Do flashing icons get on your nerves? Do you ever envy your UNIX brethren with their fancy mailbox icons? As a long-time user of QuickMail, I finally decided that I wanted to have a better way to see if I have mail; hence QM Biff was born.
What It Does
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QM Biff consists of two parts, an extension (yeah, one more INIT to install!) and a miniature application. The INIT knows whether QuickMail thinks you have mail or not, but keeps the icon from flashing. Instead, the application indicates whether you have mail by displaying one of two pictures (which you can select).
How To Install
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Just drag the "Biff Extension" to your system folder, put the "QM Biff" application in your "Startup Items" folder (if you want it started everytime you restart) and restart your computer. That's it.
Credits
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QM Biff was hacked together by Patrick C. Beard, and was written using "PatchWorks", the object-oriented trap patching framework. If you are interested in obtaining this framework for your own projects, contact me. My addresses are:
Patrick C. Beard
P. O. Box 73493
Davis, CA 95617
pcbeard@ucdavis.edu
Technical Details
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QM Biff works by patching NMInstall & NMRemove, and comparing the bits of the 'SICN' that is flashed with the bits used by QuickMail. If these bits ever change, you can just change a resource ('SICN' # 128) inside "Biff Extension".
The application communicates with the extension through a Gestalt selector, 'BIFF', which other applications can call, too. The response long word is 1 if you have mail, and 0 if you don't.
