Let me know if 10.5.3 takes care of this for you, or whether the behavior persists!

I hadn’t bothered to look at the Sparkle update logs in a while. I was surprised to see this:

[aaron@macbookpro] $ cat access_log-2008-03* | perl -ne ‘if (m/UUID=([A-Z0-9-]+)&/) { print “$1\n”; }’ | sort -u | wc -l 108833

i.e., there are 108,000 unique users of Letterbox out there! Hi, all! You are not forgotten! cheers, aaron

Before I tossed it streetside with the rest of the trash, though, I happened to switch to preview-at-the-bottom mode. Ah, I see!

Lesson: Alright, you guys win — I’ll work on a two-line column for Letterbox. (Letterbox work is a Sundays-only deal at this point, but I’ll try to make progress nonetheless).

~aaron

P.S. Yes, comments are broken. I dunno, will look at it when I have time.

This version adds Leopard compatibility, a spiffy auto-updating mechanism, a simple preference pane, and menu items for quick switching. It does not yet have a two-line column, which will wait for another day. I’ll probably push out a very minor update by today or tomorrow, just to test the auto-updating mechanism. Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Also: Some of you are probably making use of Dane’s Harnett’s excellent work on WidescreenMailPlugin. I welcome cross-fertilization of ideas or even code. Feel free to let me know what’s working better in one or the other, and hopefully we can keep making our Mail.app experience a little more pleasant for everybody. This go-round I really will make Letterbox’s source code, as well as the underlying improvements to the Mail plugin template, available.

I do suspect, though, that it’s a good idea to have only one or the other enabled at any one time. You can use the MailPluginManager application included with Letterbox to temporarily disable WidescreenMailPlugin — or Letterbox — for the sake of testing.

cheers, Aaron

Full changelog:

Changes

• [bugfix] We now play nicely with the “Mail thinks this junk mail”, “This message has unloaded images”, and GPGMail banners.

Download

Download the disk image, and double-click on the installer:

Letterbox 0.16

Frequently Asked Questions

1. I want an Outlook-style message list with each message on two rows!
   • Yeah, me too. Patience…
2. 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.
3. 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.
2. A more fool-proof installer.
3. Preference pane to switch between ‘Message right of list’, ‘Message below list’, and ‘Message left of list’
4. Menu items and keyboard shortcuts for same.
5. Options for alternate-colored-rows in the message list, and a few other tweaks.
6. (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] After entering a search in the search field, the message list column sizes go wonky. Clicking on another mailbox resolves the issue.
• [known-issue] GPGMail’s banner inherits the dark gray background of the plugin. Not a big deal, but might want to clean this up somehow.
• [known-issue] The message pane collapses to the right side as soon as it’s less than 50% of the width. It should permit narrower sizes rather than collapsing all the way to zero.

What’s New

• [feature] Letterbox now has friendly installer (it uninstalls, too :).
• [added] We have an icon, courtesy of ssunis. Also, the plugin now appears as a file, rather than a folder.
• [bugfix] The message pane is once again flush against the top of the window.
• [added] The installer automatically shows the message pane, to help folks who have it collapsed.
• [changed] The divider is now 1 pixel wide and dark gray, like the one between the mailboxes and the message list.

Download

Download the disk image, and double-click on the installer:

Letterbox 0.15

Frequently Asked Questions

1. I want an Outlook-style message list with each message on two rows!
   • Yeah, me too. Patience…
2. 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.
3. 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.
2. A more fool-proof installer.
3. Preference pane to switch between ‘Message right of list’, ‘Message below list’, and ‘Message left of list’
4. Menu items and keyboard shortcuts for same.
5. Options for alternate-colored-rows in the message list, and a few other tweaks.
6. (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] After entering a search in the search field, the message list column sizes go wonky. Clicking on another mailbox resolves the issue.
• [known-issue] GPGMail’s banner inherits the dark gray background of the plugin. Not a big deal, but might want to clean this up somehow.
• [known-issue] The message pane collapses to the right side as soon as it’s less than 50% of the width. It should permit narrower sizes rather than collapsing all the way to zero.

Changes

• [change] tweaked the divider to be 3 pixels wide, instead of 9.

Download

1. Download the plugin:

Letterbox 0.11

1. Quit Mail.app
2. 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.
3. 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

1. 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.
2. 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.