Aaron Harnly has taken an “all-too-welcome distraction from pressing schoolwork” to update his widescreen plugin Letterbox.

He has released the new version as a public beta.

It comes with a stand-alone plugin manager for Mail.app that can inspect, enable, disable, install and remove any Mail plugin:

The new version also features a preference pane with options to tweak the display, by toggling on and off the horizontal lines and/or different coloured backgrounds for items in the middle pane. The preview pane can be set to display on the right or underneath (an option to display the pane on the left has been switched off until some problems are resolved):

It comes with an auto-updater and Aaron promises that a two-line column for the middle pane (à la WideScreenMail, the other Leopard-friendly wide-screen plugin) is on the way.

It is a public beta so can expect a few minor kinks that still to be ironed out. Pick it up from Aaron’s web site.

Related posts

• WideScreenMail plugin gets two-line preview
• WideMail 0.1.0: Real Widescreen Preview Column
• How plugins turned an Entourage Girl into a Mail.app Fan
• Wide screen plugin for Leopard Mail released
• Three-pane Mail.app hack that works

Dane Harnett has updated his new WideScreenMail plugin, giving it the much-asked for two-line preview à la Entourage.

This was one of the features most requested of Letterbox, the Tiger wide-screen plugin.

Entourage, you will recall, displays mailboxes on the left, and the selected message in a preview pane on the right.

The middle pane offers a listing of the selected mailbox, with each line displaying the sender, subject line and time at which the email arrived:

Now, with WideScreenMail, Mail.app users can have the same layout. The middle column now displays the sender and the subject line in one field and the time of arrival (or whatever other column(s) you select):

And, of course, unlike Entourage, you are seeing Mail’s unified inbox, and don’t need to jump from account to account to answer your email.

Obviously, this reduces by one the number of columns needed in the middle pane and makes for a more efficient use of the available space.

Dane has made the new version of the WideScreenMail plugin available on his web site .

Still no further word on Letterbox progress.

Related posts

• WideMail 0.1.0: Real Widescreen Preview Column
• Letterbox (widescreen plugin) for Leopard
• How plugins turned an Entourage Girl into a Mail.app Fan
• Wide screen plugin for Leopard Mail released
• While I was busy…

Dane Harnett has released a widescreen plugin for Leopard Mail, which gives Mail.app an “Entourage” or “Outlook” look.

It is not as polished as Letterbox , the first and best of the widescreen plugins developed for Tiger Mail.

Aaron Harnly is working on the Leopard version , but if you really can’t wait, and plenty of people seem to think that this is the bees’ knees of email functionality, WideScreenMailPlugin will do the trick.

In essence it shifts the preview pane from the bottom to the right-hand side of Mail.app’s interface:

WideScreenMailPlugin is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .

Related posts

• Wide-screen hack for Yojimbo
• WideScreenMail plugin gets two-line preview
• Letterbox (widescreen plugin) for Leopard
• WideMail 0.1.0: Real Widescreen Preview Column
• Three-pane Mail.app hack that works

Fans of Aaron Hanly’s Letterbox plugin, which redraws Mail.app’s interface to provide an “Outlook-style” preview pane on the right, will love a hack for Yojimbo that does the same thing.

Jon Hicks has created a modified nib file for Yojimbo’s interface that moves the preview pane to the right.

The shift involves some contraction of the Listview in the middle, but looks good:

This is Jon’s screenshot, ripped off with thanks

Jon provides some instructions for installing the new nib file. The involve digging around inside the app itself, but are not too daunting.

As Jon points out, it is a good idea to backup the existing OGMainWindow.nib file, in case you tire of the new look.

You can get the modified file and read the instructions on Jon’s web site .

Related posts

• Wide screen plugin for Leopard Mail released
• Letterbox 0.16: Installer, visual enhancements
• WideScreenMail plugin gets two-line preview
• Three-pane Mail.app hack that works
• Three-pane hack for Panther Mail

The poster at Apathy Online has developed a quick hack for Panther Mail users that will give them the “Outlook-like” three-pane layout.

Tiger Mail users can use Aaron Harnly’s excellent Letterbox plugin . However, despite a few positive reports, Aaron doesn’t promise seamless operation in Panther Mail.

If Letterbox fails you in Panther, this could be the fall-back you are looking for.

The end result looks like this:

Image from ApathyOnline

Installing it is easier than you might think.

First, quit Mail. Then navigate to it in your Applications folder and right-click on Mail’s icon. Select the “Show Package Contents” option:

Then navigate through the Contents and Resources folders to the English.lproj folder. (Or the lproj folder for the language you use.)

Open it. Find the MessageViewer.nib file:

Back-up the original file before you do anything, either making a duplicate in the same place or copying it to the Desktop.

Then right-click on the MessageViewer.nib icon, choose the “Show Package Contents” option again and replace the files inside with the three modified files from ApathyOnline.

Restart Mail.app and enjoy.

Disclaimer: I have not tested this myself, no longer having a Mac with Panther installed. Also, since I can’t remember that far back, I have simply assumed the layout of the Mail package is the same. If it isn’t, I hope that someone will tell me.

Related posts

• WideScreenMail plugin gets two-line preview
• Three-pane Mail.app hack that works
• Get rid of Tiger Mail’s lozenge buttons
• Wide-screen hack for Yojimbo
• Wide screen plugin for Leopard Mail released

It’s the season to sacrifice all discretion and fact-checking reserve to the excitement of unrestrained rumour-mongering.

Jason O’Grady at Powerpage helps the process along with a list of “leaked” 10.5 features , which may or may nor be true, but are interesting to read either way.

He offers details of Spotlight 2.0, Dashboard 2.0, Safari 3.0, iChat 4.0, Automator 2.0, QuickTime 7.2, Mail 3.0, iCal 3.0, Address Book 5.0.

For Mail, his source suggests:

- New server protocols
- Widescreen version
- Different views, drop down
- Gmail-like thread system
- Ability to send proper HTML email
- Able to import pages documents as email
- iChat integration and new collaboration integration
- iCal calendar integration

Who knows?

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