The next best thing to Mail.app is a copy of Thunderbird skinned to look like Mail. At least, that was clearly the case until GyazMail got IMAP support.

Another Apple Mail skin has appeared for Thunderbird, bringing the total to three.

This one, called “Apple Mail”, offers the Tiger Mail look.

The developer says it “makes your TB look and feel like the native Apple Mail software, that comes along wiht your shiny and flashy new Mac.”

Things start to fall apart a bit in the Compose window though:

The “Tiger Mail” theme offers Thunderbird users the same look.

CrossOver provides a Panther Mail look.

Take a look at both of them in an earlier Hawk Wings post and/or go grab Apple Mail from the Thunderbird Add-ons site.thunderbird, Mail.app, apple mail, skins, themes, panther mail, tiger mail, the sincerest form of flattery

Aaron emailed me a screenshot of Mail.app taken from an episode of the TV show Weeds (Series 2, Episode 5), which you can see below. Another screenshot has been posted on Flickr. It seems to show a message preview pane in a drawer on the right.

I am suspicious. It looks like a photoshop job to me.

Tiger icons and Panther Mail drawers seem odd. The Apple menu seems to be missing, the app is identified in the menubar as “Email” rather than “Mail”, the Applescript menu is where it was positioned in Panther, whereas it is on the right in Tiger Mail. The Junk mailbox appears below Trash in Tiger Mail but these are reversed in the screenshot (and these cannot be reordered):

On the other hand, it appears to be a functioning app. I’ve not seen the episode, but Aaron tells me that “the cap comes from a longer sequence that shows the character browsing through an inbox full of mail, with multiple messages popping up in that pane.”

A puzzle. What do you think?

[Thanks to an Apple Mail demi-god for technical advice. You know who you are!]mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, panther mail, weeds, screenshot, photoshop, plugin

Two Apple Mail themes for Thunderbird have been updated.

CrossOver 2.2, the Panther Mail theme, now works with 1.5 and the current beta, 1.6a1. The developer has also added a progress meter to the status bar.

It now looks like this:

Click on the image for a larger view

TigerMail, a theme complete with lozenge-shaped buttons, has also been updated. It also works with everything up to the current beta.

Version 2.0 now uses small folder icons and features a “native Aqua interface”.

It now looks like this:

Click on the image for a larger view

If you want the Mail.app look in Thunderbird, you can get these themes from the Thunderbird Add-ons site: CrossOver , TigerMail

One feature that many people miss in Apple Mail is the ability to request and answer return receipts.

People with Panther Mail can use MailPriority. For Tiger Mail users, there is an all-or-nothing solution that involves a Terminal hacking. It adds a return receipt request to all your emails.

The only other option for requesting receipts is a third-party service like ReadNotify. (Not a bad idea if you only need them now and then).

But now there is a way to answer the return receipts that others send to you. Joel Nelson has posted an AppleScript which automatically replies to return receipts sent to you by people who use mail clients that support it (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc). The message it generates looks like this:

Download the script and save it somewhere memorable. You will need to browse to it when setting up the rule that runs the script. Follow the instructions on Joel’s site.

You will very probably need to add a “Disposition-Notification-To” header to the list of conditions in Mail.app’s rule menu. Select the Edit header option:

Then click the plus sign on the next window and type “Disposition-Notification-To” so that it looks like this:

Now Apple Mail will automatically reply through the rule to any emails that request a read receipt.

Personally, I don’t miss them. There’s nothing more annoying than people asking you if you have received their message while you are reading it. But I don’t live in a corporate environment. In business some people have an expectation that you will acknowledge their emails in this way, and now with this script you can.reply, receipts, applescript, terminal hack, Tiger Mail, Panther Mail, email

Rizvan has developed a theme called Crossover for the Mozilla email client, Thunderbird, which gives it the look of Apple Mail.

The theme features Apple Mail’s Panther icons (although with different icons for the Sent and Drafts folders), fonts and a Mail-like layout. But it’s not quite the Real Thing as you can see from the screenshot below:

thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, theme, crossover, panther mail