Inspired partly by Michael McCracken’s distraction-free, dedicated WebKit browser for Gmail, Chip Cuccio has written one for Google calendar.

It does just what Michael’s does for Gmail, giving you a view of your Google calendar without the toolbars and other things that distract you from your work.

Chip has posted the app, the source code and a screenshot on his web site .

Quick work too, considering recent news.ical, gcal, Google calendar, webkit, productivity, safari, gmail

Tonight I stumbled across a newly-posted Gmail icon at InterfaceLIFT.

The set contains images for the back and front of an envelope, the front displaying a possibly recognisable address.

This may be especially of interest to people looking for an icon to use with Michael McCracken’s excellent dedicated WebKit Gmail browser, although people who use Gmail for their email but Mail.app to read and collect it might be tempted too.

As usual, you can use these instructions to replace the icon in either the WebKit browser or Mail.app.gmail, Google, mail.app, apple mail, icons, hacks, productivity, email, webkit

Michael McCracken has posted a follow up clarification about his nifty little WebKit browser for Gmail.

He wants to correct some misconceptions, not least:

I didn’t say anything about disliking or replacing Apple Mail. Mail is my primary mail client, and there’s plenty about it that I like. I just use both, since I like GMail better for viewing mailing lists.

He also says that he has no great plans to develop the app further, although he gives his blessing to anyone else who wants to and lets him know.

And he takes pain to point out that the credit belongs to the Apple Web Kit Development team.

(On a pedantic note, I see from comparing his original post with this one, that the browser is built with the WebKit demo from the Web Kit development team. I am still confused about this, despite John Gruber’s post on the differences and Daniel Jalkut’s patient further explanation ).gmail, webkit, web kit, browser, email, web 2.0, webmail, mail.app, apple mail

Michael McCracken likes Gmail a lot.

But he finds that reading it in his normal web-browser is too distracting. Bookmarks, other open windows and the Google search are constantly tempting him away from his work.

So he created a dedicated WebKit browser that loads only Gmail without the distractions:

This gives him the focus that he is used to in an email client like Mail.app.

He has made it available for download from his web site .

If you are going to use it a lot, you might want to give it a distinctive icon, like one of the Gmail icons in the Mayosoft collection (or this recently posted one at InterfaceLIFT). Then a glance in the Dock tells you what it is:

UPDATE: Michael has some more things to say.gmail, email, productivity, WebKit, getting things done

According to Tao of Mac, after the update to 10.4.4 Mail.app is still registering as version 2.0.5. This suggests that the update offers no significant improvements for Apple Mail users.

However, some of the WebKit HTML rendering improvements listed under Safari in the 10.4.4 release notes, might flow through to viewing HTML messages in Mail.app.

I’m not going to attempt to download the update on dial-up, so I have to wait two weeks before I find out.

If you spot something new, please share!

MacInTouch’s never-ending story of reader reports on Apple Mail is always an interesting read.

In today’s instalment, Chris Malanga offers an intriguing tip for setting a font tag in a Rich Text message in Mail.app.

He notes that when the message is rendered into HTML by WebKit before sending, the font tag is more usefully placed (esp. for Outlook users) if you compose the message in a font that is not the default one set in your Preferences. He advises setting the default Rich Text font to one that you never use, and composing in another instead.

Personally, I can’t get my head around how Mail.app renders HTML via WebKit at all, so I am willing to listen to anyone who does.

Secure OS X has discovered a spoofing vulnerability in WebKit that also affects Apple Mail. Mail.app uses WebKit to render HTML emails.

The vulnerability involves the way links are displayed in HTML messages in certain circumstances:

The WebKit application fails to show the correct URL in the status bar if an image control with a “title” attribute has been enclosed in a hyperlink and uses a form to specify the destination URL. This may cause a user to follow a link to a seemingly trusted website when in fact the browser opens a malicious website.

Secure OS X recommends being careful when entering personal information after following a link contained in an email.

It also suggests viewing the raw source of the message if you are at all suspicious — View > Message > Raw Source in the menus, or Option-Command-U — to see what the URL reallly is before clicking on it.