Nothing raises the temperature among email aficionados like the debate over top-posting and bottom-posting in replies.

I have my own barbaric views on this topic.

QuoteFix is a plugin for mail.app that answers every bottom-poster’s heart-felt cry.

When installed, it places the cursor below the original message, or below the selection if you highlighted some part of the message before hitting the reply button.

And it does it well:

It also claims to remove the signature from the original message and to remove unnecessary empty lines from the original message.

I have found performance more patchy on these two fronts, but the plugin is still in active beta development, so it’s unreasonable to expect too much.

If bottom posting is your thing and you use mail.app, you will want to test it for yourself.

Get the QuoteFix plugin and read the installation instructions on its Google Code page.mail.app, apple mail, bottom posting, top posting, plugin, signatures, wars of religion

Jim Riggs has long been frustrated by Mail.app’s lack of options for previewing messages. So he has written the TruePreview plugin to fix it.

He writes:

One of the most common shortcomings/omissions/bugs/failures in Mail is the inability to truly preview messages. If the preview pane is displayed in the message viewer window, as soon as a message is selected and displayed, it is marked as read. Most every other e-mail client on the planet provides an option to delay marking messages as read.

TruePreview installs itself as a classic plugin bundle in your ~/Library/Mail folder.

It provides a new tab in Mail’s Preferences in which you can set a default time delay in each of your accounts for messages to be marked as read:

A very nifty piece of work!

Jim has tested this on the most recent version of Mail.app in 10.5.6, but is keen to get feedback from users with other configurations.

The plugin is open-source (BSD licence) and can be found on the SourceForge site (UPDATE: Or, if you are having problems with SourceForge, try here ). apple mail, mail.app, preview, mark as read, plugin

Late last year, I posted about a new plugin for mail.app, miniMail which offers a minimised “iTunes-like” interface for Apple Mail.

Then it was at 1.0.2, now it is at 1.1. And its list of features gets longer and better with each update.

When the plugin is installed, clicking the green bubble in the top left hand corner of Mail results in a mini-interface just like the iTunes option:

It now boasts an impressive array of keyboard shortcuts, mostly the same as mail.app’s own, although it has some of its own:

• Return will open up the individual message in mail
• Spacebar opens up a Preview pane, or “Quickview-esque” view of the message
• Right and Left Arrows move to the previous or next message
• The Command key plus an arrow moves to the first or last message

Here’s a screenshot with the plugin’s Preview Pane on display and the list of supported Mail shortcuts:

It adds its own tab to Mail’s Preference where further options can be set, including displaying the subject and sender on separate lines for greater readability, whether to start Mail with the miniMail interface displayed by default, the font size of the main text and more.

Of course, I am always going to use my Mail beautiful, bold and big (is there a more lovely sight for a Mac user than a fully-tricked out Mail.app doing its thing?), but people who are conscious of screen real estate will love this.

MiniMail is shareware (USD 9) but offers a 30 day free demo. You can get it from the developer’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, itunes, interface hack, plugin, keyboard shortcuts

MiniMail is a plugin that allows Mail.app users to minimise Mail’s interface into an “iTunes like” mini-format, instead of to the Dock. It must have come out when I was on a break from Hawk Wings, so a new Leopard-ready release gives me a chance to look it over.

It installs as a classical Mail mailbundle. When active, clicking on the Green “+” button in the top left hand corner of Mail.app, reduces the interface to space-saving proportions:

It features a Get Mail, New Mail and Options menu with the most frequently used actions, as well as providing support behind the scenes for all of Mail’s keyboard shortcuts:

The pane itself can be resized to the dimensions that suit the user.

It also offers options in a pane within MAil Preferences which allows the user to chose which mailboxes to monitor for new messages:

MiniMail is shareware (USD 9) although it offers a 30 day free demo. You can get it from the developer’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, itunes, interface hack, plugin, keyboard shortcuts

Dane Harnett has released a widescreen plugin for Leopard Mail, which gives Mail.app an “Entourage” or “Outlook” look.

It is not as polished as Letterbox , the first and best of the widescreen plugins developed for Tiger Mail.

Aaron Harnly is working on the Leopard version , but if you really can’t wait, and plenty of people seem to think that this is the bees’ knees of email functionality, WideScreenMailPlugin will do the trick.

In essence it shifts the preview pane from the bottom to the right-hand side of Mail.app’s interface:

WideScreenMailPlugin is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .entourage, mail.app, apple mail, outlook, widescreen, hack, plugin

Hannes Bretschneider has written a script that displays notifications about newly arrived mail on the Desktop using the GeekTool utilty.

GeekTool is a Preference Pane utility that can pipe the result of Unix commands, scripts and other things onto the Desktop. There are many ways to use it. For example, Lifehacker journo Gina Trapani uses it to pipe her plain text to-do files onto her Desktop.

Hannes’ script grabs the sender and subject line of new messages. When a GeekTool entry is created for it:

It outputs the results to the Desktop:

Like all GeekTool outputs, the font face, point size, position on the Desktop and many other options can be set in the GeekTool Preference Pane.

This elegant notification solution runs in the background and avoids the need to use another notification utility.

On the other hand, in order to get the most of out it, you need to be able to see your Desktop. I can’t remember when I last saw mine.mail.app, apple mail, notification, plugin, geektool, script, new mail

Juan Ignacio Leon’s excellent iPhoto2Gmail plugin has been updated and now offers even smarter ways for Gmail users to email photos from iPhoto.

Basically, it adds a pane to iPhoto’s “Export…” dialog:

The updated version offers a Contacts button that pulls down your Gmail contacts so that you pick the recipient(s) from that list.

Other new features include:

- A bugfix for RAW and other non-jpeg files that were not properly renamed when scaled.
- A fix for some situations in which the plugin would try to send message without recipients.
- Re-written code to be Object Oriented and Modular for maintainability.

You can get the revised version from Juan’s web site .iphoto, gmail, photos, webmail, plugin, web 2.0, integration, email