I get a lot of email from people who use Microsoft Outlook. I don’t know why, but the font size in their emails is smash-your-eyeball-to-the-screen small.
I consider myself to have great near vision, but I can’t read these emails. So I usually select all of the text and paste it into a text editor. That way, I can actually see it.
Before Marked, this post would have ended here. Actually it never would have happened because who the hell cares that I have trouble reading crappy email?
Wait. Marked? Yeah, I said Marked.
Marked not only makes Markdown easier. It makes email easier, too. If you have Marked installed and also have the services that come in the Marked bonus pack, you can
- Right-click a mail message in your inbox
- Go to Services > Preview Selection in Marked
Bam. You’re now reading the email in Marked. And you can see the text in gorgeously legible Helvetica! Yes sir, the service sends the entire message contents to Marked.
So that this happens even faster, I assigned a keyboard shortcut to the service.
I have no idea if Brett Terpstra had Mail 5 in mind when he wrote the Marked services, but I was happy to find this odd use of my favorite Markdown previewer.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool. Do you know of a mac app that allows you to use markdown to compose email?
Why not just hit the command and + or – keys to adjust text size in emails?
That’s a decent option that works if you open the mail message in a separate window. One thing I don’t like about zooming on a message is that the elements that were originally ok become cartoonishly large. Putting the message in Marked makes everything uniform (and easier to read in my opinion).
I don’t use Outlook–can you really not set the preview text font in Preferences?!
I probably left way too much to the imagination in that intro. I’m actually using Mail 5 to read email sent to me by people who use Outlook.
As much as “Marked” is a useful tool and sure if you have it installed it can do as you describe but it’s really not meant for that purpose. An email in Mail coming from Outlook is hardly going to have Markdown tags inside.
If you really have trouble with Outlook default fonts in email being read in OS X Mail 5. Then all you need is a couple of corded key presses and it’s quicker then running a Service to launch another App. You can either CMD and Plus to zoom-in or ALT+CMD+P to convert to plain text and ALT+CMD+] to revert back. You can also tell Mail to use Fixed Width Font when displaying plain text. There are many to choose from, Menlo is built-in and kinda nice. Bitstream Mono is good as well. Consolas is available if you have Office 2011 installed. Plus, you can set the default fixed width font size.
I am not a big fan of HTML formatted email. There is little need for colors, pictures and formatting. It’s like watching an Office user mangle a presentation or business document with bizarre font changes and other visual changes. Unless you are a professional typesetter or graphic designer, you should step away from the fonts and styles! I am one of those old school fixed width font guys who is comfortable in a terminal. Although I have Mail configured, I really don’t use it. I use Mutt in a Terminal, hosted on a remote server that I ssh into and restore my running session with GNU Screen. It’s always running, picks up where I left off and runs on any system that can connect via ssh including an iPad. Screen multitasks everything I need (Mutt, ViM, Compiler, IRC, TTYtter {Twitter}, etc.). It’s a 1970′s solution that I suppose could be called a Cloud Console today. Now that Lion will run a Terminal full screen it gets even neater. I can flash back to those glory days of green or amber phosphor and going as fast as that keyboard will let me go. Got a real click keyboard too! Loud, but oh so sweet to type the light fantastic. Forget get the mouse, moving my hand away from the home row slows me down. I only use the mouse when it’s really beneficial.
Marked displays it like text. No Markdown syntax needed. Marked is really smart (reflects the prowess of its maker).
You may consider QuickCursor for quickly accessing text in your prefered text editor… Works everywhere in osx