Balzac 1.0 b29
Balzac is an email application for OS X 10.4 and above, which aims to provide clear views on your mail whilst allowing fast, sophisticated searches of past correspondence. It has been written to utilise all the advanced services available in OS X, from the address book to the built in spell-checker.
The list below is a short summary of the most interesting features of Balzac.
- Dynamic views on your mail (ie 'Smart Folders')
- User defined categories - messages can be in several categories at once
- An inbox which shows you messages from the last few days
- Fast searches on header fields or text content of all messages
- Customize the way you view your mail with HTML templates for list views and message views
- Send custom HTML email using templates
- Supports Growl notifications
Work on Balzac can be sporadic, as I have other paid work which has to take priority. However the latest betas move over to a new mailbox format in preparation for adding support for Spotlight searches, and also add a lot of other features, including Ruby in outgoing messages. See the Version History below for details.
Screenshots
Click on this link for a selection of screenshots showing various features of Balzac
Mail Views
On the left hand side of the Balzac window is a list of Mail Views - mail views are analogous to folders in normal mail applications, however they constantly update to show all of your messages. The advantage of views being based on searches is that once you have set up a few views to your taste you won't need to file manually.
Using Mail Views
To see the messages in a mail view, you click on that view, just as you would a folder in another mail program - the messages matched by the view will then be displayed in the main browser window. Views which are inside other views (ie child views) search only the messages from the view above, so as you move down a hierarchy of views you will see fewer and fewer messages. You can see child views by clicking the arrow beside a view which has children. You can drag views around to reorder them, and double click them to change the title, just as you would expect.
Searching
To search the messages within a view, you can type a few words into the 'Search View' box at the top of the Browser window, and hit return to begin the search. Searches use Apple's Search Kit and are very quick, so you won't have to wait for results. You can also search on various parts of the messages - for example their date, or the from and to fields, or the flavour of the message. To do this you prefix your search terms with from:, to: etc. More sophisticated searches are also possible. Changing the search criteria for a view is a simple as clicking the 'Replace View' button.
Bug Reports
This beta version is not limited in any way. Please report any problems with it to me at the email address at the bottom of this page. Support for IMAP and Spotlight are on the roadmap.
Known Problems
- Balzac is not compatible with TypeIt4Me (an Input Method for Panther and Tiger)
- When sending via mail.google.com, you must use port 465 and turn on SSL (NOT port 587)
Version History
Version 1.0 beta build 29
- Fixed bug in whitelister dealing with numeric HTML attributes
- Removed spurious status messages in Leopard
- Worked around date parsing bug in Leopard causing inbox to display as empty
Version 1.0 beta build 28
- Fixed bug introduced in b27 meaning messages could not be sent with ‘Plain Text’ style
- Fixed bug meaning Trashed messages were showing up in other views
- Spam and Trash views can now have useful sub-views
Version 1.0 beta build 27
- Relaxed Whitelister slightly to allow attributes like bgcolor and colspan
- Whitelister now deals better with various types of malformed HTML, and removes spurious xml declarations
- Window close button now reflects edited state of drafts
- Textile now off by default in plain text messages
- Fixed bug meaning messages tagged Mailing List and Spam were not shown in Spam view
- Fixed bug with display of bracketed urls
- Removed rubygems require in tagger.rb
- Automatically generated Mailing List view now shows messages correctly
- Subviews of Mailing Lists view now show messages
- Fixed bug in plain text rendering of bolded text with punctuation characters between them
- Now adds emails with company name only or no names to address book auto-complete list
- Fixed bug introduced in b26 where saved drafts not replaced when edited after restart of app
- Fixed styling issue causing links in message bodies to be underlined
Version 1.0 beta build 26
- Replying to 'To do' message removes 'To do' tag
- Fixed bug rendering returns in some plain text messages
- Summary now replaces newlines with spaces
- Saved drafts now restore styling
- Saved drafts now restore signature setting
- New messages no longer have a tab character at end in compose view
- Fixed bug causing instability on attempting to edit connect minutes in new prefs dialog
- Fixed bug when pressing cancel twice in find panel
- Fixed bug in system version check
- Fixed CPU usage caused by unreleased timer
- Added table rows to permitted tags
- Fixed bug rendering new lines and multiple line quotes in replies
- Added tagging of outgoing messages
- Reply-to header field now respected for mailing list messages
- Auto-complete emails no longer prefixed with a blank space if no name in address book
Version 1.0 beta build 25
- Add a sheet on closing draft window - Discard or Save Draft
- Fixed bug assigning new port to Receive or Send port in Accounts prefs
Version 1.0 beta build 24
- Now requires OS X 10.4.0 or higher - due to various dependencies on 10.4 tech (Ruby, transitions, DOM)
- Can now compose using embedded textile or eruby commands, or even just HTML
- Added snippets (excerpts of text which can be reused), and thus signatures
- Added Delete Spam Messages menu item
- Added Delete Trash Messages menu item
- Significantly faster when tagging or deleting multiple messages
- Added French localization, with help from Wtfigo - all mistakes are mine
- Imports mail from Tiger mail.app 'mbox' format, as well as real mbox - drag and drop from Mail.app folders
- Fixed mail export bug with quoted messages
- Fixed bug in send code meaning long urls not wrapped
- Opening saved drafts no longer loses formatting
- Fixed bug with date display caused by stale cache for messages several days old
- Fixed some cosmetic styling bugs for incoming messages
- HTML Whitelisting now implemented
- Added completely revised help files
- Added Sparkle support
- Similar button now strips Re: etc from subjects
- Similar button now undoes selection if pushed twice
Version 1.0 beta build 23
- Now imports Mail.app version 2 .mbox files as well as version 1 .mbox via drag and drop
- Now produces log file (visible via console window)
- Fixed bug remembering passwords when first run
- Improved auto-update code
- Fixed bug when sending Spam messages with certain encodings to SpamSieve
- Fixed bug - disabled accounts were being included in auto-connect after sleep
Version 1.0 beta build 22
- Mail view styles and message view styles are now independent
- Fixed crashing bug when sending with SSL enabled
Version 1.0 beta build 21
- Added support for SpamSieve as a Spam filter
- Added option to turn off cache and maximum size for cache
- Text now set to normal style following a head or quote in outgoing message
- Text can now be styled bold or italic in outgoing messages
- Fixed bug when find panel requested multiple times
- Fixed problem sending messages after internet connection interrupted
- Fixed bug sorting by from in lists with messages having only email in from field
- Some GPG support added, but disabled for now
Version 1.0 beta build 20
- Now a Universal Binary
- Now connects automatically when the network comes up after sleep
- Uses new style Unified Toolbar
- Fixed bug handling mailto urls
- Fixed bug with export of single message
- Fixed bug in select all
- Fixed bug with selecting a word by double clicking on OS X 10.4
Version 1.0 Beta build 18
- Added registered user string to about box
- Changed SMTP code so that authentication is not required with blank username
Version 1.0 Beta build 17
- Fixed bug with cancel button not working if clicked at bottom
- Changed 'Flavours' to tags and removed US localisation
- Fixed bug in auto-complete if part of name was deleted
- Fixed bug meaning messages weren't removed from the server
- Fixed bug in preferences which reset default account when fields changed
- Limited History saved to last 7 days (display not yet done)
- Fixed some problems displaying inline attachments in HTML messages
- Fixed bad handling of gmail message parts incorrectly labelled as 'inline'
- Save as image now works from image attachment view
Version 1.0 Beta build 15
- Now requires OS X 10.3.9 or above
- Uses search view rather than combo box
- Fixed recipient list selection problem on 10.4
- Fixed cosmetic bug in table highlight
- Added back to list button to message view
- Dragging messages to views adds tags if applicable
- Delete after days field in prefs now enabled immediately after click on checkbox
- Fixed handling of Authentication failure on receive
- Connect With menu now updated on Account deletion in preferences
- Now remembers most recently used Recipient addresses for autocomplete
- Fixed problems with History caused by NSArrayController change in 10.4
Version 1.0 Beta build 14
- URL auto-linking improved when displaying messages
- Attachment names containing dash no longer truncated on save
- Shift select now always works in list view
- Mailboxes now saved after downloads
- Table selection now updates when Accounts deleted in Preferences
- Auto-scroll in list now works with Webcore 1.3
- Drag into webview now works with Webcore 1.3
- Feedback for downloading changed
- Select similar only adds tag if there is one
- Fixed handling of multipart/mixed messages
- Delete messages on server enabled, including delete after n days
- Account import now updates popup and removes blank account
- Updating tag colours now updates browser view immediately
- 'None' entry in tags menu works
- Deleting messages from Trash now deletes definitively
- History now saved on quit
- Quoted text no longer converted to blockquote in Source view style
- Text selection disabled in list view to improve clicking with Webcore 1.3
- Added SSL suport for send/receive and ports in preferences
Version 1.0 Beta build 13
- Extended expiration date of beta
Version 1.0 Beta build 12
- Added Zonic BugReporter for reporting crash information
- URLS no longer wrapped if they contain non-alphanumeric characters (eg '-')
- Fixed bug with menus not responding when a view with no messages was selected
- Message style now set correctly to last used for replies
- History menu now clears correctly
Version 1.0 Beta build 11
- Tag searches now case-insensitive
- Dates in messages now displayed in local time zone
Version 1.0 Beta build 10
- SMTP with no authentication now permitted
Version 1.0 Beta build 9
- HTML messages with inline image attachements now properly displayed
- URLs in outgoing HTML messages now have HTML links generated
- Help files now opened at specific pages
- Americanised Help files
Version 1.0 Beta build 8
- First public release
