Filed under: Software, Leopard
Widemail makes Mail.app widescreen friendly
I find the Mail.app plugin Widemail extremely useful. At my day job I use Outlook and the widescreen view is very efficient for space management. Prior to upgrading to Leopard, I used the application Letterbox written about here; however in my recent search for a Mail-enhancing plugin I wanted something a little more robust. Enter Widemail. It not only provides the awesome widescreen view from Letterbox, but it provides a means for creating a two-line message row similar to that found in Outlook for Windows and Entourage on the Mac.
Since we last wrote about Widemail the developer has added a preference pane within Mail.app making it easier to tweak settings. Additionally, the Widemail custom column can now have items that are left-aligned and right-aligned within the same row. Everyone's favorite automatic self-update framework, Sparkle, has been added as well.
Widemail makes Mail.app exceptionally more functional for my day-to-day use and is a free download (as in, feel free to make a donation).
[via Lifehacker]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Matt said 1:25PM on 12-08-2008
Been using this for quite some time. It's excellent and simple!
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Jack said 1:32PM on 12-08-2008
Thanks for sharing .. been looking for some thing like this for a while ...
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Mark said 1:43PM on 12-08-2008
It works great if and only if you don't have long message lists. If your message list is too long, it freezes. For example, I have my Gmail IMAP'ed in and if I go to "All Mail" it freezes up and I have to restart Mail. After a while, I just gave up. I'd love it if the developer would fix the issue because it is otherwise really nice.
For now, I'm using Letterbox. It doesn't have multi-line message info in the message list, but it is very fast and doesn't ever freeze.
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David said 1:51PM on 12-08-2008
Multiline message list doesn't work for me... been all through the settings - don't see an option for it either... just the formatting options for the 2nd line.
Is it supposed to work by default?
No multi line love for me....
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Greg said 2:09PM on 12-08-2008
I think I've figured it out. If you right-click a one of the column headers (i.e. From, Subject, etc.) you can select "WideMail Column" which seems to do the trick. I've turned off everything now except the WideMail Column.
jln said 2:09PM on 12-08-2008
It doesn't work here as well. To bad.
mark said 4:48AM on 12-14-2008
Same here. Can't enable the multi-line display, and the "WideMail column" doesn't display at all.
Bummer.
Kryptinite said 1:51PM on 12-08-2008
I've never heard of this until now. I'll be downloading it as soon as I get home. Sometimes it pays to mention things more than once :).
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Aron Trimble said 2:15PM on 12-08-2008
@Greg - You hit it right on the head! I should have mentioned that bit in the post as I don't think it is documented very well.
jln said 2:29PM on 12-08-2008
This is not really obvious. Thanks Greg.
Sorry for hitting the wrong post's reply button, btw...
mark said 5:04AM on 12-14-2008
OK, I got it to work (Command-clicking a column header), and I like it -- but WideMail's handling of threads, which I use extensively, is poor. It's jerky, erratic, and unpredicatable. When expanding a thread, you don't know where to look, because the thread is likely to have moved higher or lower in your email list. This may end up being a dealbreaker for me. Bummer, because I really like it otherwise.
(Hint: make color of 2nd line "silver" -- use the colorpicker crayon. This makes the WideMail column far more readable.)
MatthewRex said 1:58PM on 12-08-2008
David, I have the same problem. I cannot enable multi-line for the life of me. I may just got back to Letterbox.
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aphex said 2:50PM on 12-08-2008
Wow - Talk about unstable. Since I installed this my Mail.app has locked up no less than three times in an hour on my 10.5.5 MacBook. Uninstalling, this is way too buggy for me.
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aphex said 3:01PM on 12-08-2008
Lovely, so now that its uninstalled, the Subject column is missing not only from my Inbox, but its missing from the list to select it to turn it back on.
Wow. Just wow.
Ben Timmins said 3:20PM on 12-08-2008
I don't know where I found this originally, but I've been using this for a while and totally love it!
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Jonatan said 6:47PM on 12-08-2008
After uninstalling I'm stuck with the three columns.
Does any one know how to fix this?
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magu said 4:40PM on 12-08-2008
I love how people tend to install without reading.
Above the Uninstall button, it says 'Before uninstalling, please make sure you have re-enabled the "Subject" column from within Mail.'
Learn to read.
One thing this article forgot to include is how to enable the third-column: right-click the column headers and select 'WideMail Column'.
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magu said 4:41PM on 12-08-2008
Not 'third-column'. Second-line is what I meant. Mind wanders into the next article on the RSS reader... :P
roylevitt said 4:51PM on 12-08-2008
installed it to try... hated it and uninstalled. To my surprise my mail.app is now stuck displaying the three columns and no widemail preference to be found to delete. Any suggestions???
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Jonatan said 6:37AM on 12-09-2008
I found out that I still had a widescreen.bundle (Library/Mail/Bundles) allthough I uninstalled it a long time ago. Everything was fine again when I deleted the file.