Safari allows you to specify a news aggregator app of your choice to which it pipes RSS subscriptions, but not an online service like Google Reader. Rob Wilkerson has written an extension for Safari 5.0 that plugs the gap.

Using his AddToGoogle extension, users can click on Safari’s RSS button and find that the feed is sent straight to Google Reader. Sweet!

Installation is a little more tricky than one might think. Two things to watch:

1. Make sure that you have the Develop menu enabled in Safari 5.0. You will find the option to turn it on in the Advanced tab of Safari’s Preferences.
2. Make sure that Safari is listed as the default RSS reader in Safari’s Preferences. If you have mail.app or some other aggregator selected as the default application, that choice will override the extension.

Download the extension and click on it to install it. You will see this slightly alarming warning:

Check that it is installed by opening the Extension tab of Safari’s Preferences:

The latest revision of the extension, released today, provides the option to subscribe to feeds in either Google Reader or directly as a widget on your iGoogle page.

Checking this option offers a choice every time you subscribe to a feed:

AddToGoogle is freeware and available from Rob’s wiki page at Codaset.

Somewhere, in recent updates to Safari 5.0 (included in the 10.6.4 update), something went wrong with the way applications pass text to each other.

A post at MacFixIt suggests that the fault lies with WebKit, which is now “using rgb(0,0,0) as the value for the CSS “background-color” property for messages”.

Whatever the cause, emails generated in other apps often arrive in Mail.app with black text on a black background.

Here are some I made earlier: one generated by mailing a to-do from iCal:

Another created by running an applescript over a blog post in Safari:

Suggested workarounds vary in complexity. Some involve dragging iCal appointments to the Desktop and then into Mail, others suggest copying all the blacked-out text, cutting and pasting it into another app like Textedit to turn it into plain text and then pasting it back again.

Unmarked Software, the developer of TextSoap, has even produced a stand-alone Mac OS X Service, FixMailText , as a work around.

In fact, the fix is quite simple. Apple’s technote on the problem points out that all you need to do in most cases is

1. Place the cursor into the body of the email.

2. Press ⇧+⌘+T (Shift + Command + T) to turn it into plain text. Or select “Make Plain Text” from Mail’s Format menu

3. Carry on.

It also suggests a slightly more convoluted workaround for those who need to preserve links embedded in Rich Text:

If you want to preserve links the message might contain:

1. Click in the body of the Mail message
2. Press Command-A to select all
3. Press Command-X to cut
4. Press the Delete key to clear remaining elements
5. Press Option-Shift-Command-V (Paste and Match Style)

This will replace the black-on-black text with text that uses your default Mail font settings.

As others have said, a technote from Apple on the problem is as close as one will get to acknowledgement that something is wrong.

Hopefully a proper fix is not far away.

UPDATE: 6 July 2010 Mail Attachment Iconizer, a mail plugin that is also afflicted with this bug has been updated with a release (2.1.10) that resolves the problem. [ via MacFixIt }apple mail, safari, webkit, mail.app, apple mail bugs, ical, applescript

Growl 1.1.3 has been released, bringing with it the official Leopard-friendly GrowlMail Extra.

Long-time Hawk Wings readers will remember that a beta-version of the GrowlMail Extra emerged on the Internet late last year. This new release is the real thing.

The main Growl app gains a number of improvements, including the ability to show notifications in every one of Leopard’s Spaces, the option to set a unique sound for each app’s alerts, and some bug fixes.

GrowlMail itself has been rewritten to remove the conflict with Leopard, and can now be installed on other start-up volumes.

Likewise, GrowlSafari now works with Safari 3.0, and other Extras get bugfixes and enhanced compatibility with Leopard.

The alerts looks nice, and now seems to drag a picture from Address Book for the sender if one is available, but uses the default Mail stamp icon if not.

This screenshot features an “iPhonesque” display style from MacThemes.

GrowlMail adds a preference pane to Mail.app in which you can set the way it reports alerts for more than one new email, the mailboxes it should monitor and more:

Growl and its Extras are freeware and available from the Growl web site . growl, growlmail, mail.app, apple mail, notification, leopard, safari

After complaining that the IT Department has more important things to do than upgrade our Zimbra installation, I am forced to eat my words.

It was updated this morning, and the new features (see Zimbra’s press release ) are just as sweet as they promised to be (Thanks, Mark. You IT guys are the cat’s pajamas.)

I no longer have to dive into Firefox to use its web interface, and it does feel blisteringly fast in Safari 3.0.

Dialling up the Zimbra 5.0 web interface in Safari on the iPhone now automatically launches its “mobile” interface. It looks good:

It lets you select emails by folder, via Zimbra’s saved searches or by tag. In a nice touch for MailTags users, you can set a Zimbra filter which will pick up a particular plain-text MailTags tag in the x-mailtags header and label it with a corresponding Zimbra tag.

The only downside I can find is no auto-completion of email addresses, which is a pain if you need to compose a new email or forward an existing one.

The calendar on the iPhone is even better than the built-in one.

It respects the colour choices of each calendar so that it is easier at a glance to see if the event is home-related (blue) or work-related (green). In iPhone’s default calendar everything is steely-blue. Stylish but not as informative.

No auto-completion puts iPhone’s mail client ahead for email, but Zimbra’s calendar is now my first port of call for seeing what’s coming up next.

[Hawk Wings readers who are unfamiliar with Zimbra's power, reliability and general open-source goodness can read about it on Zimbra's Product Page .] zimbra, mail.app, apple mail, mailtags, iphone, safari, firefox, productivity

A new version of the Zimbra collaboration suite has been released, which will make Leopard users smile with its support for Safari 3.0, integration of Leopard’s CalDAV features and an optimised iPhone interface.

The update was announced on the same day as Steve’s MWSF keynote, so it seems to have sunk without a trace. That’s a shame, as Zimbra is not only the closet thing that I have ever used to a Microsoft Exchange killer, but also works seamlessly with mail.app. It even plays nicely with MailTags.

I use it at work and it is rock solid. With its iCal-syncing Preference Pane, it also provides the platform-independent email and calendaring interface between me and my PC-using PA.

According to the press release , the Zimbra Team are cock-a-hoop about Leopard. CEO and co-founder of Zimbra, Satish Dharmaraj, says that, “The amazing speed of Safari 3 has blown the Zimbra team away and we are excited to be the first major collaboration platform to support the calendaring standard CalDAV.”

I will admit that I began to drool (a little) at the mention of the iPhone interface:

Additionally, ZCS is now available to iPhone users via the Zimbra Mobile HTML client. The iPhone’s Safari browser enables fast access to the full-featured AJAX interface, and the Zimbra Connector for Apple iSync allows users to sync not only their email but also their address books and calendars to their iPhones.

Unfortunately, the IT Department where I work is currently enjoying some personnel restructuring and doesn’t have the resources to commit to upgrading our installation to the new version anytime soon. Perhaps you will have more luck.

Although it is now owned by Yahoo!, Zimbra retains its open-source roots. An Open Source Edition is available for free. Other, more expensive options including product support are also available. All of them can be explored at the Zimbra web site .

The company is also hiring .zimbra, mail.app, apple mail, leopard, caldav, iphone, safari, opensource, collaboration, microsoft exchange, productivity

A poster on macOSXHints points out how much smarter Leopard Mail is at handling content from the web which is pasted into its messages from web browsers.

For example, say you want to share someone’s overall top artists from Last.fm:

Block the content you want to send, and then drag it to a message in Mail.app, and behold:

Mail does a pretty good job of preserving the HTML formatting, even keeping the links and tool tips alive. It even provides a “widget-like” black boundary and cross for quick removal of the HTML block if you change your mind about sending it.

There are two things to note here. First, this works much better if the message is set to Rich Text Format. I live in a Plain Text world, so didn’t notice this at first. But perhaps only fuddy-duddies like me think it is more polite to send a link to the page.

Secondly, it works even better if you apply the “quicker text dragging” hack. Of course, this speeds life up all across Mac OS X, but also in this case.

Cocoa-based apps (Mail.app, Safari, etc) require by default that you hold your mouse down over the selected text for a second before dragging.

You can reduce the built-in delay with a simple Terminal hack. Open Terminal and type (exactly):

This will reduce the delay to a tenth of a second in all your Cocoa-based apps (‘-g’ stands for ‘global’).

It modifies a string in the .GlobalPreferences.plist file in your ~/Library/Preferences folder:

You could edit it manually in Plist Editor, as seen here, if you have an aversion to the Terminal, although you will need to use an app like Leopard Cache Cleaner to reveal Leopard’s “hidden files” first.

You will, of course, need to restart the apps for the change to take effect.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, safari, cocoa, text, html, rich text formatting, tips

Gmail’s new interface is gradually spreading through its user base. I have it now.

It brings mysterious backend changes which enhance “the performance and the usability” of Gmail, as well as new features for contact management and more.

Two things will strike Hawk Wings readers at once.

First, the new interface breaks the Better Gmail Firefox extension. Its keyboard macros, quick navigation, coloured labels, advanced composing options and more make Gmail a pleasure to use.

Luckily Gina Trapani (a productivity goddess) is quick off the mark, and Better Gmail 2.0 is already available, although with a vastly decreased feature set, as she waits for the developers of each feature to update their code. Still, it already contains the keyboard shortcuts which are the key feature for speeding up your Gmail experience.

Secondly, Safari 3.0 is not fully supported. For example, on a cosmetic note, compare the contact manager layout on Google’s blog (top) with how it looks in Safari 3.0 (below):

Other early adopters of Leopard may agree that it is possible to spend too much time on the bleeding edge of innovation. Luckily, you can opt to use the old interface instead by clicking on “Older Version” next to the Settings.gmail, not apple mail, not mail.app, email, firefox, safari, interface, productivity