It is impossible to go away from a post by Pierre Igot at Betalogue without learning something new. Two recent post are no exception.

He details several shortcomings in the way that Mail presents the user interface for threaded messages and in the method it uses to auto-select a first message to display when any given thread is expanded.

A second post expands on the problems , especially how keyboard shortcuts operate in normal and threaded views.

Several of the issues arise because of the way in which Pierre likes to use Mail:

I use Mail with the so-called “message area” pane closed. In other words, my main mail viewer window in Mail consists of the mailbox list on the left-hand side and the message list on the right-hand side. I don’t have a third pane at the bottom displaying the contents of the currently selected message. I don’t like that, because when that “message area” pane is visible, any message in the message list becomes marked as read as soon as you select it, whether you actually want to read it or not.

People who use Mail in the same way will find the second post especially interesting.betalogue, mail.app, apple mail, keyboard shortcuts, bugs, threading, messages, preview pane

Hawk Wings has posted about Mark Lyon’s Gmail Loader before back in the days (last year) when it was a command-line utility.

Things have changed. Gmail Loader now has a graphical interface and is much more “user-friendly”.

As the rush to Gmail’s web interface continues, James E. Robinson III provides a timely walk-through using the current version to get the emails from his IMAP account into Gmail’s system.mail.app, gmail, email, messages, mailboxes, mbox, emlx, Gmail Loader, web interface, transferring

There is no easy way to import messages in the new 10.4 format (individual XML documents with the emlx extension) into Mail.app. It is not one of the options in Mail 2.0′s “Import” menu.

But you can put deleted messages back (if you have them in a backup) or add news ones and force Mail to reindex them. Here’s how:

1. Quit Mail.
2. Make a backup of your complete ~/Library/Mail folder just in case, by Option-Dragging it out of the Finder window onto the Desktop.
3. Create a new directory in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder called – for example – “backup.mbox”.
4. Create a sub-folder in the new folder called “Messages”.
5. Copy all the messages (emlx files) that you want to restore from your backup into that sub-folder.
6. Launch Apple Mail. The mailbox you created will be in the list of mailboxes on the left. Highlight it (it will appear empty but isn’t really) and choose “Rebuild” from Mail’s Mailbox menu.
7. Mail.app will rebuild and re-index the messages.
8. When the process is complete you will see the messages you added in the new mailbox. You can then move them to wherever they really belong.

This has worked for me. And I double-checked it again this morning.mail.app, apple mail, emlx, import, messages, tip, mailboxes

GPGMail is a plug-in that enables the sending and receiving of encrypted emails in Apple Mail. It works in Tiger and Panther, and acts as a front-end to macgpg, the Mac port of an open source encryption engine, gpg. You will need to install macgpg first.

After installing GPGMail, you will find a new sub-menu under the Message menu, from which you can manage your digital signatures and other encryption options. The developer’s website provides a list of the plug-in’s limitations, including the fact that encrypted messages are just stored by Apple Mail and not indexed.

It is freeware and is available from the developer’s website.

Joar Winfors provides some background on his site about using digital signatures in Apple Mail.

UPDATE: GPGMail 1.1.2 released, 5 February 2006.

UPDATE: 25 July 2011 The GPGTools web site now hosts this plug-in.