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

As everyone knows, it has long been possible to add a very fancy signature to your mail.app emails, using the excellent tutorial provided by Melvin Rivera.

It’s complicated, involving some digging around under the hood. It also requires a measure of HTML and CSS coding ability.

However, when the process is over the result is impressive (provided that you don’t hold a faith position on plain text in Internet communication):

Now a poster on macOSXHints has discovered an easier way. It is possible to add hyperlinks to your signatures in Mail’s Preferences without the pain involved in the first option.

All you need to do is type text into the signature field, highlight it and press Command-K (⌘-K). Up pops a dialog into which you place the URL, and you’re done. In a minute you have a hyperlinked signature, not as polished as Melvin’s, but easier on the eye than a sig full of long URLs:

Rob Griffiths comments that the tip didn’t work for him in 10.5, but it’s working fine for me in 10.6.1 (mail.app 4.1).

Of course, Command-K (⌘-K) also works in the body of any (rich text) email you are composing.

[Via macOSXHints ]

On Apple Discussions Martin Marconcini has discovered a way to bring Mail.app to a screaming halt in three easy steps.

Frustrated by Mail’s tendency to freeze when he dragged anything onto Mail’s Dock icon, he went back and painstakingly restored his Mail installation step-by-step until the glitch re-emerged.

Here’s what he discovered (you can test it for yourself):

One: Set Mail’s New message default in the Composing preference pane to plain text.

Two: Add a signature to your email account in the Signatures Preference pane. Make sure that you select it at the bottom of the signature pane to be added to every new message by default:

Three: Drag an image or anything else onto Mail’s Dock icon.

That’s a big, 100%-repeatable train wreck for me.

It seems like a common configuration; it’s not restricted to dragging ClarisWorks documents onto the Dock icon when the signature contains a particular accented Laotian character. How does such a thing not emerge in internal testing? Perhaps I am too romantic about internal testing.

Anyway, happily, I am in the clear. All my signatures are just a few keystrokes away in TextExpander.

But Martin suggests some workarounds for those plagued by these freezes:

a) Use Rich Text (not an option if you use Blackberry or need plain text)
b) Use Plain Text but remove the signatures (can be a Pain In the A** if you use different business accounts like me with odd disclaimers that are a “must”).
c) Roll back to Safari 3.0.* and either use it or use Camino/Opera/Firefox/Etc. Could be a problem if you rely on Safari stuff like Inquisitor, 1Password, etc.
d) Don’t drag attachments to the dock icon…

On 8 April Apple acknowledged this as “a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering”. mail.app, apple mail, rich text, webkit?, plain text, dock, attachments, bug, signatures

Scott Little has updated his excellent SignatureProfiler plugin for Leopard Mail.

Veteran Hawk Wings readers will remember how many nifty tweaks and new options this plugin brings to Mail.app’s signature feature (see this previous Hawk Wings post if you are not a veteran reader).

The new version adds support for Leopard Mail and removes it for Panther Mail. You can get the update (1.4.4) from Scott’s web site . SignatureProfiler is donation-ware.signatures, mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, html, CSS, Skype, hyperlinks, plugins

I’ve got to mark exam papers now. No more blogging for me.

The rest of tonight’s Hawk Wings comes to you in brief:

1. Chris Campbell at particletree has collected six posts on email and how to manage it better. Most of them have been covered here over the past year, but it’s good to see them together in one place. [Via 43Folders ]
2. Take Control Books is holding “a 50% off sale” on its ebooks to celebrate its third anniversary. Titles like Take Control of .Mac, Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger and Take Control of Spam in Apple Mail are going out the door for a song.
3. Mez Hopking has posted a nice tutorial on making a fancy signature in Mail.app, but it’s a bit old school in parts now.

mail.app, apple mail, ebooks, email, signatures, html, tips

Scott Little has released a substantial update to his SignatureProfiler plugin for Apple Mail, which manages signatures and adds extra features like iTunes info and account-specific tail signatures.

The new version (1.3) adds the option to insert a variety of Skype images into your sig, new placeholders for images and hyperlinks in your sigs, greater stability and more.

Most usefully of all, it now allows you to add HTML and CSS to signatures without all the messing around with cryptically-named files like 92768111-8FA1-4572-977D-C94D7A5FDB9A.webarchive that was involved in previous signature hacks like this and this .

Now, creating fancy signatures is much easier. A new contextual menu in SignatureProfiler for Mail’s signature preference pane makes it fast, easy and error-free:

You can drop an HTML file or a webarchive right into the signature you want. Options to add an obscured email address and other fields which SignatureProfiler fills in when constructing the signature means that you can construct great signatures in minutes:

Of course, this will appeal most to fans of Rich Text emails rather than to old fuddy-duddies like me.

Still, the ability to add info about your iTunes habits, account-specific tail signatures and other features of the plugin do not break the sacred bonds of plain text brotherhood, so there is lots for every Mail.app user to enjoy here.

SignatureProfiler is donation-ware and it is available from Scott’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, signatures, CSS, HTML, plugins, iTunes

Scott Little has written a clever plugin that manages signatures in Mail.app and adds extra features like iTunes info and account-specific tail signatures.

When the bundle is installed (Scott provides specific plugins for Panther and Tiger Mail) and configured, its options can create quick distinct outgoing signatures from the same signature file:

As he explains,

Basically what this plugin does for you is add the ability to have replaceable tags in your signatures that are context sensitive to the Mail account that you are sending from. In addition, you can have it autofill information from iTunes into a signature as well.

For example, by adding placeholders like {itunes.display.info} to a signature in Mail’s signature preferences, you create a tagline that can be added to emails sent from any of your accounts which you specify:

It’s a clever idea. Although Scott hasn’t tested it on an Intel Mac, the Tiger bundle seems to work fine on my MacBook Pro.

It adds another set of options to other tips for creating HTML signatures and CSS signatures in Mail.app.

The plugin is donation-ware and available from Scott’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, plugins, signatures, itunes, tips