Hawk Wings » NetNewsWire

Moving around Mail with the keyboard alone

Tim Gaden — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:13:30 +0000

Michael Boyle finds Mail frustrating to get around in.

He asks:

Why oh Why can’t Apple Mail allow me to navigate with the arrow keys the way NetNewsWire does? The relationship between the feeds pane and each feed’s posts in NNW is so fast and intuitive; whereas there seems to be no relationship between the mailboxes pane and the message panes in Apple Mail.

I am happy to admit that driving NetNewsWire with the keyboard alone is a pleasure.

However, it can also be done in Mail, even if the process is not quite as intuitive.

If you are keyboard-only kind of person, see an earlier Hawk Wings post “Moving around Mail.app using the keyboard“.mail.app, apple mail, Tips, keyboard shortcuts, tab key, conversations, netnewswire, productivitySimilar Posts:

Email to Yojimbo script with PDF support

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:30:11 +0000

Drummond Field has written an applescript that exports an email from Mail.app into Yojimbo.

Unlike other “Email to Yojimbo” scripts, this one offers the option of exporting the email into Yojimbo as either a note or a PDF.

Select the message, run the script and a dialog appears:

Drummond doesn’t have a web site to host the script on, so it finds a home on Hawk Wings for the moment.

Download it here

Don’t stop there though. Other useful Yojimbo scripts include:

A script to push Yojimbo notes onto an iPod.
A script to send a Yojimbo item with Mail.app.
A script to email yourself notes that are automatically inserted into Yojimbo.
Scripts for Yojimbo, NetNewsWire and de.licio.us integration.
All the other scripts you can find by searching Hawk Wings for “Yojimbo” and “script”.

mail.app, apple mail, applescript, yojimbo, pdf, notes, ipod, netnewswire, delicious, tips, productivitySimilar Posts:

Scripts for Yojimbo, del.icio.us and NetNewsWire integration

Tim Gaden — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:48:07 +0000

On the Yojimbo mailing list, Dylan Damian shared two applescripts that help to integrate the new tagging feature of Yojimbo 1.3 with del.icio.us and NetNewsWire.

They use pukka to tag a URL in either Safari or NetNewsWire, post the link to del.ico.us and then create a web archive of the page in Yojimbo complete with the same tags.

For example, if you run the first script (tip: make a Quicksilver trigger for it) when viewing a web page in Safari, it launches pukka.

Tag the page with your chosen del.icio.us tags, and submit the page.

Pukka posts the URL to del.icio.us for you and then the script creates a web archive of the page in Yojimbo with the same tags.

Yojimbo becomes in effect, an off-line backup for your del.icio.us links.

The second script does the same thing from NetNewsWire.

In a nice additional touch, the scripts get Growl to tell you that they have done their job.

It’s all very clever and works a treat.

You can get the text of the scripts from Dylan’s post in the Yojimbo mailing list archive or just grab the two scripts here (PukkaAndYojimbo.zip).

They are easiest to use (I think) if you place them in the Safari and NetNewsWire folders in your ~/Library/Scripts/Application directory. Unless you are partial to NetNewsWire’s own Script menu, in which case you are looking for ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Scripts.

[Big hat-tips to Dylan]not apple mail, not mail.app, yojimbo, netnewswire, pukka, delicious, urls, web archives, tags, applescriptSimilar Posts:

NetNewsWire: Free Newsgator syncing, discount

Tim Gaden — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 02:54:43 +0000

A new beta of NetNewsWire (a very fine RSS aggregator or news reader) has been released .

The updated beta (2.1b32) offers registered users a free two-year subscription to Newsgator’s syncing service, which is a third option alongside syncing with your .Mac account or FTP server for synchronising your news subscriptions between multiple Macs.

If you don’t already have a Newsgator account (free), the beta will guide through the process of creating one.

NewNewsWire is also currently discounted (USD 19.95 instead of the normal USD 24.95), an offer that will stand until version 2.1 is officially released.

Endo looks very pretty and Vienna is getting better, but NetNewsWire stands head and shoulders above the pack for stability, grunt and features.

I couldn’t do Hawk Wings without it. There’s no other way for me to get across all the information I need to see more efficiently and reliably.

If you’ve been waiting for a good time to register the full version, the time is now.

UPDATE: David Chartier at TUAW provides a list of the extra features included in the Newsgator subscription, which I should have done, but didn’t.netnewswire, rss, news feeds, news aggregator, newsgator, efficiency, productivitySimilar Posts:

News and links: Mail.app (and more)

Tim Gaden — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:08:55 +0000

Suddenly there’s a glut of news. Here are today’s other notable happenings and links in compressed form:

Paul Stamatiou has switched from Thunderbird to Mail.app. Thunderbird is just too slow on an Intel Mac. He provides the benchmarks and finds that he is warming to Mail.app’s “sleek design”.

Leander Kahney discovers the latest build of Quicksilver. “It’s kind of like Spotlight on steroids, but the steroids have begun to affect the brain,” he says .

Brent Simmons, the developer of NetNewsWire, has added Hawk Wings to the app’s list of pre-selected Macinstosh feeds (which was nice of him).

Dizplay ze grand attachments? Absolument, Non! Mail Attachment Iconizer gets a French localisation .

Joe Kissell will be joining TidBITS as Senior Editor . Hawk Wings follows Joe’s career with interest, not least because he is the author of the only book dedicated solely to Apple Mail.

mail.app, apple mail, plugins, netnewswire, thunderbird, quicksilver, tidbits, frenchSimilar Posts:

NetNewsWire gets Mail.app integration

Tim Gaden — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:14:37 +0000

A new public beta of NetNewsWire, the RSS reader, is available from Newsgator, the app’s new home.

It has lots of new features and some tweaks to its interface and performance. Hawk Wings’ readers will be especially interested to hear of its tighter integration with Mail.app.

Rather like Safari, two new commands in the File menu offer options for emailing the contents of the news item and for emailing a link to the news item or page.

The email-contents command requires Apple Mail, although the email link command should work equally well with Thunderbird, Entourage and other email clients.

Nice one, Brent.

[Via TUAW ]netnewswire, mail.app, apple mail, beta, integration, safariSimilar Posts:

Talking Mail.app: Brent Simmons

Tim Gaden — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:15:37 +0000

Brent Simmons is an Architect of Client Products at NewsGator Technologies where he works on NetNewsWire , an RSS aggregator for Mac OS X.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

BS: I currently use Entourage mostly, because it works much better than Mail.app with our Exchange system.

I’ve used Mail.app in the past, though — along with Eudora, Mailsmith, pine, and mutt.

Actually, I do use Mail.app exclusively with my .Mac email address. And of course I use it as a developer (figuring out how to make it so you can send email from NetNewsWire via Mail.app).

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

BS: Were I using Mail.app more regularly, I’d probably use that one that nukes the weird toolbar icons. [Mail Stamps].

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

BS: The unified Inbox. I have multiple accounts, but they all go into the same Inbox. I haven’t figured out how to have a single Inbox in Entourage.

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

BS: The big one is that filing email is a giant pain. I want to be able to file email easily and quickly via the keyboard — as is possible in Mailsmith, Entourage, pine, and mutt. With Mail.app you have to use the mouse. Ugh!

Even if Mail.app worked well enough with Exchange, and I could switch off Entourage, that’s the thing that would stop me from switching to Mail.app. I need to file email, and I need to *not* use the mouse. Period.

There are other pet hates, of course. The text editor is weak. I’d love it if I could edit using an external editor (as in pine and mutt) or if a really great text editor was part of the app (as in Mailsmith). (Even Entourage’s text editor is better than Mail.app’s — it at least has abbreviations, which is a feature I use all the time.)

Another one is that weird vertical-bar-quotation thing. When I’m writing a reply, that bar sometimes gets stuck in odd locations and I can’t figure out how to delete. What’s wrong with >, like every other email app?

Another one is that you can’t navigate the mailboxes list with the keyboard. That’s just so weird.

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

BS: They shouldn’t pay attention to my pet hates — I’m obviously not representative of the average user. Plus it’s cool that they leave opportunities open for other developers (Microsoft, Bare Bones Software, etc.).

- – - -

Brent has recently posted a teaser about the upcoming features we will enjoy in NetNewsWire 2.1.

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, Brent Simmons, newsgator, netnewswireSimilar Posts:

Weekly Update

Tim Gaden — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:26:09 +0000

This week Address Book and iCal get the lion’s share of the additions to the Hawk Wings Plugin and Addon List.

The following items were added to the Address Book section:

AddressBookQuickEntry (an alternate entry interface for contact information)
AusAB (maps, travel directions and Sydney public transport times for Australian addresses)
iAddressX (Address Book menubar utility)

The following were added to the iCal section:

DoBeDo (a Dashboard widget for iCal ToDos)
iCalViewer (“Streaming” desktop iCal events and ToDos)
MenuCalendarClock (menubar utility for you iCal calendar, clock and ToDo and event information)

Mail.app itself scored two extra entries:

anentry (AppleScript to email a NetNewsWire headline) in the Integration with other Apps section
NetShred X (history and cache shredder for Mail.app and browsers) in the Added Functionality section

These additions bring the number of entries on the list to a round 120, all making Mail.app, Address Book and iCal easier, more efficient, more productive and (possibly) more fun to use.
Similar Posts:

anentry: AppleScript to email a NetNewsWire item

Tim Gaden — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:26:16 +0000

anentry is an AppleScript that will email a selected headline from NetNewsWire in Mail.app.

It’s a little bit unpolished, but it does the job.

You can get it from the developer’s web site.

(See also FeedMailer.) Similar Posts: