miniMail 2.0 retains all the goodness of the original–the ability to minimize Mail.app’s interface like you can in iTunes–but adds more features and flexibility.

The minimised interface is elegant and efficient, as you would expect from the developer of MailTags:

It is also fully integrated with Mail Act-on, allowing you to use the same keystrokes to file messages away quickly.

The plugin’s Preference pane offers options to control which mailboxes it monitors, text size inside the minimized interface itself and how it should expand again when double-clicked (to the mail mail.app window or a single message window):

The Preference pane also controls miniMail 2.0’s new feature–multiple mini viewers.

You can now open a Message Viewer for a number of individual mailboxes and minimize them to keep track of new messages in particular accounts or even RSS feeds.

Here I am monitoring my work email in one miniMail window, my Hawk Wings email in another (one canny doctoral student sends his emails to both!) and the network status RSS feed of my ISP:

Very handy for keeping focus on important things whilst filtering out the rest.

miniMail is shareware (USD 12.95) and is available from Indev’s web site . Registered users of MailTags and Mail Act-on qualify for a USD 4 discount.

Related posts

• MailTags: Irresistable force meets immovable object
• Getting Things Done with Mail and iCal
• Email Nirvana with MailTags and Mail Act-on
• Tabbable MailTags: Another improvement?
• MailTags: Hyperlink to emails in other apps

In an earlier entry on miniMail, I reported comments that it might be used to harvest email addresses or for some other unsavoury purpose.

The developer emails to say:

I can assure you that miniMail is not malicious in any way. Since the code is open source by nature, you are free to verify this yourself. However, it does make use of the PHP mail() function, and can be misused in unethical and damaging ways. We absolutely do not condone such usage. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s?Ǭ† a disclaimer in the widget package if you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re curious

P.S. ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú This does have some interesting and legal uses, though?¢‚Ǩ‚Äúperfect for getting around web mail servers and stuff like that.

You could get it from the developer’s web site, although the link there is currently pointing to another product.

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