It is my continuing goal to reduce all of my applications to tiny little notification windows so that I might receive all my information in bite-size chunks. Such is already the case with Twitterrific, and Growl lets me do something similar for IM. But what of Mail? It’s my lifeline application, but with my widescreen view, it takes up a bunch of room on my screen. Is there some way to put it on a diet, and yet constantly at my fingertips?
Indeed there is: Olive Toast’s $9 MiniMail. This (fully Leopard-compatible) mail bundle takes a page from iTunes’s playbook by hijacking Mail’s green zoom button to turn your Mail window into a mini window. Besides the main body of the window, which lets you cycle through your new messages, there are three buttons that let you check mail, compose a new message, and perform a variety of functions such as replying, forwarding, bouncing, etc. From MiniMail’s preference pane, you can also choose which mailbox (or mailboxes) you want MiniMail to check, whether MiniMail stays on top of all windows, and a few other tweaks. Oh, and if you want to use the normal function of the zoom button, you can still do that by shift-clicking the button.
There’s a free 30 day trial before you have to shell out for the full price, but that really ought to be enough to tell you whether or not MiniMail is for you. As I’m still waiting for GrowlMail to start working with Leopard, MiniMail may be an acceptable replacement for the time being.
[via Hawk Wings]
Dan,
Growl 1.1.2 released a few days ago activates GrowlMail in Leopard. I've been using GrowlMail in 10.5 for over a week now without any problems.
@Nishant: Huh, I find that odd, given that according to what I've been reading over at the Growl forum, GrowlMail isn't compatible with Leopard. Last time I tried it, it made Mail crash every time I tried to do something. The Growl folks have said that it'll be fixed in 1.1.3, which is due for release in the near future, so I'm a little surprised it works for you. Oh well, perhaps mileage just varies.