Posts Tagged ‘plugins’

Snippets plugin for Google Quick Search Box

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

QuicksnippetsiconQuickSnippets is a new plugin for Google Quick Search Box (QSB) that adds basic snippet management to the utility’s toolbox.

It is easy to use and quite clever.

First get the plugin from the developer’s Github site.

Copy the plugin file to your ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box/PlugIns/ directory, and restart QSB.

Then to add a snippet, all you need to do is activate QSB and type quicks and select the QuickSnippet Regist option:

Quicksnippets Regist

Enter the trigger and the snippet itself into the dialog box:

Quicksnippetscreating

I’ve found that cutting and pasting blocks of texts into the snippet box preserves the line breaks when they are activated later.

When you’ve entered all the snippet you want, dumping them into an email message or other document is easy.

Just activate QSB, and type the snippet’s trigger. The snippet appears in the list below:

Quicksnippetinaction

Select it and hit Enter. All done!

Obviously it’s not TextExpander, but for a lot of people it might be all the snippet management you need.

QuickSnippets is freeware and comes with more copious instructions in English and Japanese.

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Scripts to integrate Toodledo with mail.app and MailTags

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

ToodledoHawk Wings reader Himanshu Shukla emails to share two applescripts he has written which integrate the online to-do manangement service Toodledo with Apple Mail and the prince of productivity plugins, MailTags .

His first script simply pipes a selected email from mail.app into your online Toodledo account, where it will wait for you to tag it, give it a context and a project or folder.

The second, more complicated script uses MailTags to tag and add other information to the task before you send it off.

When this script is run, it open up a copy of the email, ready to forward to Toodledo and offers you the chance to map fields from the message’s MailTags pane onto categories that Toodledo understands:

Keywords in Mailtags = Context in Toodledo
Project in Mailtags = Folder in Toodledo
Due-date in Mailtags = Due-date in Toodledo

Priorities:

Very Low (Mailtags) = “-1. Negative” (Toodledo)
Low (Mailtags) = “0. Low” (Toodledo)
Normal (Mailtags) = “1. Medium” (Toodledo)
High (Mailtags) = “2. High” (Toodledo)
Urgent (Mailtags) = “3. Top” (Toodledo)

Clever! You can tag and process the task without leaving Mail’s interface.

Of course, it’s even more clever to trigger the script with a keyboard shortcut, either in Quicksilver or Fastscripts or MailTags’ sister app, Mail Act-on:

Toodledomailactonrule

You can get the scripts from Himanshu’s web site where they are freeware.

Combined with Toodledo’s own iPhone app or the Action Lists iPhone app , which is a dedicated GTD system using Toodledo as its backend, you can recreate a robust workflow for Getting Things Done that goes with you on the road.

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Script to archive emails into Evernote

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Applescript 100pxJustin at veritrope has written an applescript that will quickly import emails from mail.app into Evernote , the web-based note and information manager.

It’s easy to use.

First, get the script from veritrope.

Like all Apple Mail-related scripts, the best place to store it is in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail folder, so that it appears at the top of the AppleScript menu when mail.app is open.

Then find the email that you want to save into Evernote, highlight it and click the AppleScript menu on the right of your menubar:

Evernotescriptscriptmenu

The script grabs the email and shunts into Evernote. It loads the message first into Evernote’s Desktop app from which it syncs up automatically.

The script also presents a dialogue so that you can tag the email and select where to store it:

Evernotescripttagging

Chosing the “Select notebook from list” options retrieves a list of your existing notebook and also offers you the option to create a new notebook on the fly.

A nice Growl alert lets you know when it’s done.

The end result is a new Evernote note, nicely tagged-up and with a hyperlink back to the original message in mail.app:

Evernotescriptresults

Of course, it all goes much faster if you fire the script with a trigger in Quicksilver or set a keyboard shortcut for it with a utility like Daniel Jalkut’s excellent FastScripts .

veritrope also provides a fistful of applescripts for integrating Evernote with other popular apps like Yojimbo, NeetNewsWire, MacJournal, DEVONThink, even (of all things) Entourage.

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10.6.2 broke my Mail plugin! :-(

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

ImagesApple has changed the way that Mail.app interacts with plugins in Snow Leopard.

As Ken Aspelagh describes it on the Mac Observer:

“Each new version of Mail and the associated Message framework includes a unique code. Plug-ins have to explicitly declare themselves compatible with each new version,” Mr. Aspeslagh told The Mac Observer. “There is some sense to this as plug-ins are closely tied to the inner working of Mail, and stand the chance of breaking when Mail.app updates. Apple didn’t want to take this chance, so now they automatically disable all plug-ins with each update.”

So today’s 10.6.2 update is likely to break some plugins.

Most developers are only too aware of this issue, and will get updated plugins out fast.

Greg Welch, who develops the MailRecent and MailFollowUp plugins, has already got new, 10.6.2-compatible versions out the door.

Eric Hinterbichler has done the same with his new Herald Notification utility.

Other developers are sure to follow quickly. Some acted weeks before the update appeared, like Aaron Harnly who pushed out a compatible version of his Letterbox plugin three weeks ago.

10.6.2 broke the Mail clipping plugin from Omnifocus, but fortunately this can be restored simply by reinstalling it.

Other plugins, especially those not so actively or quickly supported, might be more difficult.

langui.sh has published some Terminal commands that will (potentially) revive other busted plugins. He has written them for GrowlMail but they could easily be adapted for other plugins, and “trick” them into working again.

It’s worth a shot, especially if you are in love with a plugin that’s not so well supported. However, maybe make a backup of the plugin’s bundle first. You know, just in case.

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Clever miniMail plugin for mail.app re-released!

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Mini MailstandfirstScott Morrison of Indev Software (producers of the MailTags and Mail Act-on plugins) has released a souped-up version of the miniMail plugin, which he recently acquired from Olive Toast Software.

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:

Mini Mail Interface

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):

Mini Mail Prefs

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:

Multipleminimails

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.

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Christmas Stationery for Mail.app

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Festivestationeryequinux, purveyors of fine HTML stationary for Mail.app, has released a new collection of Christmas stationery templates in plenty of time for the festive season.

“Season’s Greetings Vol. 2″ contains templates offering Christmas greetings, invitations, wishlists for your kids to send to Santa, templates for one of those much-loved “annual news-roundup” emails.

Kwanzaa and Hanukkah are not forgotten. Templates are included for those festivals too.

For those not in the know, Apple Mail’s stationery feature allows the app to send pre-made HTML emails, often quite fancy. Many of the equinux templates allow for customization by the insertion of your own photos and user-definable fonts:

Christmas Stationery Screenshot

The pack costs €7,95 (c. USD 11.80) and is available from equinux’s web site where you can also see the company’s other stationery packs.

If you are keen on this kind of thing, and know that your friends don’t mind receiving them, but you don’t want to shell out money for the option, you will find some freeware seasonal stationery templates listed in the following, previous Hawk Wings posts:

1. Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates.

2. More Mail Stationery, for sale and for free.

[via macnews.de ]

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Herald plugin brings notifications and quick actions

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Herald Icon StandfirstErik Hinterbichler has created a plugin, inspired by the well-loved MailAppetizer, that offers the same polished notifications when new mail arrives, and adds the option to perform some quick actions from the notification pane itself.

As an added bonus it’s ready to run in Snow Leopard now, while MailAppetizer is still being made Snow Leopard friendly.

It offers a customisable notification pane, with four icons on the bottom which allow you to delete, reply, open the message in amil.app or simply mark it read:

Herald Notification Screenshot

Herald comes in an installer package, but installs itself as standard plugin bundle in the Bundles folder of your Mail folder. It adds an additional pane to Mail’s Preferences.

The first tab allows you to specify whether the notification pane should be permanent or dismiss itself after a user-defined number of seconds. It also offers the option of opening the message in Mail’s main window or in a separate window of its own.

The second tab control the background and font colours and the level of transparency in the notification:

Herald Preferences Appearance

The third pane provides the ability to specify which mailboxes it polls for incoming emails, providing you with good control over just how bothered you want to be, and by what kind of emails:

Herald Preferences Mailboxes

If you like having your email in your face all the time, a utility like this will do the job very well.

Herald is donation-ware and is available from Erik’s web site .

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