The Unread
Less frightening than a zombie.
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The Unread 1.1
Okay, so I pick the worst titles for my programs. The only good one, DooZee, was suggested by my friend Brian. However, despite the lame joke and silly icon (which is actually the first icon I've made that I like, though it's by no means perfect. Maybe I'm improving...) I really like this little program. It may seem simple (it is, for the most part) or useless, but after you try it out, you may find it very useful. I do.
So what is The Unread?
Fair question. Simple answer: The Unread puts a Status Item in your menu bar whose customizable title can display the number of unread emails you have in Mail (it only works for Mail right now).
Elaborate answer: I have lots of applications with lots of BIG windows and only one monitor. I wanted a quick way to see if I had any new mail in Mail without actually wasting the .35 seconds required to make the Dock spring up or to command+tab to Mail only to have my hopes dashed by not finding a little red badge on the Mail icon. I tried a Konfabulator widget that had a floating window that displayed if and how many unread emails you have, but try as I might I just don't have the taste for floating windows, I value my screen real eastate and no matter where I put the darned things they eventually (or immediately) get in my way.
It's frustrating, I know, but I'm here to help!
That nice, compact, warm and fuzzy menu bar is (almost) always there, why not take advantage of that? And so I have. The Unread will display a menu bar status item representing the number of unread emails (if any) you have in your accounts in Mail. The title is highly customizable for each of four situations:
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1. An error was encountered. The default for this situation is "!!" (sans quotes) because it takes up little space. You can change it to "Hey, Dummy! Over here!" if you like.
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2. Mail is not running. This defaults to "MNR!" and will optionally display an alert that will optionally let you launch Mail. Optionally, you can change it to whatever you want.
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3. You have no unread emails. This is normally "--" - again, to keep the space to a minimum, but you can change it to "Nobody Loves Me" if you are feeling blue.
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4. You have unread emails in Mail. This is normally an asterisk shaped character followed by the number of unread emails. You can change this to whatever you want as well with the added option that if you put a pound sign in the title it will be replaced with the unread count (if you want a literal pound sign, you just type 2 in a row). For instance, "## of unread messages: #", while overly long, would display in the menu bar as: "# of unread messages: 45" assuming you had 45 unread emails.
Additionally, if you do have unread emails, the menu will be populated with the title of each of your accounts that have unread messages in them and the specific number of unread messages in each of these. Selecting one of these menu items will take you to Mail. You can also specify exactly which accounts and folders The Unread will monitor and which ones it will ignore. Pretty simple but give it a try, you might like it. As always, comments, suggestions, criticism and the like are all gladly accepted.
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