Anthony Baker emails to tell me that the new nightly builds of WebKit (which will be used for Safari 3.0) have fixed the WYSIWYG form editing problem that bedevils users of current Safari versions.

This means, he says, that “you can now hit Gmail and get the same kinds of rich-text editing capability provided to IE, FF and other browsers. You can also access Google Docs.”

And it’s true. Using Safari 2.0.4 (419.3) the formatting bar in Gmail’s basic HTML view doesn’t appear:

But WebKit displays the HTML formatting bar in all its glory (as it also does in Google Docs):

Not only that but some basic formatting keyboard shortcuts work too. So ⌘B and ⌘I toggle bold and italic text, making it easier for die-hard keyboard users to format their emails without fingers leaving the keyboard.

Not all the shortcuts work though. Tab+Enter doesn’t send a message and ⌘U doesn’t produce underlined text.

The latest beta of the much-hyped Desktop client for Gmail, MailPlane which I have been fooling around with for a few days also offers the option to use WebKit behind the scenes to give users this added functionality (but that’s a topic for another longer post.)

WebKit scolds you for daring to use extensions, but that’s a small price to pay for a user in love with Gmail’s HTML features.

[Thanks, Anthony!]mail.app, apple mail, gmail, webkit, safari, html, web forms, formatting, mailplane, google

Nick Flood posts a problem in the user forums at HEXUS:

I stupidly deleted mail.app and I now need it. I can’t find the download anywhere on the internet.

Can anyone help me out?

Once upon a time, you had to get hold of Pacifist , a neat little app that extracts applications from packages, disk images and archives.

You could use it to navigate through your original OS X discs to find Mail.app, extract and install it.

But now (and not everyone knows this) there is an easier way.

Tiger allows for the “custom installation” of individual apps without the need for third-party helpers.

Just insert your installation disks and follow the instructions in this Apple technote, “Custom installs in Mac OS X 10.4″ :

This custom reinstall option can also be used with Address Book, iCal, iChat, iTunes and Safari.

Of course, sometimes Mail.app is so buggered up with hacks, scripts, plugins and add-ons that you may want to delete it and re-install on purpose.

An earlier Hawk Wings post (see “The Final Solution: Reinstalling Mail.app“) covers the steps to do that successfully. mail.app, apple mail, custom install, ical, address book, reinstall, ichat, itunes, safari

As everyone knows, Mail.app doesn’t offer a default option for composing HTML emails. No one feels neutral about this; people either love or hate it.

If you fall into the latter category, check out LetterPop , a new HTML newsletter creation web app, which promises another option to existing workarounds like these three (“Composing HTML messages in Mail.app”) or using TextMate as an external editor.

It was recently hyped by Lifehacker as “the first must-see web app of 2007″.

The app is essentially a web-based WYSIWIG HTML editor. Once you have created an account, you can upload images and shoe-horn them into a limited number of templates, mainly of the “What I did on my holidays” variety. The templates also offer a varying number of test boxes for your news.

Create a mailing list by adding contacts to the address book in your LetterPop account (a nice quick-add feature is provided), and a mail-out about your flash newsletter is just a few button presses away.

Recipients don’t actually get a copy of the newsletter though. They get an invitation to visit the LetterPop web site and view it there:

It has just launched and is a true “Web 2.0″ beta (the only one apart from Stikkit ?), so you may find your artistic options restricted.

Still, you can quickly knock out something respectable:

One note of warning: The number of Safari-unfriendly sites is declining, but this is one. I had to use Firefox to upload images.

LetterPop is free. Privacy mavens may want to consider the site’s privacy policy which contains the following statements:

81 miles may, at its discretion, use this information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.

and

In the course of operating our business it may be necessary or appropriate for us to provide access to your personal information to others such as our service providers, contractors and select vendors so that we can operate 81 Miles and other related entities. Where practical, we seek to obtain confidentiality agreements that are consistent with this policy and that limit others’ use or disclosure of the information you have shared.

[Via DownloadSquad ]html, newsletters, mail outs, email, productivity, mail.app, apple mail, safari

A poster on MacOSXHints makes a good point about the new Gmail interface and Safari.

Although Gmail’s new right-hand menu doesn’t work in Safari, the keyboard shortcuts for the options it contains work fine.

And they are, of course, “r” for Reply, “a” for Reply All and “f” for Forward.

Keyboard shortcuts are great. Although the jury is still out on whether they actually make you faster or just make you feel faster, just feeling faster is good.

So, it’s worth expanding these three to include all the keyboard tricks in a nice, complete and printable list of Gmail shortcuts .

Or if you are a real Google fanatic, the Complete Google Apps Cheatsheet .

Desktop email client fanatics like me will find it useful to know about the Thunderbird one (PDF) , the Entourage cheatsheet (PDF) and the complete list of Apple Mail shortcuts (PDF). email, gmail, thunderbird, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, Apple Mail, mail.app, safari

Carlo Gandolfi has developed a way to run Mail and Address Book on a memstick or USB stick, iPod or external drive.

It works as a shell script which opens the local copy of Mail using preferences stored in the external application bundle. The Portable Address Book works in the same way.

If you have a USB stick big enough, you can also store your Mail folder, com.apple.mail.plist and caches on it.

This means that take your Mail and contacts with you and get working on any Mac that has local copies of Mail and Address Book installed.

And there’s more….

However, Portable Safari, Portable Mail, Portable iCal, Portable Address Book and Portable iChat require a USD .99 donation before you can download them. Others like Portable Adium, Portable AbiWord and more are free. See the details and the scripts that makes it work on osxportableapps Sourceforge page .

The Free Open Source Mac User Group has made even more applications portable. Their stuff is free.mail.app, apple mail, address book, ichat, ical, safari, portable apps, memstick, USB stick

The current “Tip of the Week” from Apple describes how to email a URL from Safari.

It’s as easy as pressing ⇧⌘I and then sitting back while Mail.app creates a new message containing the link.

That’s it.

I hesitated about posting this, but sometimes tips aren’t as well known as you might think, like using ⌘] and ⌘[ to cycle through the available HTML, Rich Text and plain text views of an email, or using Gmail-like “Conversation” views in Apple Mail.

If you use some other browser, you will have to make your own arrangements. OminWeb users can use a bookmarklet to send a link, Firefox users can customise their toolbar by adding a “Send Link” button and Camino users can uses ⇧⌘L. url, safari, camino, firefox, mail.app, apple mail, keyboard shortcuts, gmail, tips, emailing a link

rooSwitch Lite offers multiple profiles for most of Mac OS X’s iApps including Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, Mail.app, Safari and Stickies.

As the developer Brian Cooke explains:

rooSwitch makes it easy to keep your favorite apps data safe and also makes it easy to manage profiles for different situations. A good example of this is are “at home” and “at work” profiles.

rooSwitch Lite is the freeware, restricted version of rooSwitch (shareware, USD 14.95). It doesn’t have the range of apps that the shareware version offers or the Automator and AppleScript support, but it does offer unlimited profiles and fast switching between them.

In addition to keeping home and work settings separate, rooSwtich’s profiles are great for beta-testers and developers who need to work with multiple preference and application support files.

Brian has made a movie which demonstrates the app in action and another movie of the shareware version gives additional tips on how to use the app to maximum advantage.

rooSwitch Lite is freeware and available from Brian’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, ical, address book, productivity, profiles, preferences, Safari