Mailplane for OS X
Posted by admin | Filed under Apps
I use Gmail for all my personal email, mainly for the spam filters and quick searching. I do sometimes miss the feeling of a desktop application for working with my email though. I also do a lot of website development in firefox, which gets bogged down with extenstions.
Enter Mailplane. At its core, it is a stripped down safari displaying Gmail, which makes it really fast to open. Toolbar buttons and hotkeys turn Gmail into a real application. Receive a new message and you are notified through Growl and with a count of new messages on the dock icon.
As well as the application “feel”, Mailplane has some features that can only be done with a desktop app:
- The screenshot feature opens grab with the selection tool active. Drag around what you want to email and it is captured and attached to the email as a JPG. No messing around with menus in grab.
- Multiple accounts are displayed in an account drawer on the side of the window, allowing for many, many accounts to be managed.
- iPhoto integration lets you browse through iPhoto and choose photos to send to Mailplane
- Even Google Talk is supported, and in a new window
The only drawback I’ve found so far is not being able to use greasymonkey hacks to customize the gmail interface. You can however create your own stylesheet for Gmail.
The program is currently in private beta and available only for Mac OS X, but I highly reccomend it.
Tags: Apple, gmail, leopard, mac, OS X
