November 2004

By: FJ de Kermadec

Introduction

I am a paperless junkie. In an ideal world, I would read books on my screen, listen to music on my iPod, pay my bills through the Internet and, generally, forget that trees can serve another purpose than recycling carbon monoxide. This being said I, for once, was happy to play with a stack of envelopes and disgustingly sticky label paper.

Why? Because I was reviewing Mail Factory from Belight Software, which, despite all my fears and apprehensions brought a bit of fun back into the mailing world — OK, fun might be a bit of an overstatement but it is never the less a pleasure to use a well-thought application.

First impressions

Mail Factory is a snap to install: it follows Apple's recommendation of using drag-and-drop whenever possible. Once done, the application launches immediately, without displaying any ungraceful "Shareware!" pop-up windows (I did not register immediately, to get a feel of how the demonstration version behaved).

Getting straight to the point, it displays an assistant that allows you to create labels and envelopes by clicking on a succession of "Next" buttons — much like the Mac OS X setup assistant allows you to set up your computer. The interface is without doubt clean and it is obvious that a lot of work went into it — instead of being black and white, buttons feature a subtle shade of green that contrasts nicely with the brushed metal background.

The usually annoying "layout examples" are nicely contained into tabs and views, making them truly useful and preventing them from cluttering the interface too much — although I wish there were a way to completely get rid of them until the final stages of the process.

Menus are nicely laid out and self explanatory too, which makes the overall first impression quite positive. Most of them also feature keyboard shortcuts, which is a welcome accessibility touch. Many of these respect the widely accepted (or Apple-recommended) standards that exist across Mac OS X applications: goodie!

Delving further

If the first overall impression was excellent, I soon hit a wood wall (note, I didn't say brick ;)... Indeed, when it came to actually creating my first label, I felt kinda lost. The non-standard interface — it uses a few non-standard controls and elements — makes it slightly difficult to move around at first. I found myself clicking furiously on a big "Next" button at the top right that turned out to be a progress indicator — the actual button was a tiny text one at the bottom!

Also, this nice Assistant we were referring to looks frighteningly like if it were the main application window, which led me to think for a few minutes that there was no other way to create labels and envelopes than following the (relatively) tedious steps of (1) selecting a layout (2) designing the label and (3) selecting the address that should appear on it...

Why am insisting that much on my (hopefully limited) stupidity? Because it turns out that, once I had understood that I was only dealing with an Assistant put here for my convenience and found the actual standalone label and envelope creation widows, I began to truly appreciate how easy to use the application is. A bit of looking around the preferences revealed that, although the assistant is set up to launch at startup by default, this can be changed to any other window. I basically was hit by a modal interface... So deliciously 90's!

Getting it to work

Once my first interface issues were solved, I actually found Mail Factory a delight to work with. Both the "Label" and "Envelope" windows are extremely well thought, easy to use and give you a very good idea of what the resulting labels will actually look like.

Clicking on the buttons located at the bottom brings up modal palettes, allowing you to progressively delve into the subtleties of the process without cluttering the interface. Getting the names on the labels is a breeze: simply click on "Recipient", select your contact (in my case from Address Book) and the data is automatically pulled onto the label. My limited trials with addresses from various countries (I only had France and the United States to play with) revealed that the application is indeed able to adapt the formatting depending on the country and to detect whether or not all options are applicable for you — for example, it suggested that I print a barcode for my US addresses but automatically grayed the option out for the French ones.

Integration with Address Book is excellent and lets you tap into most of the card options featured by the application — Mail Factory acknowledges that you can enter multiple addresses on a card for example and allows you to switch between sources.

The way fields are displayed and filled in is reminiscent of Address Book: the application lets you know which fields are here when there are no contacts to display but immediately gets rid of the visual clutter when you start composing the labels — an ingenious "show all fields" button calls them back if needed. I actually liked the automatic layouts so much that I never felt the need to add custom fields, although this is possible and quite easy to do.

Once the address is laid out, formatting it is a snap and is done through system-standard color and font palettes — well, not really standard but sufficiently reminiscent to make you feel immediately at ease with them. Text formatting options may seem limited at first (applying a shadow to a word for example is a multi-step process) but this is actually good: it forces you to focus on the usability of the label and doesn't allow you to come up with a design that no mailman or machine could possibly read!

The formatting inspector also contains a few niceties like a "Capitalize" button that could be useful with some postal systems.

A "Sender" button allows you to print your name and contact details, which can be very useful on an envelope. The same options pretty much apply to this field.

Once you have gotten the information you wanted on the label, you can drag the "Sender" and "Recipient" blocks around like if they were grouped objects — and it comes with a nice frame, as an added touch. Some limited (but welcome) alignment guides will help you in this task.

If you are into creating pretty labels, a dedicated "Design" pane allows you to add drawings, logos and images to the labels — Mail Factory even taps into your iPhoto library if you want it to! Nice touches include the ability to conduct an internet search on images and have the results displayed in the application itself — given the potential copyright issues I don't know if this particularly useful but it is a nice touch never the less.

The application comes with an extensive collection of cliparts that look frighteningly like the AppleWorks ones — not the same drawings but the same style. While I'd rather do without art at all than cliparty-looking cliparts, this is probably a matter or personal taste. Much more interesting and useful is the collection of warning and handling labels with which the application comes: you can, by simply clicking on a button, add icons and warning signs to a label or envelope, that you will then be able to resize and drag around — I can finally get rid of these stickers!

The "Layout" button allows you to set up the size of labels and envelopes that you will use. While it could easily be confusing, the sheet that scrolls down is actually surprisingly clean and neat and contains a list of pretty much every pre-cut label you can think of. Just pick the right make and reference and you're done! You are also free to create your own layout if you happen to be relying on a brand that is not represented. Oh, and the application recognizes both A4 and US Letter! Yayy!

The standards "Print" dialog is actually very clear and easy to understand. It gives you a nice preview of what you are about to print and, unlike similar software that I have seen in the past, manages to make you feel confident that what you see is indeed what you will get. A little confusing is the "print list" option that allows you to print mailing list labels... I would have looked for it into the "Contacts" palette of the design window but, after second thoughts, I guess it makes more sense to have it here.

Nice zooming sliders along the way will help visually impaired users to work with the application and will allow the others to avoid these oh-so-common 1pixels faults in some of the most carefully crafted designs.

A nice "calibrate printer" sheet should help you work around the most infuriating aspect of printing labels: making the printer work on the paper — come on, admit it: how many piles of sticky paper have you had to throw in the trash (sorry, recycling container) because of a printing glitch?

Preferences

The preferences window is delightfully uncluttered and, actually, quite easy to miss. There is nothing too surprising in here although some of the options — don't print the country name, place a coma after the city — once again reveal the attention to detail that went into the application. The "Check for updates" feature actually brings you to BeLight's website, a much better option than blindly downloading a file through an insecure connection: good job, great job even!

Additional Praise

Out of boredom (not related to testing the application, needless to say), I dragged Mail Factory's icon onto ScriptEditor and was surprised by the amount of AppleScript commands that one can send to the application. It's perhaps not the most complete AppleScript dictionary ever but it's a very good start and I applaud BeLight for thinking about that — especially since mailing is one of the first things I would want to automate if I had to print labels on a regular basis.

Conclusion

Mail Factory is without doubt one of these little, well-thought applications that you can't live without once you have discovered them. In French, to say that something is bloated and useless, we say that it's a "Gas factory" and this application is just the opposite: it serves a very specific but real purpose, it's stable and every element shows a true attention to detail. My only complain (if I can use such a strong word) would be that the interface takes a bit of time to get used to but it's a detail. I would never have thought that I would say that about a label printing application but, dude, it's a winner!