Mail.appetizer is a handy little plugin that enables you to preview incoming Apple Mail right on your Mac desktop. The Mail.appetizer window shows you the subject, sender, and a brief snippet of the message.

Once the plugin is installed (and Mail is restarted), you'll have a new Notifications option in your Mail preferences, with options to change:

• Which mailboxes show the notifications
• The font and size of the notification text
• Transparency
• Time to display the message

Mail.appetizer is in beta, and the plugin has a few known issues. But if you've been looking for a simple tool to preview your Mail messages on your desktop a la Entourage style, then we would give Mail.appetizer a shot.

There are currently builds for both Tiger and Leopard.

[via Cool OSX Apps]