Letterbox beta 5 for Snow Leopard
This beta updates Letterbox for the impending arrival of 10.6.2, and adds an extremely simplistic two-line view. I’d like to make it more customizable, and support including dates within the column, but not at the expense of simplicity, stability, and speed. So we’ll see how it goes.
Still a manual install to keep out the unadventurous. Click through for the link and instructions.
Download beta 5 for Snow Leopard: Letterbox-v0.24b5.zip.
As always, your comments, email, and donations are hugely appreciated.
Letterbox 0.24b5
Released October 19, 2009
Updated for 10.6.2, some bug fixes, and very preliminary two-line column support.
Details:
Updated for the forthcoming 10.6.2 release.
Extremely simplistic two-line column support. Always and only shows sender on first line, subject on second.
Fixed incompatibility with MailTags, and did some work to avoid future incompatibilities.
Still a manual install. Will work on a Snow Leopard-friendly installer next.
Still incompatible with some Mail plugins that also use Sparkle for auto-updating.
Changing the preview pane position with the menu item or keyboard shortcut does not visibly change the value in the preference pane.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Brilliant, Aaron! The two-line view is most impressive and my preferred way of listing messages. Will be sending a donation soon. Seems that only Helvetia/Geneva will display correctly. Will this be changed in the future?
Thanks again!
October 19th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Updated from beta 4 with no problems. 2-line display looks great!
October 19th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Aaron,
One thing I noticed in b5 is that when you close & re-open mail, column widths are not preserved.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Good work Aaron. I’m experiencing the same issue as Ed, with the column widths not being preserved on quit.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:17 am
This is great, thanks so much. I finally decided to quit mooching and sent a donation.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Fantastic work, Aaron! Letterbox has become absolutely indespensible for me.
I’m just wondering if there’s any chance you could release the source to Letterbox, either through a service like Github or Google Code or just as a zip. I know you’ve mentioned the possibility of an open source release before, and I think many people would be thrilled to get to look at your code – either to help you with patches, or to just learn about Mail Plugins and Cocoa programming.
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
October 19th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Thank you Aaron. The 2 line support is great. I just placed a small donation, wish it could be more. Come on people, drop Aaron a few bucks!
I’m already looking forward to the next release.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Works great but and I haven’t had any problems but it looks somehow wrong to me. Maybe I’m a one line man but there’s nothing that ends one message and starts the new. I know you can turn on lines or row colours but these go all down the page and aren’t just used for the number of messages in the list which I think would be better.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Outstanding work, Aaron, and $15 is headed your way for your efforts. Keep up the good work!
October 19th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I, too, have the problem with column widths reverting to the default with relaunch. Otherwise it looks great! Only other issue: seems only certain sans-serif fonts will work properly, but that is not a big deal for me.
Just sent a donation. Wish it could have been more as well. But I’m not drawing a paycheck right now.
Thanks for your efforts Aaron!
October 19th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Aaron,
Awesome. I am a man of my word. With the 2-line subject, this hack is now usable. Since I will be keeping it, and using it, I am sending my donation. As far as I am concerned, any additional improvements are cosmetic, you have a polished product!
Thanks
October 19th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I thanked you above, I thanked you when I gave you a donation. I’ve been using mail for half a day now, and every time I look at my screen, I think to my self about how awesome letterbox is now.
So, I want to thank you, again.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Is the two-line support supposed to have the sender repeated twice (in the Sender and Subject columns) and then just the Subject in the second line. Right now I have the Sender listed in the first line Sender column, first line Subject column, Received time listed in the first column, and the Subject listed in the Subject column of line two.
Do I have to do something to fix that?
October 19th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Aaron–
Thank you for returning the two-line preview to Mail. I missed this. I was using Widemail because it offered this feature. I’m glad you’re working on this because the developer of Widemail hasn’t posted anything since Snow Leopard came out.
If I could offer some helpful tips, it would be nice if the sender was bolded. And it would also help if the subject and date could be incorporated in the second line, in smaller type. Then, you wouldn’t have to view the subject or date received columns and that would leave room for a single column (plus attachments and flags, etc.) Widemail renamed this the Widemail Column since “subject” was no longer fully descriptive.
Anyway, excellent progress and I will make a donation soon. Thank you again.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Hi Aaron, thanks for the update. Can I post a bug? It seems that every time the Mac goes to sleep, Mail returns to 1 column, as if your add-on does not exist. Restarting Mail will bring back the 2 columns view.
October 19th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Experiencing the same thing as Lance - I thought that having a two-line column would mean the subject would have two lines to itself.
As it is, I have the from column repeated as the top line in the subject column, with the subject directly below that. Is this how it’s supposed to work? Anyway, I know it’s experimental at this stage, so look forward to improvements to two-line support in future betas.
October 19th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Same issue as listed above: in 2 lines mode, the second line does not display correctly (it is truncated in the vertical alignment). I am using font Optima Regular 14. Note that the issue persists whatever the font size. Looking forward to a coming fix. For time being, I deactivate the option “2 lines mode”. Anyway, thanks for all your efforts!
October 19th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Lance and Paul B — the idea is that you can remove the From column, by right-clicking on it and unchecking it. I’ll add some explanation in the next version.
Ed, spd — good catch on the split pane widths. By “column widths”, you’re referring to the preview pane and message list, right? Not the columns within the message list? I think that’s a bug I introduced in vain pursuit of a preview-pane-in-the-center configuration. I’ll fix that in the next beta.
And for the fonts — yeah, I set the height of the two-line view to the height of one line in the current font * 2.1, which apparently doesn’t really work for more than a few fonts. I’ll investigate a more comprehensive solution soon.
Adam, you must maintain a much emptier inbox than I do. I am humbled.
Scott — yes, I plan to allow formatting and the date on a future revision. Formatting should be easy; the date is proving more recalcitrant for silly technical reasons. I am avoiding Widemail’s use of a custom column — instead opting to reconfigure the Subject column — since people had problems not being able to recover their Subject column after uninstalling Widemail.
And RK: Letterbox’s source is and always has been available at http://git.harnly.net/letterbox.git — I don’t heavily advertise that fact, but let people know upon inquiry.
Cheers, all.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Yes, Aaron, I meant the width of the preview column. With the two-lined view, the preview column obviously does not need to be so wide. It squeezes out the actual message pane, which is fine for email messages but does not work with HTML ads or messages.
Like Yosh, now I’m getting the “wake up on wrong side of bed” bug. So I may have to disable the two-line view as well. Like me, my computer needs sleep, including naps!
Thanks for the great work, Aaron.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Fabulous work, the two line display is a terrific start. At some point in the future it would be great to be able to group messages in a folder under headings, e.g., Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, Last Month.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Also having problems with it reverting back to normal layout when hiding mail. It doesn’t happen all the time and it doesn’t matter whether in two line or single line mode.
Aaron - my inbox is full and overflowing.. all the smart mailboxes I use help to make it appear a little more manageable!!
October 21st, 2009 at 4:06 am
Aaron, Great to see two lines! I appreciate the reasoning behind the method you are using to implement this, but it does cause a problem in sent email. In Sent items the two lines also display the sender and the subject. Of course in sent items I am always the sender. I suspect that you may be giving yourself more of a headache trying to modify the subject rather than introducing a new custom field. I look forward to the next increment. Certainly very usable right now.
Paul
October 21st, 2009 at 9:58 am
Are you going to make a version for the old Leopard?
October 21st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I noticed a strange thing today with beta 4 (and also beta 5): When Letterbox is enabled, the Inbox list of messages does not show any from my MS Exchange account. All my other Inbox messages show up. If I search for a message that’s on the Exchange server, it will appear, but will not be highlighted in the full Inbox list. Disabling Letterbox returns everything to “normal”. Is anyone else seeing this behavior; does any obvious solution come to mind?
October 21st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Melvyn Goldstein,
FUI…I noticed a similar problem. But after I closed Mail and restarted, the messages were back where they belonged!
October 21st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
@Aaron - Thanks for the reasoning behind the decision. I assume you’re aiming for something like the layout in Windows Live Mail, where it’s a two-line layout with “from” on top, followed by “subject” below.
Something that Windows Live Mail does though, which aides readability, is make the bottom “subject” line lighter then the “from” line, which makes distinguishing between the two fields easier.
I don’t know whether this could be accomplished with Mail?
October 21st, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Unfortunately, closing and restarting Mail has had no effect.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
@Aaron - Nice work. I’m excited for the two line layout, and agree with the keep it simple approach.
I only have one request about changing the two line view, and I understand this is a beta, a first implementation, and love it already:
As is the two line view is not the most visually quick to read. This is, I think, because the “From” line and the “subject” line are the exact same font and font-size.
I think making the “From” line a slightly smaller font-size, or a lighter color, (or both) would differentiate the two enough to make it much more readable. And none of this would involve any more complexity on the user side.
Other than that: great work. I’ve had zero issues, bugs, instability since beta 4
thanks
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Aaron
I appreciate the “donationware” and I for one would never bug you about adding features but it would be really nice if you would fix the column width bug asap. I have to readjust my Mail app every time I open it. After a few days that gets really annoying.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Dear Aaron, You have done a great job so far. I especially love the two line option. However, I agree with “preachs” in that the column with bug is annoying. Won’t you please fix it ASAP. I will be glad to send you an extra donation if you could manage it soon. Respectfully, Alex
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Dear Aaron, You have done a great job so far. I especially love the two line option. However, I agree with “preachs” in that the COLUMN WIDTH BUG is annoying. Won’t you please fix it ASAP. I will be glad to send you an extra donation if you could manage it soon. Respectfully, Alex
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:58 am
Aaron,
I tried installing the Beta 5 today, and had some strange behavior.
Occasionally, when logging back in or restarting the machine the Finder would not start. The symptoms included no menu bar at the top of the screen, and no desktop icons. Right-clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock displayed only one option: Open. Selecting that gave some cryptic error number. Reverting back to Beta 4 eliminated the problem.
I’m running Snow Leopard 10.6.1, MacBook Pro 2009, 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM.
If you need any more info, or require screen-shots or anything, let me know.
Peter.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:29 am
Thanks Aaron, but in my setup I have to disable Letterbox in order to get MailTags to work…
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:32 am
Let me fine tune the above: MailTags is not working when using the “Right” positioned reading pane. When using “Bottom” they do!
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
Hi - again, nice work on getting this working with Snow Leopard so quickly!
I have noticed a weird bug in Beta 5, after I upgraded from Beta4.
When I close and re-open the Mail’s message list window, it seems to be a 50/50 chance of whether it opens with the preview pane on the right, or the bottom. If it appears on the bottom, closing and re-opening the window a once or twice usually fixes it. This seems to be a new bug since Beta 4, so I’m going to roll back for now.
This is happening on two different machines here, both running OS 10.6.1 with Beta 5 - let me know if I can send you any additional info that would help
October 24th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Aaron,
A quick update… using the “Remove Letterbox” on the Beta 4 preference pane before copying over the Beta 5 bundle seems to have eliminated the Finder problems I was experiencing. Previously, I had simply dropped the Beta 5 bundle into the ~/Library/Mail/Bundles folder and said ‘yes’ to overwriting the Beta 4 bundle. I guess that wasn’t good enough.
Peter.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Aaron, Thank you so much for the Snow Leopard update. I never realized that I was going to lose this feature when I installed Snow Leopard. And I didn’t realize how useful and ultimately indispensable your Letterbox view was to my everyday work flow. Just wanted to say great job and thanks for putting in the donation option, you deserve it for taking care of us Mac folk. Jeri
October 25th, 2009 at 4:28 am
Aaron, you’re my hero!
October 26th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Alright, I’ve donated a small amount because I felt bad about free-riding for the past few versions. The little plugin is excellent! I’m eagerly waiting for the fix of some of the two-line bugs mentioned above.
Keep the great work!
October 28th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Finally I have a tool I have wanted for a long time.. many thanks…
Worthy of a little donation… looking forward to the final release
October 28th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Aaron, great job! With the lack of support for widemail in Snow Leopard, I was pleasantly surprised to run into your plugin. I promise to make a donation if we could see a fix to the annoying COLUMN WIDTH BUG described by a few other individuals.
Thanks, keep up the great work!
October 29th, 2009 at 1:27 am
great app, Aaron! Works beautifully for me. would love to be able to set spacing (top, bottom) a px or two between messages. I found Letterbox after Widemail crapped out in Snow.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:16 am
thank you so much, Aaron!! i had been using widemail, which has not yet been updated for 10.6. letterbox works at least as well, and seems nicely compatible with snow leopard.
i find this a MUCH better use of widescreen real estate, and it makes mail much more usable for me.
cheers!
October 30th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Aaron… I wanted to say something positive and to make a few suggestions… but it seems everyone else has said the same thing already. I still don’t understand why Apple Mail lacks such a basic function, and I had, previously, been a user of widemail. But a) since you have updated your app and stayed communicative with your audience, and b) you seem to be quite focussed on compatibility, stability, and performance, I am now a convert.
I have even donated today… even though I really do want to see the two columns formattable with different size fonts, positions, etc. (a la widemail, I suppose)… and of course, the bug with the width of the preview pane. But, the truth is, I use letterbox every day and, even with the bugs / issues, I can’t imagine life without it!
Thanks, Nic.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
[...] ０．Letterbox beta 5 for Snow Leopardをダウンロード。 １．Mail.appを起動していない状態で~/Library/Mail/にBundlesという名前でフォルダを作成。 ２．ターミナルで下記をコピペ、enter。 [...]
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 am
Yes, please, kill this issue about the preview width.. but I’ve made my donation, quite little but to say thanks
Please update soone this issue, even just a beta released for this only issue could be just great..
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Hey Aaron! First of all, thank you for letterbox; I really appreciate the program.
I’m not much of a programmer, but I’m so eager to be able to use your program with my mail. I’ve tried to follow your instructions to self-install, but I seem to be missing something, because even after putting your file in my library folder and then opening up the terminal and putting in that info and hitting return and then closing and opening mail, I still don’t seem to have a letterbox option under my preferences.
Do you have any guidance for me?
All the best,
Roger
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
Hi….
I really like the letterbox plugin, b5 has been working nicely. Some days ago something interesting started to happen.
In about 30% of the times when I reopen the Mail window, the message are not displayed by Letterbox, but in the old way, message list on top, preview below.
I have to close and reopen the window once or twice to get Letterbox back.
Best regards, Michael
November 4th, 2009 at 4:07 am
[...] 𣉭ownload Letterbox Beta ⌦ Plugin-Seite [...]
November 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
i don’t know what i’d do w/o letterbox. /love/ this plugin. thanks!
November 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Letterbox rules! I really like Letterbox and I can’t live without it :P.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Hi Aaron,
Let me start by saying how much I appreciate your software and the work you put into it. However, Could you tell us when do you think you will have the next Beta out (Beta 6). I can’t use Beta 5 because of the column with bug, and I know I am not the only one. So, I have been checking your website everyday since October 19. Any estimate on how long it will be is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Alex
November 8th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Great work Aaron, however as others have already stated, I would appreciate some timeline on column width bug in Beta 5. Not intending to be pushy, just your best guesstimate would be appreciated.
Thanks again,
Holty.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Just updated from 10.6 to 10.6.2 and didn’t know about this update until Letterbox was disabled. Just installed and it is working.
I repeat, it is working in 10.6.2!
.:Brian
November 9th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
[...] に移動してMail.appを起動すると一応動作はしています。 ちなみに「LettrBox」は動作確認版（β版）がリリースされています。 [...]
November 9th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
FYI: I just updated to 10.6.2 and it automatically disabled Letterbox.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Great Work! Your update works for 10.6.2
Thanks
November 10th, 2009 at 4:33 am
[...] Mit einer neuen Version von Apples Mail.app (4.2) kann es passieren, dass die Mailplugins deaktiviert werden. Das Plugin “Letterbox” gibt es bereits in einer angepassten Version: Letterbox Beta 5. [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 6:23 am
[...] to follow quickly. Some acted weeks before the update appeared, like Aaron Harnly who pushed out a compatible version of his Letterbox plugin three weeks [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Hi there,
the new beta ist working, but the 2 lines view is good for what? The only column using the second line is subject, but the first line is covered by “recepient” and the second line contains a one-line subject … ??
Much more useful might be a slider in the PrefPane of letterbox to choose additional pixel space between rows. The alternate background color is useful, but with a bit more space between rows I could be better.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:08 am
great work … what a premium support for this plugin … same day 10.6.2 is out I can download the update for letterbox … thanks a lot
November 10th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Hi Aaron,
First of all, thanks so much for this awesome plugin. I’ve held off on upgrading to beta 5 because of the column width bugs, but 10.6.2 has come and forced my hand. Any idea on when we might expect fixes for some of these lingering issues?
November 10th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Hi, Super support. To no surprise really since the product is super…(I did not think you had an update for 10.6.2 already so I tried to use mail w/o Letterbox, but realised I missed Letterbox right away, and finds that you already have an update. Very, very good!!), very best regards// MATS PS a donation of $15 is on its way…
November 10th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
[...] the link. Standard installation process, no need for Terminal [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] Letterbox has been updated, but the above instructions can be adapted for any future OS update that breaks [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Perfect! Just updated to 10.6.2 and got the messages that mail 4.2 killed the letterbox bundle. Nice to see that almost a month ago there was an update available
Thnks.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I also like to thank you for your work, it’s great. One thing which disturbes in b5 is that when you close & re-open mail, column widths are not preserved.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Hi folks. Sorry for the quiet — I’ve been snowed under at work. I’ll release a beta 6 with a fix to the pane widths bug this weekend.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Yes, please! And also because with 10.6.2 letterbox doesn’t work anymore!!!
Thank you Aaron!
November 11th, 2009 at 5:50 am
Thanks for all the hard work, Aaron. It works great under 10.6.2, apart from not preserving column width over restarts of Mail for me. But it’s there, and I like it… so sucks to Apple for not buying you off to do it themselves. Would we get all the effort from them if they took it over!!! I doubt it.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am
i have 10.6.2 and letterbox beta 5. always i start mail the spreads of the columns are changed no adjustment the width of the columns
sorry for my english
November 11th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Thanks for getting beta 6 out Aaron. With 10.6.2 I had to upgrade to beta 5, which then re-introduced the “revert to horizontal pane” bug after awaking from sleep or even between mail sessions. Restart of Mail solves the issue but is not terribly convenient.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Hello, after 10.6.2 update beta 5 of Letterbox does not work properly. Somethimes does, sometimes seems to be somehow off. I have to to launch Mail.app again and it works for a while, than automatically disapear on and off.
Please fix it!
November 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hey Maj - your previous message is demanding. You, like me, are users. If you’re not paying or even considered donating, please refrain from this. Be patient, our friend says he’s been busy at his real job. You should be thankful something like this is available and YOU don’t have to pay for it. I don’t know where you’re from or rather which planet you’re from but in these times of economic downsizing, a nice comment for Aaron would go far. Maj: Please fix it! Or, get lost. Another idea: Go pay for Microsoft Entourage or get a Windows PC.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
It would be nice if Letterbox would remember the size of the panes if you re-sized them. If you re-size them now and then close mail, your changes are lost. I hope this functionality is coming in future betas.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:41 am
[...] Letterbox beta 5 for Snow Leopard [...]
November 12th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Hey Direkkto, I did not want to say something rude, I just wanted to say that something is broken in the current release of Letterbox. I don’t understand why you’are so excited. I can understand that Aaron is busy and cannot deal with everything - that’s obvious. My intention was only say that beta 5 does not work properly in 10.6.2 - that’s all. I am really happy, that Letterbox exist and appreciate Aaron work! Keep up the great work!
November 12th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Thanks again for your hard work Aaron. Beta 5 works for me under 10.6.2 (I had been on Beta 4 which does not)
November 12th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Aaron, when beta4 was disabled by upgrading Mail, I had to admit that this was indispensable to me. I was happy to find that beta5 was already out and waiting. Small donation heading your way.
And I like the 2 line Preview Pane. Thanks for your response to Lance and Paul B. above. I too, was bugged by the doubling of “sender”, but didn’t think to remove the “From” column. Looks good to me and seems much more readable than a single line with a “right” side preview.
Thanks!
November 13th, 2009 at 2:25 am
hey aaron, just fyi: I just installed the os x 1.6.2 update and after restart it disabled your wonderful little plugin. but a reinstall made it work again. Best, josef
November 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Dear Aaron-
I just installed beta5 and it works like a charm. However, suddenly the hotkey in Mail.app for zooming text larger has changed. Normally, I can zoom by hitting command and the [= ] button without also hitting shift. But now Mail.app requires me to hit command-shift-[= ]. Outside of Mail.app, for example in Firefox, I don’t need to include the shift.
It would be nice to get back to the original keyboard shortcut. I don’t see any keyboard shortcuts option within Mail.app, and the keyboard shortcuts in Mac Preferences are global (and correctly set to command-[= ] without the shift key).
Did beta5 do this? If so, how do I get my convenient Zoom keyboard shortcut back?
-John
November 13th, 2009 at 11:39 am
There seems to be a race condition of some sort. When you close the Mail.app window and then reopen it, sometimes you get the wide view, sometimes you get the standard. To create this issue just open and close constantly until it happens (Command w;Command 1).
November 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Hi, great! only the column width bug is a bit annoying.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Hello, I just want to say the same as Pepe. When you close the window sometimes you get the wide view, sometimes the standard view - like without Letterbox. It is a bug IMHO.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Great app.
Anyone besides me notice that you can’t turn OFF the preview pane with the latest beta installed? I turn off the preview pane when I’m about to delete a known piece of spam.
November 14th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Anyone know how to set the preview window and have mail remember the settings? The default review pane is narrower than the mail info pane and I like the preview pane to be the larger than the subject pane.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Glad that Letterbox is back for SL. I have two wide monitors and I hated to go back to the default windows arrangement. Also like the 2-line view. Maybe you can make it so that other columns also show up in two lines. Right now I am losing space in the other columns (flag, replied, size, date recieived and attachment). And I just donated.
November 17th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Wish list: pane placement stability, and any added aesthetic choices,e.g.,line colors, pane color differentiation. Profoundly appreciate the effort
November 18th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Any chance of adding auto preview like in Outlook? I have a co-worker that is running Parallels and Outlook just to have that feature. The two line subject is great, but he doesnt use the preview pane at all, so if there was the ability to preview the first few sentences under the subject line I think he might finally let go of his one last hold on MS.
November 18th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Your work is greatly appreciated.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Hi Aaron,
Any chance of releasing Letterbox Beta 6 this weekend?
Alex
November 20th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Good work, I like the two line view very much, but in this version the sender is in the first and the subject in the second line, it would be nice if in the next version it would be possible to place the subject in the first and the sender in the second line. It would also be nice if the date could be included in the second line.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Dude. This is a LIFE SAVER!!!
Thanks so much!! I love it, and it’s what I’ve been looking for since Snow Leopard made Wide Mail incompatible.
Thanks again, and post when the version is solid. I will for sure send a donation.
KVL
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Aaron,
Thanks a million for your work on this. It has made my experience with Mail SO much better. For some reason the two-line view isn’t displaying properly for me. The second line is only partially visible, i.e. half of the line is cut-off. Has anyone else had this problem? I’m using MailTags and MailActOn if that makes a difference.
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Exactly which weekend was that?
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Until some moments ago I was so happy with letterbox! However, I just updated OSX to 10.6.2. Apparantly with some new goodies for mail, as letterbox is not working with this new version of Apple Mail (4.2).
A already known problem?
Regards,
Hugo
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Please ignore my previous message. ‘Problem’ solved, my fault, too impatient.
Although this reminded me that I still had to donate. Consider it done. Thanks for the SL version.
November 27th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Aaron, now that 10.6.2 is on my machine, Letterbox has been disabled. Any timeframe on an update? Thanks so much for your hard work. A donation will be on the way.
November 27th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Im on 10.6.2 and everything works just fine! I just recently shifted from t-bird to mail.app. Something I wanted to do for a very long time but which I have stalled cause the lack of 3-pane. ‘entering letterbox and THANK you an awful LOT Aaron!!!
November 28th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Hey Aaron, any timeframe on a fix for the beta5-introduced bugs?
November 28th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I have tried a few times, following your directions, and cannot get this to work. Any thoughts? When do you think you might have the auto-install version?
So frustrated!
December 1st, 2009 at 6:04 am
ES Allingham:
Beta 5 is compatible with 10.6.2. Are you sure you have the latest version?
December 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am
I hope Aaron did not have a car accident, didn’t catch a nasty N1H1, or his girlfriend didn’t dump him so he’s locked himself up in solitude. Who is gonna keep our Mail working properly if not him???
December 1st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Well Tomasz, let’s just say it’s been a rough stretch for me this month. I hope to get back to Letterbox this upcoming weekend.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Switched to Snow Leopard and have been missing Letterbox like crazy every time I check my InBox. Going to try the current version because I can’t keep up with my mail with the standard views and I’m wasting so much of my new iMac screen space.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
No worries. I think, Aaron, you just made people hungry for the Letterbox. I guess that’s a good sign for you that people check this website a few times each day in the hopes of finding another beta version. You really make Mail much better than what Apple gave us.
December 5th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Yes, totally agree with Tomasz. Must be nice knowing thousands of people are hammering your website daily…wondering what goodies the next beta will hold.
December 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Well, I can say for sure I visit this site almost daily to see if something new is released. I cannot work without Letterbox anymore, so I am holding the 10.6.2 update for now (even without the 2 lines preview, Letterbox is a must have).
I is strange that Apple is so perfectionist on every aspect, and leave a huge ancient problem on its mail application.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:49 am
I agree with all the latest posts. Not a day goes by when I don’t check for the latest version. I couldn’t use Mail without it. Can’t thank Aaron enough for his work, though for sure I’ll be clicking the Paypal button when the two-line version comes out. My second line is totally empty with SL 10.6.2 and Letterbox 0.24b5.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I have dumped Apple Mail and am using the new Thunderbird version 3. It does a vertical three-paned layout natively and allows searches across all mailboxes like Apple Mail. There are a number of add-ons, like with Firefox, so it is very configurable.
I recommend it - I couldn’t go back to Apple Mail now. Thunderbird has not only caught up, but has now overtaken it. I love the fact that I am nor reliant of thrid party developers hacking an app to provide what I consider to be an essential feature.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I had to remove my mail plist due to a problem. I am using SL 10.6.2 with Mail 4.2. Letter box beta was working just fine. After removing plist and rebooting mail. original problem went away but letterbox did not show up. So i reinstalled lasted version of beta into bundles folder and nothing happens. Letterbox does not show up in preferences. I have restarted computer. mail works not LB. Help!!!!!!!
John@svirsky.com
December 7th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Hi Phillip & Anyone Else, I just downloaded Thunderbird Version 3 (still in beta testing) but it doesn’t open in a native 3 panel layout. Am I overlooking something?
December 8th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Just go to View in the Apple menubar, then choose Layout. You will see Vertical View. Select it. Message pane needs to be selected too.
December 8th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Hi everybody,
I am grateful for all his effort, but if Aaron isn’t able to release a better version of Letterbox, I may consider switching. I just downloaded Thunderbird Version 3. It’s not as easy as Apple Mail, but the vertical view looks great. It also seams to do a better job with spam.
Respectfully,
Alex
December 9th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Aaron, I think I found a bug in the new beta. After I reinstalled the beta (I had to reinstall instructions in terminal, that solved my last post problem) The command plus command does not work to make larger. Command minus works as does bigger/smaller in the tool bar.
Thought you might want to know about the bug. Look forward to new addition soon, please.
December 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
[...] Download de juiste versie van Letterbox voor jou versie van OS [...]
December 10th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
i’ve been wanting a 2 line view ever since widemail became incompatible with 10.6.. great work with this release!
December 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
[...] Letterbox has been updated, but the above instructions can be adapted for any future OS update that breaks [...]
December 14th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Well adios everyone! It’s off to Thunderbird for me. It has a very nice 3 pane interface available. Life’s too short. Ironically the anti-spam word was “move” when I went to post this. LOL!
December 15th, 2009 at 2:14 am
How do you keep the same pane measurements each time you open mail. Alternatively when will this be addressed?
December 15th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Hi Aaron,
You did a great thing with your work extending Mail. Trying to find some example code, I looked a little into the source code of letterbox and I found mentions on a new version of the Mail.app plugin template. Could you please share this new version of the template, it would be a great help for those like me that are digging into this subject.
Thanks, Elise
December 16th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Dude! Your plug in is great. Apple should pay you big bucks for writing code that they should provide as part of Apple Mail out of the box. Every other mail client has a vertical view. Users are lucky you are taking up the slack. Thanks!!
There is a minor bug in the latest version. The vertical divider bar wont stay put. Every time I quit Mail it moves back to where it wants to go.
December 16th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Come on Aaron, a little feedback wouldn’t be asking too much of your time , numerous deadlines have come and gone without comment. WE know your busy however a few lines of info it just common courtesy.
We all appreciate your efforts to date
Holty
December 17th, 2009 at 4:43 am
It is no good relying on a coder working of his own volition to provide what many consider an essential feature of an essential application. No good at all. I have used WideMail and Letterbox and both developers seem to feed on the public adoration they get and the rest of us end up almost begging them to provide the plugins.
If you haven’t tried the new Thunderbird 3 (now out of beta) give it a go. You might be pleasantly surprised! Don’t rely on these guys, it is too demeaning!
December 17th, 2009 at 10:37 am
I agree! I have observed everyone being extremely nice and even donating money with the expectation that this plugin would be finished. When the donations ramp up, the developer disappears. No one is that busy! Thunderbird is a very good alternative mail client and it has the vertical interface built in. For those who need that to make their life complete, Thunderbird is your answer!!
December 17th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
You cant be mad at this one guy who probably has a real job and cant develop his plug in fast enough to suit you. The fault lies with Apple for being so incredibly arrogant. They wont include a vertical view with Apple Mail for the same reason they dont put two buttons on mice. Steve Jobs is perfect. He is the Lord of all things digital and electronic. If Steve Jobs thought you needed a vertical view, he’d provide it.
I switched to Thunderbird 3.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:45 am
I am not sure what I am gaining by switching to Thunderbird, though. The vertical view only provides one-line option as far as I was able to figure out. The integration with Address Book is not the best. No integration with iCal.
I mean the current Letterbox beta version offers pretty much the same functionality (apart from maybe being able to change the message width). Am I missing any other advantages of Thunderbird or ways in which its shortcomings (vs. Mail) can be addressed??
December 18th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
my guess is to fix those issues with current letterbox beta is not that easy, otherwise, Aaron would have done it earlier. All this plugin does is through hack, basically, by reading those binary dump (if you understand what this means), there is no open API from Apple to tell how to do. If there is open API, I would have written one myself too.
just like someone said already, only one to blame is Steven Jobs. Sometimes, I hate Apple as much as I hate M$.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:48 am
Hi, Seems that Aaron is too busy to write few lines about the plugin status. Is dead already or it is still in active development?
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hey Aaron, don’t forget us. Why don’t you invest some time to make it production ready, sell this ? I bet people would buy it without thinking twice (I would).
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Maybe he’s just pissed about all the unfriendly reactions. You guys should appreciate his work and let him do what he wants or has to do. And yes, it’s up to you, to switch over to Thunderbird and look for another place to complain about it!
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Thunderbird blows. No Exchange support. Entourage just blows period. I really like Apple Mail especially with Letterbox. I have been using it for years since 10.4. For me there is no other option. Aaron, as I have said before, I appreciate your efforts and I wish there was some way I could assist on the project, but I am not a coder at all.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:44 am
Like most of you I’m pretty bummed not to be able to use Apple Mail, which I was using before Snow Leopard with WideMail, (http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/?p=28) which did a good job with the vertical view.
With LetterBox also not working I’ve been forced to Thunderbird 3, and am learning to live with it. It’s really fine once you iron out the kinks a bit, and having the vertical layout it absolutely MANDATORY for emails for me.
Do give Thunderbird a try …. it’s really not so bad. And one day we’ll have WideMail or LetterBox. I would pay for either one, and so would a lot of people. Maybe we need to find/pay a developer to do this for us.?
Now that’s an idea … anyone on board to pay a programer to develop this, and then market the plug-in ourselves?
December 24th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Hi Aaron They are a lot of people who have not their place here, when you pay hundreds bucks for something doesn’t function, I hope you take enough time to complaint about it like here… I think you make a superb job Aaron, and your app is really a good thing, please continue it for a long time, and Happy Christmas
December 25th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Widemail is now updated for Snow Leopard. Check it out, it works fine so far.
December 25th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Sweet.
December 25th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
So the new WideMail beta is buggy, at least for me — keeps freezing when scrolling down the list.
Letterbox in its current version at least is stable to the points that it can be used.
December 26th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Installed Widemail. Seems stable. Works for me. Letterbox still has the bug where it wont remember the position of the vertical divider bar.
December 26th, 2009 at 9:27 am
No Widemail is not stable. It is buggy. The WidemailColumn can sometimes not be displayed. And sometimes it is freezing when you scroll down the list.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Letterbox seems to pop in and out for some reason. If mail is minimized or I wake the computer from sleep letterbox is active, other times i’m back to the normal mail app’s standard view until I restart mail.
December 26th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
So far, I’ve been very pleased with the new Widemail. I did have the “freezing scroll” problem, but the freeze was usually less than a second or two and on balance, tolerable. Interestingly enough, I added a right justified field to the second line (now it looks like subject <–> … size) and the freezing went away. Seemingly bug free and working like a champ now.
I’m still really hopeful about Letterbox. Aaron, I very much appreciate all the work you’ve put into it and am looking forward to trying out new iterations as they become available.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Aaron, I’m sure I speak for everyone when we say we hope you’re enjoying the holidays, but please just drop a quick note to assure us that we’re not waiting in vain!
December 28th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Hi good folk. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.
It’s been a rough stretch for me — my best friend died, my woman done lef’ me, and I’m very very busy at work. But I will be tackling some Letterbox development in the holiday week. Hang in there, patient ones!
~aaron
December 30th, 2009 at 3:53 am
[...] is the original post: aaron.harnly.net » Blog Archive » Letterbox beta 5 for Snow Leopard By admin | category: Exchangeフォルダ | tags: always-wins, bbry, inbox, leopard, [...]
December 30th, 2009 at 4:48 am
aaron really sorry to hear that.. take your time…
for all users a new edition of widemail released with snow leopard support. Although a pre-release it works quite good for a day that I am using it. http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/
I will wait for your edition aaron its good to have competition
Regards
December 31st, 2009 at 4:52 am
apple would be poor without people like you, thank’s
December 31st, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I love you. I couldn’t live without this plug-in. If I weren’t married I’d totally hunt you down for a date.
January 1st, 2010 at 3:07 am
Aaron, no worries. No rush. Thanks for everything you’ve done for even the most undeserving, unappreciative people.
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:21 am
“for all users a new edition of widemail released with snow leopard support”
Be aware of a possibly serious bug in “widemail” that may crash your Mail.app hard if you don’t configure properly and you ever receive an email with no subject (it sure-as-heck did mine!).
Aaron…”this, too, shall pass”.
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:58 am
“Be aware of a possibly serious bug in “widemail” that may crash your Mail.app hard if you don’t configure properly and you ever receive an email with no subject (it sure-as-heck did mine!).”
…AND I just had to go download a plist editor to correct a settings change “widemail” made in my “com.apple.mail.plist” file, which caused my “subject” column to disappear! (sheesh!) So far, “letterbox” seems to be the safest plug-in of its type.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 am
“a settings change “widemail” made in my “com.apple.mail.plist” file”
Um…perhaps “widemail” didn’t actually make the change, but I can only say that I could no longer see the “subject” column after I uninstalled “widemail” (after the crash), which I could see before installing it.
January 3rd, 2010 at 5:52 pm
aaron, so sorry to hear about your recent losses. thank you for taking the time through those troubles to even think about spending your time on letterbox. it’s ok if you don’t have the time to work on things for a while. we appreciate everything you’ve already done. i too love and need this plugin, and it’s already very usable as it is, so many thanks for it!
January 4th, 2010 at 1:05 am
I am very sorry to hear about your recent spate of misfortune Aaron. Happy new year and all the best for the year of the tiger. Along with many others here, I thank you for your efforts in making Letterbox.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
[...] your mail layout into three columns, making much better use of wide screen displays. I grabbed the latest public beta for Snow Leopard and all is [...]
January 9th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Great work Aaron!
I’ve used Letterbox on MacOS X 10.5 but now I updated to SnowLeopard 10.6.2, so the old version did work for me anymore.
I installed the beta5 but after i restarted apple mail my flagit plugin which i had updated for SnowLeopard before was deactivated.
Now i will reinstall flagit again and hopefully both plugins will be okay. If not, i guess the problem is sparkle.
January 12th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Hi Aaron, I have been using this plugin with no visible bugs untill today… When I the Mail window and leave the application running & reopen, it seems to revert to the standard preview pane at the bottom.
Thanks for all your work on this is makes using Mail so much better!
January 13th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Aaron - beta5 is perking along happily for me. Many thanks.
My condolences on all the bad shit hitting your fan; I hope things get better for you soon.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:41 am
The beta is working fine except some little bugs:
So long. –Xjs.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:44 am
The beta is working fine except some little bugs:
So long. –Xjs.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:45 am
–Xjs.
January 17th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Regarding my comment about Letterbox randomly seeming not to work when opening Mail.app: you might be able to reproduce it by opening and closing the Mail.app main window often enough. Sometimes, not all of the features Letterbox provides are utilized – e. g. sometimes you have a hairline separator, but no three-column layout; sometimes your settings for the mail list (alternating colors etc.) aren’t applied but the rest is, etc.
It seems that if there’s the three-column layout, all the other features will always work, too. It also seems like two-line messages always work.
–Xjs.
January 20th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
When I first installed Letterbox it seemed to work as expected. However, just recently it has evolved a certain buggy behavior. The viewing pane cannot be resized at will — if it is visible, it seems to have a certain “wide” width, which crunches the main header pane so as to be nearly unusable. The alternative is to drag it to the right so that the viewing pane disappears entirely. The net result is that the viewing pane is either “too wide” or “not visible.”
The problem seems worse whenever a spotlight filter is in effect, which in effect forces me to turn off Letterbox when using spotlight in Mail.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I tried out Letterbox, but it does not let me make the preview pane narrow enough for my needs. Is there a reason that a 1600px window has to have half that space reserved for the preview?
January 23rd, 2010 at 6:26 am
Hmm doesn’t work here, Snow Leopard, just nothing happens, worked fine with Leo before, but now just does nothing, help.
January 24th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Did you apply the steps in the readme?
January 24th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Sorry to hear about your issues, Aaron. I hope things turn around for you, can’t wait for these bugs to get ironed out of Letterbox.
January 25th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
For those of you with 10.6.2 compatibility issues, show the package contents of Letterbox.mailbundle (right-click, Show Package Contents). Edit info.plist (in Contents) and add these strings to the array for SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs:
Don’t know specifically what they are, but they do allow Letterbox work on my machine now.
January 29th, 2010 at 4:06 am
U ARE A LEGEND!
January 29th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
This is brilliant!
I’ve always liked e-mail applications with a lot of functionality and since switching to a mac, I’ve missed a lot of that as the mail app is a little basic in it’s barebones state. It only just occurred to me that there were probably addons for it any as soon as I went looking I found this little gem and immediately installed it.
Thank you Aaron for awesomeness
January 30th, 2010 at 11:05 am
I literally check every day for a new Letterbox - once these bugs are gone, I will be a very, very happy man. Hope all’s well, Aaron.
January 31st, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I also check every day. Very much looking forward to having a new updated version of your software. I still truly believe you should charge for it……I would pay and so would others.
January 31st, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I CHECK EVERY DAY TOO!! When can we expect a Snow Leopard Letterbox?
February 1st, 2010 at 8:19 pm
The two line view works best with Helvetica I see.
Making the first line bold would make legibility much better
Also a little bit of padding top and bottom.
An awesome add-on for Mail!
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Thank you very much! Helps to get all the mails better organized.
Best regards