The next best thing to Mail.app is a copy of Thunderbird skinned to look like Mail. At least, that was clearly the case until GyazMail got IMAP support.

Another Apple Mail skin has appeared for Thunderbird, bringing the total to three.

This one, called “Apple Mail”, offers the Tiger Mail look.

The developer says it “makes your TB look and feel like the native Apple Mail software, that comes along wiht your shiny and flashy new Mac.”

Things start to fall apart a bit in the Compose window though:

The “Tiger Mail” theme offers Thunderbird users the same look.

CrossOver provides a Panther Mail look.

Take a look at both of them in an earlier Hawk Wings post and/or go grab Apple Mail from the Thunderbird Add-ons site.thunderbird, Mail.app, apple mail, skins, themes, panther mail, tiger mail, the sincerest form of flattery

Doug Lerner wants to take Mail.app and his messages with him and plug it into any Mac he can find.

He posts in the Apple Discussions:

Apparently Thunderbird supports a “portable mailbox” feature. In other words, you can keep your mail on a USB RAM drive, and just plug it in to whatever computer you are using – Mac or Windows – and Thunderbird just uses that mailbox instead of one on your HD.

My friend’s USB RAM was only 2GB and he was getting worried about reaching capacity, so he started using his 20GB iPod instead, which works just as well.

I wonder if such a thing is possible with Apple’s Mail app.

Naturally, the idea that Thunderbird can do anything better than Mail.app sends me into a frenzy.

Clever people have developed a couple of ways to use Mail.app on memory sticks or iPods.

Portable Mail is a clever hack that opens a local copy of Mail.app on whatever Mac you are using with preferences stored on a USB stick. If the stick is big enough to cal also store your Mail folder and everything else on it as well.

Developer Carlo Gandolfi has recently released SyncPAppsX , a helper app that syncs the local and portable settings for a range of his portable iApps including Portable Mail, making it even easier not to miss a beat. Nice.

Jeffrey Glover has worked out a way to store his Mail and Mail Downloads on an iPod. By creating some symbolic links, he shows you how to force Mail to use the messages on the iPod, regardles of which Mac it is plugged into.

Obviously, by creating different symbolic links, you could move the Mail folder to any remote volume, a network drive perhaps, and so share the same messages between two or more Macs on the one network. It’s an interesting way to share POP messages between multiple Macs, although I wouldn’t want to guess what would happen if more than one Mac was writing to the Mail folder at the same time.mail.app, apple mail, portable apps, usb stick, memory stick, ipod, mobility, productivity, thunderbird

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs uses the recent release of a Windows security patch to fire up the campaign to end HTML email.

He reminds his readers that “viewing your e-mail in anything other than plain text mode is asking for trouble on a Windows computer.”

He then proceeds to list some of the reasons why HTML should be avoided, including better protection against phishing attacks, avoiding “spam touting graphic images from adult Web sites” and not seeing your own HTML emails end up in someone else’s spam folder. (See a much more comprehensive list of reasons on the Free Anti Spam web site.)

Instructions are provided on using plain text in Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Opera. These might be useful for Hawk Wings readers in a distressing work environment.

Mail.app users have at least three ways to deal with incoming HTML emails—see an earlier Hawk Wings post, “Viewing HTML messages in Apple Mail“).

I am a fan of the first, most brutal option myself, but I am also a realist. See further King Canute (Wikipedia ).

UPDATE: Nicholas takes a different view . “Arguing that email users should not have access to different fonts or colours is much like arguing that they should still be using the word processors of 1987 as well,” he suggests.

[Thanks, Michael]mail.app, apple mail, windows, outlook, html, plain text, thunderbird, opera, outlook express

Nick Kreeger has released the first version of a new open source email client for Mac OS X, which “blends technology from two popular Mozilla projects, Camino and Thunderbird, to create a polished native Macintosh application”.

The “Welcome to Correo” email waiting in the inbox describes it as “Mac essence, Gecko powered”.

Extra user interface polish is provided by Jon Hicks , who has provided the icons and other bits and pieces.

And it does look nice:

As Nick admits, it is pretty basic at the moment, although multiple POP and IMAP accounts are supported.

It also features a quick switch between the classic “Mail.app” layout and an Outlook-like “wide-screen” view.

He has big plans for the app though:

There are many planned features for the mail client, including plugin capability (to allow development of extensions such as PDA synchronization), tabbed window interface, address book support, keychain access, and various other to-be-determined features.

A roadmap on the app’s wiki gives an additional sense of where the app is headed.

I sense the end of unqualified “Wildebeest’s butt” wisecracks about Mozilla mail clients.

Correo 0.1 is free and available from Nick’s web site .

[Thanks for the tip-off, Bronson!]email, thunderbird, camino, gecko, mac osx

Two journalists from ITWorld Canada have put Exchange Server 2007 through its paces, testing it with a variety of email clients and web browsers.

They discovered a lot of interesting things about the new software’s junk mail catching abilities and security, but what grabbed my attention was the performance of Mail and Safari.

Unsurprisingly, Exchange Server 2007 works best with Outlook 2007.

However other clients were also tested:

Exchange 2007 server is also open for use with other e-mail client access methods, such as Thunderbird (the e-mail counterpart to Firefox) and Microsoft’s older Mac Office e-mail product called Entourage. This subpar access does not include any of the groupware-focused features, such as shared contact, mail, files/folders, group calendars and Microsoft SharePoint services.

The accessibility afforded for Exchange 2007 clients is quite varied. Obtaining simple e-mail access through standard POP3 and IMAP protocols across all clients was easy in our tests.

We used a number of e-mail client applications successfully, including Thunderbird (under Linux , MacOS, and Windows XP/Vista Ultimate), Apple Mail, and Netscape clients all ran successfully and flawlessly.

Good news for Mac users trapped in a Windows work environment. We are still second class citizens, but at least we can communicate with other workers, albeit at a reduced level.

They also tested Exchange Server 2007′s web-based mail service, Office Web Access (OWA) browser, and found that it “worked well” with Safari and Firefox.

The test revealed an odd security flaw:

The OWA browser application when connecting to Exchange 2007 does not support the option to suppress externally referenced content (usually pictures) that are situated on a Web site or other Internet source, letting the mail sender record that the content have been seen/read in the e-mail. This inability to suppress rich (and revealing) content is disturbing, as it leaves this security measure to be handled by third-party applications.

The article is three pages long. Subsequent sections discuss Exchange Server’s spam catching features and other security failings.email, outlook, exchange server 2007, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, entourage, microsoft, productivity, interoperability

GyazMail, an up-and-coming Cocoa-based email client for Mac Os X, has been updated.

The new version (1.5) brings some other welcome improvements as well as a big feature bump–IMAP support.

Adding support for the IPv6 addresses and the ability to save messages in plain text, RTF and other formats are fine additions to any client, but it’s IMAP support that finally makes GyazMail almost a grown-up email app.

The interface is unapologetically modelled on Mail.app:

There is not much that it cannot do. GyazMail supports multiple accounts, a variety of screen layouts including an “Outlook-style” wide-screen format, message threading, rules and filters, SSL/TLS support, labels, customisable keyboard shortcuts, some AppleScript support and more (see the full feature set on GyazMail’s web site).

Personally, I think Mail.app still holds the edge in at least two ways: the “Unified Inbox” and the ability to extend and customise it through plugins (two of the five reasons to be grateful for Mail.app).

But after fooling around with it for a day, I’m happily prepared to put it ahead of Mail’s two other main rivals, the Behemoth and the Wildebeest’s Butt.

GyazMail is shareware (USD 18), although you can try it for free first in a 40-day demo which is available at the developer’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, entourage, email, imap

Robert Coleman has bravely made a commitment to compile and host the latest builds of Thunderbird with the patch applied that integrates with Address Book.

Many people hope that Thunderbird will one day support Address Book access, but although an Address Book patch has been created, movement on improving it or building into official Thunderbird builds has been slow.

In an email, Robert writes that he is now “hosting more up to date (ideally weekly) Universal Binary builds of trunk Thunderbird with the Address Book patch applied”.

The latest build on his site (3.0a1) was compiled on 6 December.

He also includes on his web page instructions and screenshots (and warnings and caveats) for adding the required preferences to Thunderbird’s pref.js file.

He warns that access to Address Book is currently read-only, that the code is a little unstable and that the build is not an official Mozilla one, so is not packaged with the usual Thunderbird branding.thunderbird, address book, hack, patch, universal build, email, mozilla