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In this Instructable, I'm going to demonstrate a process to de-gender the Birth Announcement Stationery by adding pink and yellow versions to it. You will need Photoshop or a similar editor to make the graphic changes. It would also behoove you to install Apple's Developer's Tools package from the original Mac OS X Install DVD to use the Property List Editor tool. You can edit the Property List files with a text editor, but it's much less intuitive and elegant...
When Apple first introduced Leopard (Mac OS X vers. 10.5), one of the really neat features was the Stationery feature in the Mail application. They had supplied a number of professionally designed templates making it very easy to send out very cool emails. Some of them even had the ability to change the base color! This was especially important in the "Birth Announcement" Stationery.
At some point over the seven updates to Leopard, the original Stationery were replaced with even better constructed templates. Unfortunately, one of the sacrifices were that fewer of them had the color change feature. Most disappointing is that the "Birth Announcement" is now only available in blue! What if you want to announce a girl? What if you're announcing your new High-Def Entertainment System? You're going to need/want something other than blue!
Last week, I set out to learn how to make my own Stationery files for Mail. Part of the process is to understand how the current stationery works. It a lot easier to modify what's already there than to create new from scratch. The results are also instantly gratifying like we've grown to expect in this day and age.
When Apple first introduced Leopard (Mac OS X vers. 10.5), one of the really neat features was the Stationery feature in the Mail application. They had supplied a number of professionally designed templates making it very easy to send out very cool emails. Some of them even had the ability to change the base color! This was especially important in the "Birth Announcement" Stationery.
At some point over the seven updates to Leopard, the original Stationery were replaced with even better constructed templates. Unfortunately, one of the sacrifices were that fewer of them had the color change feature. Most disappointing is that the "Birth Announcement" is now only available in blue! What if you want to announce a girl? What if you're announcing your new High-Def Entertainment System? You're going to need/want something other than blue!
Last week, I set out to learn how to make my own Stationery files for Mail. Part of the process is to understand how the current stationery works. It a lot easier to modify what's already there than to create new from scratch. The results are also instantly gratifying like we've grown to expect in this day and age.
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Signing UpStep 1Locate the stationery file for editing...
Stationery for Mail are located in any of three places. Original files are located in the Library folder of the hard drive's main directory. add-on stationery may also be located in your Home folder's Library or the Network's Library. In all cases they follow a like path within the Library. Since there are very few custom Stationery, likely you only have Apple's supplied Stationery in the mail Library. You can find them by following this path:
/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/
The specific Stationery that we will be editing is located in the Announcements folder following the additional path:
Announcements/Contents/Resources/Baby.mailstationery
Be sure to make a backup copy of this file before editing it. The easiest backup technique is to select the Baby.mailstationery file and select the menu item: Finder -> Compress "Baby.mailstationery". This will copy the original file into a zip file within the same folder. Don't skip this step! If you totally hose the original, you can always recover it with the backup.
/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/
The specific Stationery that we will be editing is located in the Announcements folder following the additional path:
Announcements/Contents/Resources/Baby.mailstationery
Be sure to make a backup copy of this file before editing it. The easiest backup technique is to select the Baby.mailstationery file and select the menu item: Finder -> Compress "Baby.mailstationery". This will copy the original file into a zip file within the same folder. Don't skip this step! If you totally hose the original, you can always recover it with the backup.
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Also, There are now installers available in Step 9 to install this and a similar edit to the Sticky Stationary. You're welcome to download and use these on your own system. If you want to share it with others, refer them to this Instructable.