[DancingSponge]

I've noticed in my Mail program that when new email arrives that the little red number over the Mail icon in the dock no longer appears.

Have I switched it off somehow?
How do I turn it on?

[JKT]

This can happen if the Dock crashes while Mail is open - when the Dock re-launches itself, any icon badges are not restored. Simply quit Mail and re-open it and the icon badge should be restored.

Check your crash logs to see if and when the Dock has been crashing on you recently and if it corresponds to the times when the icon badge disappeared.

[DancingSponge]

thanks, but it's not that I don't have the mail icon. I do have the mail icon in the dock, what I'm not getting is the little red flag that pops up above it, stating the amount of new mails that have come in.

The little mail notification thingy. So you can tell just by looking at the dock how many new emails you have.

[JKT]

That was what I meant by an icon badge. Did you check your crash logs?

[DancingSponge]

I'm not too sure where to find the crash logs (sorry, I'm a Mac newbie) but I did check the My User/Library/Logs/Crashreporter folder and there are just 2 log files in it.
Help View crash.log and
Stuffit Expander crash log.

Is this where I'm supposed to be looking? Should there be a dock crash logs file there too?
I'm not aware of any crashes with the dock ever happening.

[JKT]

Yes, that is where they would be if the Dock had crashed. As there is no log for the Dock, the issue can't be with it crashing. FWIW, use Console to view your system logs (/Applications/Utilities)

Do you have any system hacks/haxies installed such as Transparent Dock?

[DancingSponge]

The only thing it might be is I tried installing httpmail for trying to get hotmail access, but it didn't work. At least I never got past the confirm the servers part. It may have stopped working then, but I have since uninstalled it, and still nada!