934 Balzac is a new email application for OS X 10.4 and above, which aims to provide a simple view 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

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.

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.

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. Balzac has not yet been thoroughly tested on Tiger. Support for Spotlight searches will be added in the 1.1 or 1.2 release, when I get round to them.

The latest beta fixes a few small bugs and adds detection of an internet connection after wake from sleep.

New in version 1.0b20:
• 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
• Longer delay for connect after wake from sleep

Known Problems
• Balzac is not compatible with TypeIt4Me (an Input Method for Panther and Tiger)
• Balzac b14 does not import Mail.app mailboxes from Tiger, as the format of messages has changed

System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

System support:
PPC/Intel

$39.00 Shareware

For more information, visit:
http://www.mecanisme.net/software/balzac/

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