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Snow Leopard: Mail's Hyperlink Bug

It's a funny one.

Get It

Try It

As reported in Coldspots previously, there's a brand new bug in Apple Mail. It's probably destined to be classified as a mere cosmetic bug but it can interfere with the functioning of the program - and in a most annoying way.

This is what a hyperlink in an incoming message can look like in Mail 4.1. The hyperlink appears as plain text. Clicking it does nothing.

Attempting to reply to the message (and then simply discarding the reply) will get the hyperlink to appear (and function) correctly again. [Resizing the window might as well.]

It's also been noted that Mail still can't adequately dispense with automatically saved drafts. This is more difficult to test if you're not practicing 'zero inbox' but it's easy in any case to see with a simple command.

find ~/Library/Mail -name *\.emlx | grep Drafts\.mbox

Compare your results with what Mail has in the drafts folder.

Envelope Index

The file '~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index' can contain a lot of sensitive personal information. There seems to be no recognition of this on the part of Apple Mail or any way to clean this information out.

Most every instance of '@' in the file will be for a mail address previously used by the program.

$ strings Envelope\ Index | grep @ | wc
      38      50    1309

The derring-do way to take care of this is to clean out and exit mail, remove Envelope Index, and then start Mail again. You should be led through a one-click process to be officially 'welcomed' to Snow Leopard Mail. At that point your new Envelope Index is pristine; you can either save this file (and restore it at regular intervals) or just go through the welcoming process all over again. [Note: Envelope Index contains more than just addresses. And it is imperative you not 'restore' Envelope Index until you remove all messages from Mail - unlike its NeXT ancestor, Mail does not actually see what's on disk.]

The Other Ones

People seem generally more content with Mail 4 than they were with recent versions but there are bugs that remain.

√ The dirty red button. Mail starts a new message with a dirty red button. Dismissing a completely empty message composition window will invoke a prompt to save - despite the window being completely empty and there being absolutely nothing to save.

√ ⇧⌘⌫ to empty trash. Mail wants a new keyboard shortcut to empty trash after all these years with the familiar ⌘K.

√ Tabbing in previous recipients. Mail no longer allows tabbing into the previous recipients list - the table view isn't connected correctly in the NIB.