Comments on: Mail Mishandling

By: Alan Bristow

Alan Bristow — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:05:38 +0000

I’m sure I am terribly un-cool for my opinion, but, after using Microsoft Mail (yes, THAT long ago), Lotus Notes 4.x, Outlook and Thunderbird, I was surprised to find I preferred a *web-based* app’ to a real one (one with files on my computer).

I migrated to Google mail from Thunderbird about 4 months ago and have not regretted the loss of an application installed on my computer and have delighted at the search speed and many good UI things.

Until I tried Google mail I was utterly bored by the thought of an alt’ ver of Hotmail. But the difference could not be greater. And I just 100% ignore the text ads on the RH side.

By: Marcus Mettel

Marcus Mettel — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:18:27 +0000

How to mark several folders (almost) at once in TB for offline use:

Select “Account Settings” from the “Tools” menu. Select the imap account which you would like to mark for offline usage. In this account select “Offline & Disk Space”. Here you can configure TB to automatically mark any newly created folder for offline usage (tick “When I create new folders…”). To select existing folders click on the button “Select folders for offline use…”.
You will be presented a tree view of the folder structure of the selected account including all subfolders (you may also select other IMAP accounts in this dialog) where you can mark all those folders you want to mark for offline use in one go.
Now close all dialogs with by clicking on “OK”.
By selecting “File->Offline->Download/Sync now” from the File menu all IMAP folders will be downloaded.

What I’m missing is a switch where I can say “Always download/sync folders”.

I hope I could express myself clearly (I’m no native speaker) and could be of some help.

By: Adam Lipkin

Adam Lipkin — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:34:53 +0000

After some corruption issues with my mailbox files, I figured I’d give Thunderbird a go, but I’m already frustrated by something that I can’t even find any mention of elsewhere: To create a new message in T-bird, instead of command-N or shift-command-N, I’ve got to use shift-command-M. I can adjust to plenty of differences (the way shift-arrow selecting multiple messages allows me to start from a central point and select in two direction in Mail, but only one in T-Bird), but creating a new document is something that’s worked the same way in multiple applications for years, and as far as I can tell, there’s no way to change this counter-intuitive command.

Just went to the T-Bird site, and I see that on Windows, they do get to use the equivalent control-N.

By: Laurens Holst

Laurens Holst — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:11:34 +0000

I believe that Thunderbird 2.0 (or was it 3.0? anyway) will have better offline-mail behaviour. Some work was (is?) done in that area.

~Grauw

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:42:45 +0000

Mail pet peeves:

1. Too easy to delete messages (esp. since the Delete key is also the Backspace key)

Delete message should be COMMAND-DELETE, just like the Finder. I’m big on consistancy.

I’ve inadvertently deleted messages by hitting the delete key when I’d highlighted text in the preview pane or even just placed the cursor there for editing (I guess that’s a behavior I’ve carried with me from Outlook, where that pane is editable). I’ve had the dog hit the key and delete messages too! Destructive procedures need to be made extra safe.

2. As touched on in the article, more settings should be account-specific. Maybe I want an alert sound played when email comes into some of my email accounts, but not others. Or they may need different filters. Maybe mail about mortgage refinancing or whatever could be relevant if it comes into one account, but would be spam in another account.

3. If you click in an inactive window, the cursor should be placed at the point where you clicked. I often see the place where I want to type, click there, start typing, and the text appears somewhere else, since it requires a second click for cursor placement. (OTOH, if you click on the scroll bar of an inactive window, it _does_ behave as if that’s really where you clicked, it scrolls.)

By: Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Thunderbird and Mail.app compared

Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Thunderbird and Mail.app compared — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 00:15:08 +0000

[...] In a thoughtful post he compares the strengths of the two. [...]

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 23:58:08 +0000

How so? I dug around the package contents for a while but never found the relevant image (or other file) that would allow that happen. I"m totally up for hacking to get the highlighting, so do tell!

There is a bit of tutorial on how to hack Mail's nib files here.

By: Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:35:28 +0000

Personally, I’d rather not have the alternating row backgrounds, probably because I’ve got all kinds of rules set up to change the background color of the message based on different criteria. Depends on how you use your mail client, I guess.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 08:46:30 +0000

William: again, I was talking about Mail there, not Thunderbird.

By: William

William — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:43:56 +0000

My biggest clue of that was the fact that there”s no setting (I can find) to have the text insertion point placed below the quoted text when replying.

If a mail client is going to try to force me to top-quote, then that”s no client for me.

I knew I’ve seen that setting somewhere, and after some searching, I found it in Account settings under Composition & Addressing.

By: Dao Gottwald

Dao Gottwald — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:05:15 +0000

It”s possible for themes to do this

He was speaking of Mail, not TB.

the only one I know of that does is Noia 2 eXtreme (which is the reason I stick with it!)

CrossOver does, too.

By: Bean

Bean — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 15:17:23 +0000

> When I”m in Mail, I also miss little touches like alternate-row highlighting in mailbox views.

It’s possible for themes to do this, the only one I know of that does
is Noia 2 eXtreme (which is the reason I stick with it!)

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/1947/

By: Jon Hicks

Jon Hicks — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:38:01 +0000

OK, if you’re up for it!

First you need to install (if you haven’t already) Apple Developer Tools from the CDs that came with your Mac
Next open MessageViewerContents.nib in the package (Contents>Resources>English.lproj), this will open it in Interface Builder. Select the list view at the top, and bring up the Attributes in the Inspector (Apple-Shift-I). Tick the box for ‘Use Alternating Row Background’ third from the bottom. Save and reopen Mail…

By: J.B. Nicholson-Owens

J.B. Nicholson-Owens — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:05:51 +0000

How ironic that this thread has discovered why software freedom (the freedom to share and modify computer software) is so important, yet software freedom was nowhere to be found within the criteria for deciding which of the two email clients to use.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:05:57 +0000

If you want to change where the quoted text goes in Mail, go to Preferences > Signatures and tick the box “Place signature above quoted text"

Oh God no, that's even worse. I want the quoted text at the top, the signature at the bottom after the quoted text, and the insertion point in between the two. That's how Thunderbird acts, and so does Eudora.

Alternate row highlighting is coming as well - I had to hack mine to do it.

How so? I dug around the package contents for a while but never found the relevant image (or other file) that would allow that happen. I'm totally up for hacking to get the highlighting, so do tell!