Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

monkeybrain · Nov 17, 2005, 08:53 AM

This has been covered before, but it draws few responses, so I want to try and get some more answers.

Is there any way to have Mail's activity viewer open and close by itself when sending mail? Or if not the activity viewer some sort of notification? Perhaps mail can be scripted to do this?

I hope there is some answer. Why apple doesn't want us to know mail has been sent without checking the Sent folder or listening out for the swoosh sound is beyond me.

TETENAL · Nov 17, 2005, 09:15 AM

Why don't you just trust Mail? Whenever I pressed the Send button it sent the mail, and in the few cases it couldn't (because the mail server was not available) it told me.

cla · Nov 17, 2005, 02:42 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Why don't you just trust Mail?

I'd love to hear the answer monkeybrain, so please make it an exhaustive one. (No irony intended.)

monkeybrain · Nov 18, 2005, 06:12 AM

So you never used the old Mail.app? You thought the status bar was useless. Do you use the status bar in Safari? If so, then you'll understand why Mail should give some feedback. It's not about trusting Mail, it's about giving feedback and informing the user. When you copy items in the Finder a window comes up with progress - why? If it was to fail it would tell you, so why have that window to begin with? To give some feedback that something is being done.

Mail needs that, particularly if you're sending emails with attachments. Also, from a new user or user with impaired abilities some feedback other than a swooshing sound should be available.

There's been other threads about this, I'm not alone in thinking this. Also, Mail used to give feedback, the Tiger version doesn't - Apple have removed this functionality for unknown reasons, this makes it more frustrating.

I hope that's exhaustive enough for you.

ism · Nov 18, 2005, 06:39 AM

Monkeybrain,

I just leave the activity window open and slightly obscured by the mail window. Just so I can keep an eye on things.

tomrock · Nov 18, 2005, 07:18 AM

When I click "send" the Sent Items folder gets a bold 1 next to it until the message actually goes.

TETENAL · Nov 18, 2005, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by monkeybrain

Mail should give some feedback. It's not about trusting Mail, it's about giving feedback and informing the user.

There is a progress spinner next to the "Sending" mail folder. What more feedback do you need that it is sending mail?

ism · Nov 18, 2005, 08:36 AM

I'll just add this as well: Mail should notify you if something fails to send anyway. I quite often 'send' stuff when not connected to the internet and it'll warn me and say it'll stay in my outbox until connected.

Then later on when connected it'll merrily send away in the background.

wataru · Nov 18, 2005, 12:56 PM

How about the "whoosh" sound?

Cadaver · Nov 18, 2005, 09:05 PM

Geez people...! Monkeybrain simply asked a question on whether something is possible or not. Why criticize his desire to do it?! Just because Tetenal doesn't need it doesn't mean that its completely irrational to want to see the Activity Viewer window pop open.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having a setting for it to open/close automatically, too. I'd also like Safari to auto-hide the Downloads window the same way. Entourage, OmniWeb, Firefox, and Thunderbird are all examples of Mac applications that will open/close the progress windows automatically.

monkeybrain · Nov 18, 2005, 09:17 PM

Thank you Cadaver. All I wanted was an answer to my question, but people just question why I ask such a question in the first place.

It seems like Apple takes away functionality and people just defend it because Apple did it. Why do all those other apps have this functionality if people didn't want it?

I use Safari Stand to auto-close the downloads' window in Safari by the way, very handy.

Cadaver · Nov 18, 2005, 09:33 PM

Originally Posted by monkeybrain

Thank you Cadaver. All I wanted was an answer to my question, but people just question why I ask such a question in the first place.

It seems like Apple takes away functionality and people just defend it because Apple did it.

Not sure Apple took away functionality here... they just never included this feature in the first place. But, I agree that it would be nice to have it in Mail. I'll have to check out Safari Stand.

- - e r i k - - · Nov 19, 2005, 02:01 AM

There is plenty visual and audible feedback in mail. When sending a mail the name of the Sent-folder changes to Sending... with a progress spinner and changes back to sent once the mail has gone through a long with a wooosh-sound. How much more feedback do you need?

monkeybrain · Nov 19, 2005, 04:09 AM

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

There is plenty visual and audible feedback in mail. When sending a mail the name of the Sent-folder changes to Sending... with a progress spinner and changes back to sent once the mail has gone through a long with a wooosh-sound. How much more feedback do you need?

My Sent folder doesn't change, when sending attachments or not, and there is no spinner. It doesn't do this on my new Mini and didn't on my old Mac either.

Could it be to do with the mail provider in use? I'm using gmail, which has caused problems in the past.

- - e r i k - - · Nov 19, 2005, 04:32 AM

You got some weird version of mail or something? Here's it sending from Gmail:

Jens Peter · Nov 19, 2005, 05:32 AM

I'm with Monkeybrain on this one. it have been covered a few times before, and still I don't get why they removed the status-bar..

Yes, there are a spinning wheel, but it's nice to see the status ( as the new "Activity Viewer" does) when sending mails.

The question is simply, why did they remove the statusbar - know from dusins of programs - and replaced it with a window ?

I don't get it...

monkeybrain · Nov 19, 2005, 02:26 PM

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

You got some weird version of mail or something? Here's it sending from Gmail:

My Mail definately doesn't do that. The only thing I can think of is that it's because I installed the old Mail icons using Mail Stamps, but I don't think it's a known issue.

I've been reading up and it seems there's lots of problems with many aspects of Mail, so I suppose this is only a minor issue - very annoying though.

Sage · Nov 19, 2005, 02:47 PM

I also miss the old Status Bar from Mail 1, so what I do is I just leave the Activity Viewer open, and layer my windows so that I can always see it (I have a 20" screen, so I have plenty of room to spare).