Mail.app plugin WideMail makes a comeback in Snow Leopard

Since upgrading, Snow Leopard users with widescreen displays may have been missing WideMail, the plugin for Mail.app that gives you a 3-column display of your messages. We mentioned it some time ago, and you may recall it being one of the casualties of my Snow Leopard upgrade. Letterbox, an alternative plugin, has been mostly functional in Snow Leopard for a while now, but I've personally been waiting for WideMail. Well, it's back, and available as a public beta at developer Dane Harnett's site.

For users with widescreen displays, the standard Mail display panels -- stacked vertically -- don't really maximize the usage of the window space. WideMail takes advantage of the screen width of most modern displays, and positions the list of mails and the preview horizontally, allowing each to take up the full height of the window while still providing the necessary viewing area. It also provides a new column in the email listing called the "WideMail column," which has two rows and is configurable in the preferences to display any of the necessary information for each email in an optimized width.

As I mentioned, WideMail 2.0 is beta (prerelease 1 right now), but I've been using it for most of the day without any problems. I'm very glad to see it back, and despite trying to keep my Mail plugin list as trim as possible, this is one I consider worth running. If you try it and love it, be sure to donate a few bucks for its continued development!

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Source: http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/

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Software Productivity

Since upgrading, Snow Leopard users with widescreen displays may have been missing WideMail, the plugin for Mail.app that gives you a...

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Dan

It is actually not advisable to preview/open a message in a pane in a mail client.

Using this option causes any message clicked on to open and execute any code contained in the message. It is impossible as far as I know to delete a message without opening it while using such features.

I know this is more of a problem for windows users as they can get viruses of trojans from using this type of feature. However, it can still give information back to a spammer if they use certain techniques to display images in a mail message. Information they can extract from you include your Email address and weather or not the address is valid.

December 28 2009 at 6:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

axel.golden

im glad i was able to uninstall that program. got worried for a moment.

December 28 2009 at 4:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cowboydan

How do i uninstall this? Its made a mess of my mail... Much prefer letterbox.

December 28 2009 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to cowboydan's comment

Brett Terpstra

Go to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and delete the WideMail.bundle folder. Be sure to re-enable your Subject column beforehand if you disabled it.

Alternately, if you can find MailPluginManager (used to be bundled with LetterBox, not sure if it still is), it makes installing and uninstalling Mail plugins a cinch.

December 28 2009 at 1:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

flummi

Can somebody tell me, how to uninstall this addon? I can't find any uninstaller nor an menu entry for addons in Mail.

December 28 2009 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cwk2

I've been using the Snow version of Letterbox for over a month. It works perfectly.

December 28 2009 at 1:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

luxuriouspunk

what is the diff. btwn letterbox and widemail?

December 28 2009 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh

Last time I tried this plugin on 10.5, I noticed that it really slowed down the display of search results. I didn't like the lag it induced so I left it alone.

Is this any better with 10.6?

December 28 2009 at 12:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kesey

So ridiculous that this requires a plugin.

December 28 2009 at 11:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paul

I installed it and it looked great. However, the message viewer has now disappeared so I cannot preview any of my emails. I tried fiddling with WideMail preferences but I cannot get it back. Does anybody know how I can get the message viewer back? Alternatively, how do I delete WideMail

December 28 2009 at 11:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

internets

How is this better than LetterBox?

December 28 2009 at 11:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to internets's comment

2raj

Yes, how's it better than Letterbox?

LB been working in SL for me without any problems. I need a reason before switching.

December 29 2009 at 12:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply