related utility to do so, AFAIK.

The new version (2.1) also fixes a minor bug. It is freeware and available from Andrew Escobar’s web site.Similar Posts:

Backing up and restoring mailboxes in Mail 2.0

Tim Gaden — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 23:19:56 +0000

Restoring or recovering individual emails in Mail 2.0 is covered by this Hawk Wings tip.

Paul Fisher has set out a method for backing up and re-importing whole mailboxes in Mail.app.

As he points out, this is especially useful if you are about to delete a POP account in Apple Mail, a process that will also delete all the account’s messages.Similar Posts:

Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger

Tim Gaden — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:26:33 +0000

Joe Kissell’s ebook on Mail 2.0 has been released!

This is the only book available on Apple Mail in Tiger and it’s excellent. Based on Joe’s earlier book on Mail.app in Panther, it has been revised and expanded to cover all the new features in Mail 2.0.

Read it to learn tips for importing email, how to fix damaged mailboxes and more. Discover seven key bits of advice about rules, five ways to improve the Previous Recipients list used for spam filtering and address completion, and six suggestions for Spotlight-enabled smart mailboxes.

Get under the hood of Mail.app and come to grips with the different ways in which POP and IMAP accounts work, their advantages and drawbacks, and how Apple Mail implements them. I have never read a clearer explanation. That chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

I was lucky enough to read it in final draft form, on the basis of alleged “technical expertise”, but I learnt far more from the book than I could offer.

Don’t buy yet another hand-tooled crocodile skin, rhinestone and spandex cover for your iPod gizmo. Buy this. If you are an Apple Mail user, there is no smarter way to spend USD 10.

Check it out (even read a free 33 page preview) on the Take Control web site.Similar Posts:

Blessed by a higher power

Tim Gaden — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 03:24:52 +0000

Macworld has found a way to export Mail 2.0 emlx files into Thunderbird.

It follows exactly the method suggested in a Hawk Wings tip on 23rd October.

Isn’t that sweet?Similar Posts: