[Disclaimer: this post refers to Apple Mail in Snow Leopard. I haven't installed Lion and taken a look at the updated Mail.app yet.]
I've been switching back and forth between Windows and OS X for a while now (as I learn to code for the iPhone/iPad). I generally like the Mac experience, but one thing had been bothering me - the apparent lack of a Message Preview in the Mail software. I'd searched under all of the menus a number of times to find a switch to turn on Preview. Having not found one, I presumed it was missing. For some reason, I didn't even search the internet for an answer! Whoops.
Anyway, a chance conversation with a friend gave me cause to look again, and I found the feature cleverly hidden! At the very bottom of the window was a tiny grey bar with a small circle on it - something I immediately recognized as the OS X "drag handle" user experience, and something that I had simply not noticed before in the Mail app. One quick click-and-drag and I had a lovely Message Preview. I feel a little embarrassed I hadn't noticed the drag handle before...
Unfortunately, though, I then discovered that with the Preview window showing, simply clicking a mail item marked it as read, and there was no switch to alter this behaviour. I use the read/unread status of emails in a specific way that doesn't match this behaviour, so this was annoying to me. A very quick internet search this time found many others also annoyed at this feature.
My search also found a product call TruePreview by Jim Riggs. Jim (in his words) "took the time to dig into Mail's innards to find an underhanded solution" to the preview issue. And it's perfect. It adds an additional tab in the Preferences dialog for the Mail application, that allows very granular control over the circumstances that result in mail items being marked as read. You can set to mark previewed email as read immediately, after some period of time, or never (my selection). You can also independently select whether to mark a mail as read when replying, forwarding, opening in a separate window and scrolling or selecting the preview pane. Lastly, you can select differect behaviours for each mail account (if you have multiple accounts set up). Basically, you can pretty much customize to whatever your personal preferences are!
