Letterbox 0.11
Minor visual enhancement.
Changes
- [change] tweaked the divider to be 3 pixels wide, instead of 9.
Download
- Download the plugin:
Letterbox 0.11
- Quit Mail.app
- Have you previously installed one or more Mail.app plugins?
- if yes: simply drop Letterbox.mailbundle into your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles folder.
- if no:
- open Terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool true defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 2- open ~/Library/Mail and create a folder named ‘Bundles’.
- Drop ‘Letterbox.mailbundle’ into that folder.
- open Terminal and type:
- Launch Mail.app and enjoy! (I promise I’ll make a friendlier installer eventually.)
Uninstall
Simply remove the file Letterbox.mailbundle from ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and restart Mail.
Frequently Asked Questions
- All I see is the message list — where’s the message pane?
- If your message pane is collapsed, move your cursor to the right side of the Mail window. Your cursor should change to a double-arrow cursor. Now double-click, and the message pane will appear.
- Does it work in OS X 10.3.9?
- Apparently yes. I haven’t tested it, but I’ve had a few reports that it works okay. I won’t put much effort into maintaining 10.3.x compatibility, though…
Todo List
Your feedback is very welcome. I plan on tackling the following items as time permits: 1. Decent website and SVN access to the code for those who are interested. 1. A more fool-proof installer. 1. Preference pane to switch between ‘Message right of list’, ‘Message below list’, and ‘Message left of list’ 1. Menu items and keyboard shortcuts for same. 1. Options for alternate-colored-rows in the message list, and a few other tweaks. 1. (Eventually) An Outlook-style view with message subjects on a second row below the date and sender info. This will probably be tough & I’ll be recruiting helpers for this task.
Known Bugs or Issues
- [known-bug] This version introduces a new bug: a 3-pixel space at the top of the message pane. Will fix ASAP.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Ii’m using an iMac G5,20″, OS 10.4.6.
I did install Letterbox according to recomendations but it doesn’t work.
Is there any other tips and tricks I could use to make it work ?
June 7th, 2006 at 3:23 am
Great plugin! Thanks a bunch
June 7th, 2006 at 4:08 am
Great. I’m only on a 12″PB, but love the horizontal layout, you just need to turn your font size down a notch and maximise your pixel use.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:08 am
Also not working for me!?
Running Version 2.0.7 (746.2/750) on OSX 10.4.6 and dropped the bundle into the relevant folder.
However, I had previously installed Mail bundles the folder was titled “Bundles (disabled)” so I renamed to “Bundles”. Any ideas?
I assume the plug-in available via the Mail Preferences… dialog?
June 7th, 2006 at 4:26 am
thanks!
June 7th, 2006 at 4:38 am
Got a bug to report I’m afraid:
1. Prior to installing bundle, resize preview pane to zero (ie. drag resizing handle to the very bottom of the window).
2. Quit Mail.app, install bundle.
3. Open Mail.app - you can no longer see a preview pane of any kind, so the pane can’t be resized and brought back into view.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:48 am
Feature request:
Some of us who have tried this out feel that it is uncomfortable to read messages that are all the way on the right side of the screen.
I would suggest having an option to have the message in the middle pane and the mailbox listing in the right-most pane.
Otherwise, great plugin thanks!
June 7th, 2006 at 5:17 am
You absolutely rock! I’ve been dying to have this for ages. I cannot thank you enough. Great work!
June 7th, 2006 at 5:19 am
Finally! I’ve been waiting for this layout since it was introduced in outlook. Thank you!
However, i have one request (if possible): There seems to be too much information in the middle frame. Rather than have one long sentence with From, Subject, Date, etc.. split it into 2 lines?
June 7th, 2006 at 5:28 am
This is really good ! Thanks
June 7th, 2006 at 5:36 am
Ace! Really nice.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:41 am
I was so impatient to try this that I remotely installed it home and checked it via VNC. I have a 20″ Apple LCD and it seems to work like a charm.
I will report back in case of problems,
Thank you very much for this,
G.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Ian ñ thanks for the report.
christian, Pieman: send me email at mithras.the.prophet, which is gmail.com account, and I’ll try to help you. Make sure that you type in the Terminal commands when Mail.app has already been quit.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Like the plugin; although the 3-panel view doesn’t quite work as well as it does in Outlook, but that’s mostly due to Mail’s UI as opposed to you - but nonetheless excellent work.
Just out of interest; I know you’re working to fix the 3-pixel space at the top of the message pane - how tricky would it be to make the 3-pixel divider just 1-pixel wide, like the mailbox pane? 3 pixels is too big in my eyes
June 7th, 2006 at 7:21 am
running 749.3/750 and i can’t get this to work … the preview pane just disappears from below, and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the horizontal panel to appear.
once i remove the letterbox.mailbundle from ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and restart mail.app, i can get the vertical preview pane to appear again.
am i a moron, and am just missing how to turn this “on”? ’cause it looks insanely cool.
thanks.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Great plugin, thanks!
June 7th, 2006 at 7:25 am
update:
i am a moron.
i did not know that this step was a necessity before installing the plugin:
[known-bug] The message pane must be visible before you install the plugin. If it is collapsed, you won’t be able to un-collapse it after installing the plugin.
suggestion: add this to the instructions list — to do this before you try the install.
as it is, it works well. excellent, excellent job!
June 7th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Great plugin but it would be even better if I could change the size of the three columns manually.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Seems promising so far on my 15″ (1280px-wide) PowerBook.
However, the split view between the message list and the message content pane doesn’t seem to like the message content being at less than about 50% of the space: when I try to drag it to be narrower, it stubbornly stays at 50%. I can make it smaller by making the window itself smaller, dragging it down, then resizing the window so it’s larger again, but as soon as I touch the split control it snaps back to about 50%.
As a workaround, I have found that editing com.apple.mail.plist in ~/Library/Preferences and changing the SplitPosition value within the ActiveViewers does make it possible to set a smaller content area.
Thanks for your efforts!
June 7th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Fantastic! I had to turn on the preview pane before I installed it (when the preview pane is disabled before installation, you won’t see the correct setup), which may be a tip for others who might have problems.
In any case, thanks so much for the great plug-in!
June 7th, 2006 at 9:30 am
great plugin!
June 7th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I’m trying this out thanks to Jens over at http://www.coolosxapps.net - so far this is an A+ addition to mail. Thanks for your work on it!
In the future (3. Preference pane to switch between ‘Message right of list’ and ‘Message below list’) I think it would be great to have the option of having the ‘Message window’ in the middle. To me that’s the important info and it seems lost pushed over to the right.
Thanks again!
June 7th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Excellent plugin! My only suggestion is to provide a way of sizing the message list and meaasage disply panes manually. I find the list pane too narrow and the read pane too large on my 24″ display.
June 7th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Not working for me either. I already had a Bundles folder. I quit Mail, dropped in the folder and…nothing. Any ideas on why it doesn’t work for me?
June 7th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Doesn’t seem to work for me on Tiger 10.4.6.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Bill: You should be able to resize them by hovering over the divider until you get the ‘arrows’ cursor, then dragging. Though there’s a known issue in that the message display collapses if it is less than 50% of the width.
Frolic, Josh: Can you email me? (myfirstname)@harnly.net.
Things to try:
- Frolic, try typing in the two Terminal commands anyway.
- Both of you, make sure you already have the message pane open (not collapsed) before you install the plugin, as noted in the known-bugs.
- Also make sure you’ve moved the entire .mailbundle folder, rather than some part of the contents.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Thanks - works great!
June 7th, 2006 at 11:19 am
that is just crazy…. not sure if i love it or hate it. but will give it some time and see.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:34 am
One thing that I’d like to see is a slight pad on the left side of the mail pane so that the message never really butts up against the divider.
If you’re able to implement the stacking of the message columns like Outlook/Entourage then even better
Thanks for this plug-in.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:39 am
As much as I’d hate to admit that I preferred Outlook for anything, the 3-panel layout was my frequent envy. I’m much happier now. Thanks.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Any chance of a 10.3.9 version?
June 7th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Working great on my Tiger 10.4.6 15″ PowerBook G4. Thanks!
June 7th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Seems to work fine on OSX 10.3.9, but it’s only been ten minutes.
June 7th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Love it! Thank you!
June 7th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
I tried installing this on my Powerbook G4 with Tiger 10.4.5 but now my email no longer works.
I did make the mistake of placing the bundle folder into the main Library/mail folder and not the User/Library/Mail folder - I have now moved it to the correct location but the mail app is still not working. The mail app loads a to a certain extent, the freezes and has to be force quit, I can see the three pane view but can’t use the application. I also tried removing the bundle folder (emptying trash and re-starting) but the Mail app still does not work.
I’m really stck without my email can you please offer any help in resolving this?
Apart from that this looks like a great idea and I am still keen to try it.
I have two other mail plug-ins running: DMI for Daylite (from Marketcircle) and Mail Template (from Mactank) - might they be conflicting with your plug-in?
Thanks in advance.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
This is a great Plugin. Very useful and clean. Thanks for sharing.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Heya…
Works great…
Respond to an email and still view the original without having to flip back-n-forth.
Pure genius…
Thank you…
aRt
Min requirements?…
Does it work in Panther, too?
June 7th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
David: Sent you email.
As for 10.3.9, I don’t have it, but have heard a few reports like Jeremy’s that it works okay. I’d appreciate any other feedback on that topic.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
w00t!!! yay!!!
Thank YOU!
June 7th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I like this idea a lot, and I encourage you do develop this further.
Keep up the good work!
June 7th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Bonjour from France,
Bravo and merci!
If a translation into French is needed (eg for preference pane), I could help.
Au revoir,
June 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
First time Mac user (20″ iMac, Intel Core Duo, 500gb, 2gb of RAM…all the options) and I just did a search for Terminal (didn’t know where it was), copied your first line from the instructions, pasted, copied the second line, pasted, open the folder, created the new folder, dragged and dropped the folder, opened Mail, and voila! Worked first time and IT’S GREAT! Thank you!
June 7th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
really cool! Should be an option in Mail to begin with. thanks.
Jamey
June 7th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Great plugin, despite the alpha status! kudos.
I’d like to make the message list wider, but it seems to cap out at a fixed maximum width. Is there a workaround for this?
June 7th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Sweet plug-in man!
I’m so glad you did this, it was driving me nuts trying to go through my inbox everyday and scroll to read even short messages.
Truely useful and simple, keep up the good work.
~ Johnny
June 7th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Looks great, thanks!
June 7th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
I have noticed odd behavior in my IMAP folder list since installing this. I have several folders that have over 100 unread messages in them (my spam folder exceeds 900 at the moment).
With the plug-in installed the number of unread messages that is displayed to the right of the folder name is sometimes the number that belongs to a different folder. This seems to happen anytime one of the folders is clicked. Right now 2 of my folders have 182 next to them, but if I click on one… now neither are showing a number, so click again… now one shows 182 and the other shows nothing.
I don’t recall this happening before installing the plug-in.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Brendan: It strikes me as unlikely that the plugin could cause that behavior, since it’s really a very, very simple plugin that affects only the SplitView… but try removing the plugin and seeing whether the behavior goes away.
Let me know what you learn.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Fantastic! Thanks
I have found a problem though… when typing a search term into the search box, then removing that search term, the window redisplays without all the columns (date, size etc.). I’m using Tiger 10.4.6.
June 7th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
I’d love to see this turn into a full featured preview window plugin which adds MUCH needed features like a user customizable timer before a message shown in the preview is marked read.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
I couldn’t get it to work on my iMac G5 10.4.6 - similarly to several messages here. When I changed the version # in the 2nd terminal line
“defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 2″ to read
“defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 0.11″
it worked fine…
Cheers.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
I’ve built an installer that installers for all users on the system (/Library/Mail/Bundles). I know how to build it to only install for the current users, but don’t know how to write the script necessary to do so.
June 8th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Hi Aaron-I’ve been using mail.app for about a year and had no idea I was suffering till this morning. One day with you’re plugin feels like it’s all I’ve ever known! Incredible.
I am in awe! Thank you for your time and effort! (And thanks to Merlin at 43Folders.com for the link.)
Guy
June 8th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I think I found the cause of Mail’s strange behavior and it is not your plug-in. I also had the UI Element Inspector app running on my second screen and it appears to be the culprit. If I kill the UI Element Inspector then Mail behaves normally with your plug-in installed. My apologies for the false alarm.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Phil — interesting, thanks! I’ll have to try to figure out what’s going on there…
Brendan — no worries, thanks for the diligence.
Rob — thank you; I think I’ve just about got an installer ready, but I won’t hesitate to flag you if I hit a roadblock.
cheers
-Aaron
August 28th, 2006 at 2:24 am
When I installed Leopard and migrated from my Tiger machine, the Mail app froze on opening. The only thing not standard about it is Letterbox.
I presume you’ll aim to have Leopard version out by “Spring 2007″.
by the way, it’s great.
cheers.