Hawk Wings » mail stamps

Mail icon template email goes missing

Tim Gaden — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:45:20 +0000

A few days ago a Hawk Wings reader kindly emailed me about his search for a template to create Mail Stamp icons.

I skimmed it, thought it was very interesting and then — somehow — lost it. Not even a mailbox rebuild brought it back.

If that person could email again, I’d be very grateful. Sorry about that. mail.app, apple mail, stamp icons, hacks, mail stamps, how embarrassing, templateSimilar Posts:

Good news for Leopard Mail lozenge loathers

Tim Gaden — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:21:16 +0000

As the arrival of each major new version of Mac OS X draws near, I start to dread the reappearance of those lozenge-shaped icons in my Mail.app interface.

Some people, more adaptable than I am, don’t mind them at all. For me, it always the first tweak I apply, using the excellent Mail Stamps utility.

Fortunately Mail Stamps developer Andrew Escobar is already working on the Leopard Mail version, which will be Mail Stamps 3.0.

In reply to my nervous email, he replies that,

Under the hood, Mail has not changed a great deal. I have been able to get full size toolbar items, so it should not be a problem. I fully plan to release a new version of Mail Stamps for both Leopard and Tiger.

Yippee! mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, lozenge buttons, mail stamps, hacks, hideously ugly, panther mail icons, good newsSimilar Posts:

Get rid of Tiger Mail’s lozenge buttons

Tim Gaden — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:47:03 +0000

Not everyone likes the new lozenge buttons in Tiger Mail. John Siracusa at Ars Technica calls them “hideously ugly”. Giles Turnbull at MacDevCenter finds that “Euw…” sums it all up. And Leopard doesn’t remove them.

In fact, the lozenges are spreading. It looks like Preview will feature them in Leopard:

Foad Afshari has posted a disk image containing the “de-lozenged” icons from Tristan O’Tierney’s Cage Fighter , a utility (broken since 10.4.6) that removes the bubble from the buttons. A before and after shot gives you an idea of the transformation:

The disk image also contains the buttons from Panther Mail and instructions on how to manually install them into Mail.app’s package.

However, there is an easier way. Andrew Escobar’s Mail Stamps still works nicely. It does all the hack work for you, replacing the Tiger lozenges with bold and brassy Panther icons:

Mail Stamps includes an uninstaller so you can return to the Tiger look if the mood takes you.

The change will not bust or damage Mail in any way. It only replaces some images deep inside Mail’s application package. You can banish those lozenges with 100% confidence.

Hopefully, someone is already working on “Preview Stamps”.mail.app, apple mail, mail stamps, icons, tiger, lozenges, hacks, panther, buttonsSimilar Posts:

10.4.6: Mail, GPGMail and MailStamps issues

Tim Gaden — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:57:58 +0000

The 10.4.6 update has been released.

According to the release notes , the only improvement for Mail.app “resolves an issue in which Mail could unexpectedly quit when lowering the quote level within a reply message”, something I’ve never noticed.

A user in the Apple Discussions reports that the update breaks GPGMail, so that Mail crashes when an encrypted message is selected.

On my PowerBook, it also overwrote the Panther Mail icons inserted by Mail Stamps, which gave me a fright.

Fortunately, running Mail Stamps after the update has removed the lozenge-shaped buttons again.mac osx, apple, mail.app, apple mail, mail stamps, GPGMail, update, 10.4.6Similar Posts:

Apple heavies Mail Stamps developer

Tim Gaden — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:50:51 +0000

Andrew Escobar, the developer of Mail Stamps and Front Row Enabler (a hack to install Front Row on any Mac running 10.4.5) has received a letter from Apple alleging that he is violating Apple’s trademarks and copyright.

According to MacNN , the letter says in part:

Your use of Apple’s trademarks and copyrighted materials violates Apple’s intellectual property rights, which Apple has an affirmative obligation to protect. Apple therefore must insist that you cease use of Apple’s trademarks and copyrighted images and that you stop offering the unauthorized downloads of Apple’s Front Row software.

It is not clear to me from this or from the post on Andrew’s site (currently down), whether Mail Stamps is really in the firing line, or whether Apple’s concerns are restricted to Front Row Enabler.mail stamps, Andrew Escobar, front row, apple, legal demands, plugins, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts:

Talking Mail.app: Andrew Escobar

Tim Gaden — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:04:31 +0000

Andrew Escobar is an undergraduate student studying Finance and the developer of Mail Stamps (a utility that removes the bizarre lozenge-shaped buttons in Tiger Mail) and Front Row Enabler .

His first Mac was a Macintosh Classic, but he was primarily raised on a PC.

He switched to the Mac in 2001, using a trusty 700Mhz Power Mac Quicksilver. He now uses a 1.25Ghz PowerBook, which is to be replaced by a MacBook Pro in September.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app?

AE: I began to use Mail when I switched to the Mac platform, after falling in love with the PowerBook G4 and Mac OS X.

I used Mail in conjunction with the web-based Yahoo Mail until my account began being inundated with spam. I’ve been using Mail exclusively since I purchased my PowerBook in September 2003. I’ve been very happy with Mail since, and it’s yet to really give me a reason to look elsewhere for another email client.

In my PC years I put up with Outlook and Outlook Express out of pure ignorance.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

AE: Without Mail Stamps , Mail would be completely unusable by me. Had I not been able to revert Mail’s new lozenge-like buttons introduced in Tiger, back to the beautifully crafted full-size icons used in Panther, I don’t think I could have continued to use Mail. It was just too big a pill to swallow. They are absolutely hideous, and I am still bewildered as to why some developer at Apple thought the change was a good idea.

Mail Attachments Iconizer is actually quite helpful. Instead of Mail trying to render and display a 16 page PDF within an email (which can sometime take forever), all my attachments are now displayed as icons instead.

I also use GPG Mail for those rare times when I need to encrypt my communications, and the recipient doesn’t use the S/MIME standard (which is built into Mail and Mac OS X).

HW: What’s your favourite thing about Mail.app?

AE: Mail is very well integrated with Mac OS X:

I think I take Address Book’s integration for granted but things like displaying the sender’s picture for a quick visual cue is a nice touch.

I added all my accounts to iChat, including Microsoft Messenger, because Mail conveniently shows if a contact is online and available for instant messaging, as opposed to emailing them.

Spotlight is incredibly speedy in finding the exact email I need to reference, whether I’m using Mail or not.

And while iPhoto isn’t really a part of Mac OS X, I appreciate the fact I can quickly move pictures from Mail to iPhoto with two clicks (I greatly prefer this over photocasting).

HW: What’s your pet hate about Mail.app?

AE:

Those stupid, stupid lozenge-shaped buttons. Oh how I loathe them.

Mail does not apply rules correctly to incoming mail in IMAP sub-folders. My university account is IMAP based and has a sub-folder called “spam-found.” While the spam filter does a perfect job of marking spam and moving it to this folder, I find it impossible to set up Mail to automatically mark these emails as read and delete them. This drives me crazy.

HW: If you could tell the Apple Mail development team one thing, what would it be?

AE: How about two things?

Thank you.

An option for a wide-screen setup would be nice, such that the mailboxes, list of messages, and the message preview are were positioned vertically. I connect my PowerBook to a 23 inch Cinema display when on campus, and it just seems silly to me that Mail can’t make use of the added pixel real-estate. There was an excellent Mail Widescreen Mockup posted on Flickr recently. While I’ve come close to reproducing this mockup with some hacking, my changes leave Mail very unstable.

- – - -

You can read other interviews with developers and Mac identities talking about their Mail.app experiences by following this tag cloud link.talking mail.app, likes, dislikes, apple mail, mail.app, Andrew Escobar, Mail StampsSimilar Posts:

The Hawk Wings Top Ten and Intel Macs

Tim Gaden — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:23:28 +0000

So, you’re thinking about buying one of the new Intel Macs announced this week in San Francisco?

I am. There’s a shiny new MacBook Pro with my name on it out there somewhere. Or there will be.

The big question for me is not whether I’ll miss the FW800 port as much as I think I will (probably not), or whether I will kick myself for not waiting for the Rev B (probably), but whether Mail.app with all my favourite things bolted-on will run natively.

So I asked the developers of all the plugins and addons on the Top Ten things every Mail.app user should have list, how ready they were for the Intel Macs. Here’s the good news:

MailTags. Scott Morrison says that a universal binary will be available “hopefully” in two weeks. And as Version 1.2 with a killer new feature as well!

Mail Act-on. Two weeks will see a universal binary of this plug-in as well.

MailAppetizer. This has been a universal binary since July last year. Ready to go.

Mail Scripts. This has also been a universal binary since the middle of last year. Andeas Amann says that “the only potential problem might be the “Archive Messages” script since it packages some pre-complied Perl packages as well”. But if any problems exist, they’ll soon be ironed out.

Mail Stamps. Version 2.1 was compiled as a universal binary for Intels and PowerPCs. And it worked fine on his developer Intel Mac, Andrew Escobar says.

MailUnreadStatusBar. Masaru says that it’s not clear whether this utility will need a recompile or not, “because it isn’t supposed to depend on architecture”. It should work equally well on a PPC or an Intel.

JunkMatcher or SpamSieve. Michael Tsai says that at the moment SpamSieve runs in Rosetta with Mail.app and the SpamSieve plug-in running natively. But a recompiled version of SpamSieve is due out in two weeks and will be available as a free upgrade.
JunkMatcher’s developer Benjamin Han wants to address some issues with his app before recompiling for Intel Macs. Due to time pressures, “it’ll probably be a while”, he says.

Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger. It is my understanding that this excellent ebook will be just as helpful on an Intel Mac as it is now.

QuickSilver. Quicksilver and all its plug-ins were recompiled earlier this week.

Spell Catcher X. Evan Gross says he will post a recompiled beta of Spell Catcher X next week (when he gets back from MacWorld) that will also contain some new features and few minor bugfixes. The final release will be polished up and available long before most people get their hands on one of the new Macs.

Now there is no excuse for restraint.

You can find a longer list of all recompiled applications that are ready to run natively on VersionTracker’s MacIntel Resource Center.
Similar Posts:

513 different Apple Mail icons

Tim Gaden — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:41:36 +0000

After writing an entry on how to change the default Dock icon for Mail.app, I thought I’d look around for as many different icons as I could find.

Here are the results. The list only includes “specialised” collections or individual icons. Many more icons are contained in whole system-wide collections. If I’ve missed any collections that you know of, please let me know. A full listing of the different icons follows the jump.

Some of these mail stamps are images not icons. In order to use them, you will need to convert with something like img2icns, a free utility which does a great job.

Highbrow Art Stamp Icons — Four paintings by Klimt, Van Gogh, Pollock and O’Keeffe for the discerning mail.app user.

First Ever Canadian Stamp — Hawk Wings reader Richard Drdul offers this image of Canada’s first ever postage stamp from 1851. Classy!

Current Canadian Stamp — Hawk Wings reader Jesse Schooff provides this current Canadian stamp. Thanks!

40 cartoon animals — Icons (two different colours for each) 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. Get them from the designer’s web site

SuperMario Mail icons — assorted images of the Super Mario brothers. From deviantART.

Lovely First Class UK Mail Stamp icon — from deviantART.

Simpsons icons — Bart, Homer, Lisa, Marge, Ruprecht, Bobo and Scully. From deviantART.

Postal Peanuts — all the gang from the comic strip as Mail.app-like stamp icons. From Pixel Girl.

Ten Rappers, various From deviantART.

Twenty mail stamp icons of Elisha Cuthbert and Scarlett Johansson. From deviantART.

Eighty (!) assorted mail stamp icons in three sets from hellhound’s gallery on deviantART. Lots of female celebrities, Iron Maiden, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presely, etc, etc.

A Canada Mail Mail stamp icon. With thanks to Jesse Schooff.

Two Frank Zappa icons. Zappa at his most handsome, handcrafted by Duncan Moran.

12 female Celebrity icons. Images of Adriana Lima, Angelina Jolie, four of Christina Aguilera, C.J. Rogers, Elisha Cuthbert, two Jessica Albas and Tila Tequila. [Via deviantART.]

A racy image of a woman’s midriff. [Via deviantART.]

Nine assorted graphic images including the hammer and sickle, a marijuana leaf, radiation and recycling symbols, the ying-yang thing and more. [Via deviantART.]

Five Bob Dylan Mail stamp icons [Via deviantArt.]

Realistic envelopes and letter icons for the “Ye Olde Worlde” look. [Via deviantArt.]

Ten assorted pastel-coloured mail stamp icons .

Eleven “Marianne” stamp icons in a variety of colours and styles. [From Cocoricones.]

Thirty national flag icons for Mail.app. The USA, UK, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates all feature. [DeviantART]

Fifty anime mail icons by the well-known artist Masamune Shirow.

Six Japanese Pop Group Mail icons from DeviantArt.

Two carrier pigeon mail icons. Via Deviantart

Matrix mail stamp icon .

“Hot mail” icon – the sun?. Via Deviantart. [DEAD LINK]

Think Different icons (44 icons) – Ali 1, Ali 2, Baez, Benbach, Branson, Callas, Capra, Chaplin, Chavez, Coppola, Davis, Dr. Spock, Dylan, Earhart, Edison, Einstein, Feynman, Flik, Fuller, Gandhi 1, Gandhi 2, Goodall 1, Goodall 2, Graham, Hendrix, Henson, Hillary, Hitchcock, Houston, Jobs, Lama, Lennon, Lucy, Mandela, Miyake, Parks, Picasso 1, Picasso 2, Robinson, Roosevelt, Sinatra, Turner, Adams, and Aldrin. From InterfaceLift.

King Kong icons – Two different shots of King Kong. From ResExcellence. [DEAD LINK]

Flightplan – 3 mail stamp icons from the TV show. From ResExcellence. [DEAD LINK]

Billy the Kid – Brown, blue, red and green Mail stamp icons of Billy Kid. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Star Wars collection – Apple Mail icons of Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, IV, V and VI. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

The Fantastic Four – Five icons of characters from the movie. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Lara Croft / Tomb Raider collection – Seven different Lara Croft icons (from the game?). From DeviantArt

Super Mario, Batman and Gorillaz – Super Mario (I think), Batman and two icons of each member of Gorillaz, 2D, Murdoch, Noodle, Russel from Demon Days. From ChiLam’s blog — which has now disappeared. I’ll leave this here, though, in case the site resurfaces. [DEAD LINK]

A Disney collection – Bambi, Mickey Mouse, Pinnochio and Simba. From DeviantArt.

A cartoon-ish collection – a bald eagle, altamira, a butterfly, a daisy, the Eiffel Tower, a shark. From Mubicons.

.Mac Stamps – Ten stylised Mail.app icons in blue, forest, green, orange, purple, red, rose, silver, slate and yellow. From smhill.net.

Hollywood Greats collection – Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, James Dean, Edward G Robinson, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean, Orson Wells, the Wizard of Oz. From AppleSwitcher.

Famous Monsters collection – Dracula, Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera, The Mummy, Wolfman, The Man with No Brain. From AppleSwitcher.

Masters of American Photography collection – Adams, Coburn, Evans, Kasebier, Kertesz, Man Ray, Steichen, Stieglitz, Strand, Van Der Zee, Weston, White. From AppleSwitcher.

A miscellaneous collection – The 19th Amendment, Alice in Wonderland, Ayn Rand, Bellows, a biplane, Joe Louis, the Chrysler Building, Edward Hopper, Frida Kahlo, Houdini, Jack Dempsey, Jackie Robinson, the Kitty Hawk, Martin Luther King, Osar Wilde, Ernest Heminway, Rockie Marciano, Rosie (WW II poster), Superman, Tailfins, The Beatles, Andy Warhol, Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde by Lautrec. From AppleSwitcher.

Sydney Opera House – The Opera House at dusk and at night and a stamp icon of the Eastern Hemisphere from space. [DEAD LINK]

Belgian/Dutch collection – Antwerp, the Ardennes, Bokrijk, Brugge, Brussels x2, Ghent, Leuven and Oostende. From DeviantArt.

Statue of Liberty collection – Brown, red, blue and green stamp icons of the Statue of Liberty. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Four African animals – Lion, Jaguar, Parrot and Elephant. From InterfaceLIFT.

Tiger collection – Three tiger mail stamp icons. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Another miscellaneous collection – a brush, a penguin, two tigers, Father Christmas and a Zebra. From InterfaceLIFT

Halloween Mail – a gravestone, a black cat, a jack o’lantern and two candy corn icons. By the Wacky Pixel Company, you can get them from ResExcellence. [DEAD LINK]

Halloween Collection – Jack O’ Lantern x3, spiders and Autumn leaves. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Two bald eagles. From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Three more bald eagles – From the Wackypixel Company. [DEAD LINK]

Royal Mail (UK) Stamps – Blue, red and gold icons, special edition stamps, a US postal service stamp and more.

The Grumpy Buzzard (A Hawk Wings favourite).

mail.app, apple mail, icons, mail stampsSimilar Posts: