Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Internet Tools
Three-pane Mail.app turns into a plug-in
Well that was quick. First Mail.app received a widescreen, three-pane face-lift, and now it's been morphed into a plug-in. The author provides two different sets of instructions for installing: drag and dropping into your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory or using a couple of commands in Terminal. Go nuts ladies and gentlmen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Don said 1:30PM on 6-02-2006
Tried it several times....got a dialog box saying that Mail has disabled the folder called Bundles and to contact the originator to find a verison compatible with OSX.4. Help?
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dave said 1:32PM on 6-02-2006
uh, i don't wanna be the first to try it, but has anybody had time to test out? would you be willing to write up some quick commentary?
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Chris P said 1:33PM on 6-02-2006
Worked like a charm! Thanks!
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Alex said 2:06PM on 6-02-2006
And now we can resize the middle bar - wahey
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travis said 2:09PM on 6-02-2006
I gave it a try and it looks good but crashes. I can keep Mail open as long as I don't actually click on an email message. Once I do that it crashes and I have to restart. I can adjust column size etc. and work within the app but click a message an down it goes.
Any ideas how to revert back? I tried taking the plugin out of the bundles folder but that didn't work.
Travis
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Colt said 2:18PM on 6-02-2006
Gave it a try. Kept it installed for about 5 min. I didn't like it. It caused (what I consider) valuable info to be abbreviated so much, that it was unreadable. I'm talking about the message list preview giving you the subject/from/date received/attachment/reply stuff. That info virtually disappears. I'm sticking with the default view.
By the way, I had no crash issues or uninstallation problems. I just dragged the bundle out of the Mail Bundles folder.
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Mark Grimes said 2:36PM on 6-02-2006
Works great here. Coexists with the other bundles (MailTags, MailActOn, GPGMail and SpamSieve) nicely. No crashes.
Only issue I see is after I carefully select the column sizes for the middle column and adjust the per message view to the appropriate width... after a spotlight lookup and return back to three column view the column widths are too wide. There needs to be a way to preserve the column sizes when in three pane mode.
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travis said 3:04PM on 6-02-2006
Never mind - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020830053915823&query=rebuild%2Bmail.app
This did it. Deleted Bundles from all users and now Mail.app works fine
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Jean said 4:00PM on 6-02-2006
worked fine for me (10,4,6). Quite amazed by the fact that a plug-in can do that. Can anyone point me to an introduction to the plug-in architecture of Apple software?
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Justin said 5:30PM on 6-02-2006
I tried it and I love it. In fact, I switched NetNewsWire to widescreen mode to match Mail. It just seems more efficient, better, nicer. It may just be the novelty of it, but it looks ike I'l be sticking with it. No crashes, no problems...just works really well and makes Mail totally new.
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bryan Webster said 5:57PM on 6-02-2006
Load of rubbish, looks awful and messy
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editblog said 6:11PM on 6-02-2006
I tried it an it worked except for the fact that now I get no mail alert sounds. No ding when new mail comes in and no SWOOSH when mail goes out....
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Jettyboy said 6:59PM on 6-02-2006
Works great for me, on a 23" Apple display, much more convenient. (for me) Mahalo to the scripter... JB
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cletus said 8:09PM on 6-02-2006
17" iMac Core Duo, 10.4.6, can't get it to do anything...help?
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Jeff Wilson said 9:43PM on 6-02-2006
Downloaded and love it. Much better for me (15" PB). Thanks to the maker.
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John said 12:42AM on 6-03-2006
Works great on my 15.4" MBP!
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Aaron Vogel said 3:58AM on 6-03-2006
Love it! Works well on a 17" PBook with 10.4.6
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Todd Dominey said 8:35AM on 6-03-2006
Works great for me. Very nice.
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Neil said 8:34PM on 6-03-2006
Works great here, too. The only issue I can see here that is directly caused by the plugin is that Mail no longer remembers a folder's threading state. Without this bundle if you expand all threads in a folder Mail would remember it for later.
The other issue is column widths can be a bit flaky, but they were like that before anyway - one annoying-as-hell bug with Mail that I wish Apple would finally fix.
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Grover said 9:35PM on 6-03-2006
Just FYI, it's not an either or thing with the command line. The command line commands are for enabling you ability to use bundles at all. If you don't do that part and haven't installed any other Mail plugins, it won't work.
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