Odissefs Pantazis-von zur Gathen (very cool!) has written an applescript that will request return receipts from recipients with email clients that can handle them.

Many people look for this if they are working in an Outlook world.

Odissefs’ script creates a new message in Mail.app, prompting you for the account you wish to use:

Then you compose the email as usual and send it off. If your recipient is using a compatible client, they will get a request to send back a read receipt, which then duly appears:

It is easier to set up than Joel Nelson’s script (see an earlier Hawk Wings post) although I have found it to be a little erratic. Sometimes the request for confirmation doesn’t come through to the recipient even when she or he is using Outlook.

You can find the script on the Apple Discussion Forums or on Ody’s web site .

Personally I am glad that Mail.app can neither send nor receive these things. Nothing annoys me more than people interrupting me to ask for a confirmation that I am reading their emails, when I am in the middle of reading them.

But if you go for this kind of thing or you are in a work environment in which they are required, you will like Odissiefs’ work.mail.app, apple mail, outlook, thunderbird, read receipts, applescript, scripts, plugins, productivity,

Gmail is made faster and more efficient by a range of keystroke shortcuts .

Now Mozilla users can enjoy the speed boost in Thunderbird and Fastmail customers can also get some of the bonus with a Greasemonkey script.

GmailUI is a extension that brings these Gmail keystrokes to Thunderbird.

After installing it, open the extension’s preferences to see a list of the keystrokes it offers:

You can get it from the Mozilla Extensions site .

Fastmail.fm Shortcuts is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that brings some but not all of the Gmail shortcut to Fastmail’s webmail interface.

It offers the following keystrokes:

Installing Greasemonkey scripts is a little more tricky than your average extension, but installation instructions and the script itself can be found in the Greasemonkey userscript.org repository .gmail, firefox, greasemonkey, scripts, extnesions, thunderbird, email, keystrokes, keyboard shortcuts

I ran across two things for Gmail users today.

Adam Pash at Lifehacker has posted a tutorial of tips and tricks for getting the most out of Gmail. It even has video clips!

Among other things, he talks about some scripts for the Firefox extension Greasemonkey which add very useful bells and whistles to Gmail’s web interface.

Another Greasemonkey script promises to bring basic encryption to Gmail. It first encrypts the email into AES and then uses the RSA algorithm to encrypt the message again.gmail, tips, tricks, greasemonkey, scripts, firefox, encryption, email

FreeMacWare.com is running a competition . The idea is that you post a selection of your best five freeware apps linked back to the site and you are in the running for a USD 100 iTunes voucher.

I can’t bring myself to pimp links like that for FreeMacWare (or anyone else), but the idea itself is a good one.

So, here are the five best freeware extras for Mail.app:

1. Mail Scripts . The collection of scripts from Andreas Amann is top-notch. They offer the ability to add all the email addresses in selected emails to your Address Book, to archive messages, to change SMTP servers on the fly, to remove duplicate messages, schedule email delivery and much more.
2. Mail.appetizer. Handsome, in-your-face, instant and informative notification of arriving emails. Lovely.
3. Event Maker. The best freeware solution for integrating Mail and iCal. Give it a Quicksilver trigger or FastScript hotkey, and iCal events, to dos and all-day events are just a key stroke away.
4. FastScripts Lite. This limited version of FastScripts by Daniel Jalkut offers up to ten hotkeys for AppleScripts and other excellent options to make using scripts in Mail and elsewhere more efficient. Nice.
5. MailUnreadStatusBar. If you are into the kinds of productivity tips that Merlin Mann is talking about in his Inbox Zero series at the moment, you will love this little app.

   It is much more discreet than Mail.appetizer, listing and offering mailbox-specific access to new mail without flashing it up in your face and thus interrupting your attempts not to live in your Inbox.

Of course, the best things in life are not always free. For a list of the very best things for Mail.app — freeware, donation-ware or shareware — see the Top ten things every Mail.app user should have.freeware, mail.app, apple mail, top five, addons, plugins, scripts, applescript

Apple has released a security update that patches the recently discovered vulnerabilities in Mail.app, Safari and elsewhere.

The release notes describe how Mail will be fixed:

In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, when an email attachment is double-clicked in Mail, Download Validation is used to warn the user if the file type is not “safe”. Certain techniques can be used to disguise the file’s type so that Download Validation is bypassed. This update addresses the issue by presenting Download Validation with the entire file, providing more information for Download Validation to detect unknown or unsafe file types in attachments.

Various Safari vulnerabilities are also remedied by this update, which is available in Software Update now.security update, mail.app, apple mail, safari, scripts, vulnerability, patch

The recent security flaws in Mac OS X have produced a range of responses. But in a lengthy article, IT columnist and Unix administrator John Welch sets a new high point.

It’s not enough to be (extra) careful about opening attachments in emails that you are unsure about. More drastic action is required:

If you are using Apple’s Mail, I’d consider switching to another mail program, at least temporarily. The problem with Mail is that it allows you to open a file with a single click, and there’s no warning from the application to give you a second chance to cancel that action. Neither Thunderbird nor Microsoft Entourage allow for this, so you might want to think about switching until Apple fixes that.

Oddly, later in the article he suggests: “Just take the common-sense steps that we all should be taking anyway, and you’ll be fine.”Mac osx, security, vulnerability, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, entourage, attachments, scripts

A tasty assortment of links on the recent security excitment, which also affects Mail.app.

Well-done

Secunia rates the Safari vulnerability as “extremely critical”, a rating the company gives when “successful exploitation does not normally require any interaction and exploits are in the wild.” Secunia is a provider of IT-security services.

Anti-virus company Intego has analysed the Leap-A (“Oompa-Loompa”) Trojan horse. After exhaustive testing, the company reported that “the best protection against this Trojan horse and its variants is Intego VirusBarrier X4″. CEO Laurent Marteau says, “it is clear that antivirus software on a Macintosh computer is as essential as wearing a seat belt in a car”.

Medium

ZDNet Australia carries an interview with Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ Asia-Pacific head of technology. ” “There is not a clear and present danger like there is with Windows but the same risks apply”, he says.

Eric Bangeman on Ars Technica thinks that “the malware may be less destructive, more difficult to find, and less prevalent than on other platforms. But it’s there, and it’s not going to go away.”

Medium-rare

At Wired, Leander Kahney is keeping his cool: “These Mac security holes are a storm in a teacup,” he says.

The Daring Fireball puts it all in perspective. John Gruber writes: “It boils down to this: you can’t safely double-click files from untrusted sources, and you never could. This is no different today on Mac OS X 10.4 than it was a decade ago on Mac OS 8 and 9.”

Stephan Schwab is also fairly relaxed: “Of course this unwanted interference is annoying and it’s far better to let the user decide when to execute something, but it’s not a security threat of any magnitude.”Trojan horse, exploits, virus, mac OS X, security, apple, safari, scripts