Hawk Wings » Tiger Mail

Smarter Searches in Leopard Mail

Tim Gaden — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:51:55 +0000

A poster on macOSXHints notes that Leopard Mail now supports Spotlight sophistication in its searches.

This means that you can use a limited set of operators to construct more complex and better-targeted searches than you ever could before. Spotlight in Leopard can filter results by metadata categories like “author:” or “date:”. Leopard Mail does the same thing.

For example, this search lets me quickly find all the emails sent from a Christ Church South Yarra email address that contain the word “beer”. Not as many as one might think! Still, the search enables me to find quickly that the answer is Boags.

Another search from work yesterday quickly finds all the emails from the Director of Communications at College which contain the word “font”. Without too much browsing I discover that Optima is the approved font for all external communications and can get on with actually writing one.

A third example. This search lists all the emails that have arrived since 3 December that mention Tiger, including the one from a Hawk Wings reader who wonders why I don’t post about Tiger Mail anymore.

Not everything about Leopard Mail is focussed on greater productivity, but this smarter way of digging through your email and finding what you are looking for is a great leap forward.

After a few posts carping on about this or that failing in Mail.app, it’s good to stumble on something like this and remember what a truly great email client it is.mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, beer, Christ Church South Yarra, tiger mail, productivity, spotlight, searchingSimilar Posts:

Leopard Mail’s stupid save attachments button

Tim Gaden — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:05:40 +0000

Pierre Igot takes aim at the behaviour of the Save button in Leopard Mail, with the rigour and vigour which are his trademarks.

In Tiger Mail, he points out, you could click on the button to bring up a â€œSave Asâ€¦â€ dialog that offered a location for saving all the attachments in the message.

In Leopard Mail, however, you need to click-and-hold on the button in order to bring up an enhanced contextual menu with more options for individual attachments.

He calls this a bug rather than an improvement:

The simple and most obvious option, which is a single click on the button, no longer worksâ€”which does not make sense, because the buttonâ€™s visual appearance suggests both a regular button that responds to a single click (like the â€œQuick Lookâ€ button next to it) and a button that brings up a pop-up menu (with the triangle). Besides, the tool tip clearly suggests that the button should respond to a simple click as well.

I’ve had more than one email from users who thought that the button was broken, because it did nothing when they clicked it., so Pierre is not alone.

Head over to Betalogue and read the whole piece. mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, tiger mail, bugs, attachments, button, counterintuitive or what?Similar Posts:

Security Bug back for Leopard Mail

Tim Gaden — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:53:54 +0000

The shell script security exploit exposed and then fixed in Tiger Mail has been reintroduced into Leopard Mail.

The loophole allows a sender to disguise an executable file (say, a shell script) as an image or some other harmless file. When clicked on, the executable file runs. Don’t remember? See the Hawk Wings post at the time (Feb, 2006).

Now, it’s back. You can test for yourself. The Heise Security web site offers to send you a test email. Give them an email address and after a confirmation, the email arrives:

CLick on the “jpg” to open it, and it runs a shell script, listing your current directory and exiting harmelessly:

Last time, the news prompted a range of responses, some of them rather hysterical. One writer even claimed that it made Mail.app too dangerous to use.

I am happy to follow John Gruber’s lead (again). As he said last time:

â€œIt boils down to this: you canâ€™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.â€

Puzzling that it’s back, yes. But dangerous? No more than usual.

UPDATE: “FatYank” provides a quick fix in the comments for those who are really worried about this:

The workaround for this is to rename Terminal. When you rename Terminal and double click on the JPG, you get a message stating that Preview cannot open the file.

Or, as Rob points out, you could use Quickview to view attachments first, in which these “fake” file show up as empty.

Thanks!

[Via The Register ]mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, security, shell script, bug, apple, tiger mail, exploitSimilar Posts:

Getting Tiger Mail messages into Leopard Mail

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:43:21 +0000

Like many people, Max Shafiq is looking on the Apple Discussion forums for a way to import Tiger Mail messages into Leopard Mail.

Another post in the same thread notes some of the ways not to do it:

I have the same problem Max. I’ve tried importing mailboxes (from the file menu), and also dragging the old Mail folders to the new Mac’s Libraryâ€¦ both attempts only partially successful, with most mail missing completely.

Actually, the answer is fairly simple. Just follow the method in this previous Hawk Wings’ post on importing emlx messages into Tiger Mail. Nothing’s changed.

It involves quitting Mail, making a backup, creating a new Mailbox in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder, copying in the individual emlx files (that is, the messages) you want to import, restarting Mail, selecting the new mailbox which will appear in the list of mailboxes “On my Mac” and rebuilding it. VoilÃ ! The messages appear, with timestamps and everything else nicely preserved.

Piece of cake. mailboxes, leopard, mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, messages, importing, emlxSimilar Posts:

Good news for Leopard Mail lozenge loathers

Tim Gaden — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:21:16 +0000

As the arrival of each major new version of Mac OS X draws near, I start to dread the reappearance of those lozenge-shaped icons in my Mail.app interface.

Some people, more adaptable than I am, don’t mind them at all. For me, it always the first tweak I apply, using the excellent Mail Stamps utility.

Fortunately Mail Stamps developer Andrew Escobar is already working on the Leopard Mail version, which will be Mail Stamps 3.0.

In reply to my nervous email, he replies that,

Under the hood, Mail has not changed a great deal. I have been able to get full size toolbar items, so it should not be a problem. I fully plan to release a new version of Mail Stamps for both Leopard and Tiger.

Yippee! mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, lozenge buttons, mail stamps, hacks, hideously ugly, panther mail icons, good newsSimilar Posts:

Another Apple Mail skin for Thunderbird

Tim Gaden — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:48:39 +0000

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 flatterySimilar Posts:

Photoshopped Mail.app on TV?

Tim Gaden — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:14:10 +0000

Aaron emailed me a screenshot of Mail.app taken from an episode of the TV show Weeds (Series 2, Episode 5), which you can see below. Another screenshot has been posted on Flickr. It seems to show a message preview pane in a drawer on the right.

I am suspicious. It looks like a photoshop job to me.

Tiger icons and Panther Mail drawers seem odd. The Apple menu seems to be missing, the app is identified in the menubar as “Email” rather than “Mail”, the Applescript menu is where it was positioned in Panther, whereas it is on the right in Tiger Mail. The Junk mailbox appears below Trash in Tiger Mail but these are reversed in the screenshot (and these cannot be reordered):

On the other hand, it appears to be a functioning app. I’ve not seen the episode, but Aaron tells me that “the cap comes from a longer sequence that shows the character browsing through an inbox full of mail, with multiple messages popping up in that pane.”

A puzzle. What do you think?

[Thanks to an Apple Mail demi-god for technical advice. You know who you are!]mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, panther mail, weeds, screenshot, photoshop, pluginSimilar Posts:

Tiger Mail skin for Thunderbird updated

Tim Gaden — Tue, 02 May 2006 12:48:18 +0000

Toyo Snow has updated his Tiger Mail theme for Thunderbird, which aims to give it the look of OS 10.4′s Mail.app.

The new version (2.1) uses system fonts for cross-platform compatibility and will now highlight a selected header.

In keeping keeping with its attempts to reproduce the Mail 2.0 look, it now follows Mail.app’s default behaviour of bolding new messages.

A number of other small display glitches have been fixed.

The end result is not an exact match:

You can get the latest version from the Mozilla Thunderbird Add-ons site .thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, mail 2.0, skins, themes, Tiger MailSimilar Posts:

Using message priority in Apple Mail

Tim Gaden — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 13:09:39 +0000

After reading the piece on Mac Observer’s review of MailTags, a former Greek student of mine emails to ask how the heck she can get this feature in Mail.app.

It’s a new feature in Mail 2.0 or “Tiger Mail” and not enabled by default (I think. Who can remember that far back?), so perhaps she is not the only one.

Open a new message window, as if you were going to compose an email. Down in the bottom lefthand corner of the top pane, you will see a little button with three text fields and a triangle on it:

Click it and select “Customize…”.

You will see a window like this offering all sorts of additional features:

Any option here that you check will be displayed every time you open a Compose window.

Message priority is on the bottom right. You can choose to have the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) button or the field that specifies a different reply-to address always displayed. You can turn off the signature field if you want. message priority, options, compose window, BCC option, reply-to address, mail.app, Apple Mail. Mail 2.0, Tiger Mail, tips
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AppleScript to send a return receipt in Mail.app

Tim Gaden — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:56:05 +0000

One feature that many people miss in Apple Mail is the ability to request and answer return receipts.

People with Panther Mail can use MailPriority. For Tiger Mail users, there is an all-or-nothing solution that involves a Terminal hacking. It adds a return receipt request to all your emails.

The only other option for requesting receipts is a third-party service like ReadNotify. (Not a bad idea if you only need them now and then).

But now there is a way to answer the return receipts that others send to you. Joel Nelson has posted an AppleScript which automatically replies to return receipts sent to you by people who use mail clients that support it (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc). The message it generates looks like this:

Download the script and save it somewhere memorable. You will need to browse to it when setting up the rule that runs the script. Follow the instructions on Joel’s site.

You will very probably need to add a “Disposition-Notification-To” header to the list of conditions in Mail.app’s rule menu. Select the Edit header option:

Then click the plus sign on the next window and type “Disposition-Notification-To” so that it looks like this:

Now Apple Mail will automatically reply through the rule to any emails that request a read receipt.

Personally, I don’t miss them. There’s nothing more annoying than people asking you if you have received their message while you are reading it. But I don’t live in a corporate environment. In business some people have an expectation that you will acknowledge their emails in this way, and now with this script you can.reply, receipts, applescript, terminal hack, Tiger Mail, Panther Mail, email
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