Mail.appetizer Beta Released for Leopard
This is one of those small customizations that makes my Mac super excellent. Mail.appetizer is an email alert plugin that gives you a preview of new mail messages as they arrive in your mailbox. Most importantly, it’s gorgeous.
As you can see from the screenshot at the right, the notification window, in addition to giving you the deets on the sender, the message subject and a preview of the message itself, also provides some quick action buttons at the bottom of the pane - close window, delete message, view message and mark as read. If you don’t need to reply, then there’s no reason to open Mail.app.
This app has been around forever - it was developed originally for Panther. And the Tiger version never got out of beta (although it worked perfectly). But as someone who doesn’t communicate primarily by email and only gives their (personal) address out to a few friends, I like know if something important has landed in my inbox, and this is the best app that I’ve found for the job.
There are some bugs with the current Leopard version listed on the developer’s website:
After installing Mail.appetizer 1.3 Beta 1, Mail will be launched in the background.
Mail.appetizer does not work when Logitech’s Scroll Enhancer (comes with Logitech Control Center) is installed.
Mail refuses to quit when both, Mail.appetizer and GrowlMail are installed.
Messages deleted with Mail.appetizer are currently not marked as read.
Considering that the previous Tiger release never got out of beta, I wouldn’t hold my breath for these bugs to be fixed. As unfortunate as that may be, I’m prepared to live with Mail.appetizer as is - I’m just happy that the developer has rereleased it.
Download Mail.appetizer for Leopard from Bronson Beta. It’s freeware.
