I found myself on a great [page][hw] the other day. I don’t know if the page is great normally, but the particular [series of posts][hwp] I was reading gave me a lot of insight into Apple’s mail.app. On that [site][hw] was also a [page of mail.app plugins and extensions][hwe]. Haven’t had a chance to digest all of it yet but some good stuff.
One of the [plugins][hwe] that was mentioned in one of the [articles][hwp] was not really a mail.app plugin, but an Apple system extension called [TextPander][tp]. Well [TextPander][tp] fit a need for me, but as I was checking out the [site][tp], I discovered that the [guy][pm] who wrote it had created a bunch of great software. I have installed and am trying out 4 currently.
[CalendarClock](http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=calendarclock&layout=default) has become [MenuCalendarClock][mcc]. There is an iCal and Entourage version of the program as well as a free and paid version. Basically, it gives you a little pop-up calendar up by your clock. You can get the [taskbar version for windows](http://www.objectpark.net/tc.html).
[FileList][fl] is great little utility that lets you rename files dynamically. Have a bunch of photos you want to rename to Client0001.jpg with a sequential count, no problem. I am currently trying to make my spotlight searching easier and I have a lot of files named flyer.psd. They are all in different folders, but when you search flyer, they all come up. Which one is the one I am looking for? Well this program will let me go through and rename my files dynamically, so everything in the directory /home/ministry/fcyc/fcyc 2006 will now be prefixed with FCYC 2006. Now a search for FCYC flyer may still get me a bunch of files, but the file name will give it away.
One thing I have hated about my switch to Mac is the way that CMD+tab only switches between programs. CMD+` switches between windows within a program. Well, with [Witch][w], option + tab switches between all open windows, and it shows you each windows title as you switch. It’s configurable, so you can make all sorts of adjustments and I am still getting used to it being there, but oh so cool.
[TextPander][tp] is the other one I am using (which we already talked about a little). Basically, [TextPander][tp] lets you substitute any phrase for any block of text or image in any program. When I type “ddate” I get Thursday, February 23, 2006, even as I type in Firefox. I do versioning of text files with a time date stamp, so now when I type “tdate” I get 23_02_06 114641, even in the edit file name dialog of the finder. One of the main things I am planning on using it for is signatures. “cchris” gives me my default signature.
One of the things I love about the web is the way this connection leads from one site to another to another. I may never have found [Peter Maurer's][pm] site, but my regular reading of [43folders.com](http://www.43folders.com) lead me to [one article](http://www.timgaden.com/hawkwings/2006/02/21/talking-mailapp-merlin-mann/), to a [group of articles][hwp], to [one program][tp], to a whole [bunch][pm] of new life hacks. So cool!
Hope some of these were helpful to you. Do you have any great mail.app hacks? While these have helped in other ways, the point of taking this road was to make mail.app better.
[hw]: http://www.timgaden.com/hawkwings/index.php “Hawk Wings”
[hwp]: http://www.timgaden.com/hawkwings/index.php?tag=talking_mail.app “Talking Mail.app”
[hwe]: http://www.timgaden.com/hawkwings/plugins.htm “Mail.app plugins”
[tp]: http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=textpander&layout=default “TextPander”
[pm]: http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php “Peter Maurer”
[mcc]: http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html
[fl]: http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=filelist&layout=default
[w]: http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=witch&layout=default
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