Category: Gmail

April 1, 2012

February 28, 2012

Open email (mailto:) links with Gmail in Chrome

“I used to avoid clicking on email links on the web because an application on my computer that I never used would pop up and interrupt me. Instead, I would copy the email address, switch to Gmail, click compose and paste it in.” read more

From now, I can tell Chrome to use Gmail as my email application and any link with an email address will be opened as a compose window in Gmail.

Just visit Gmail.com from Chrome, you will be asked to “Allow Gmail to open all email links”

Click ‘Use Gmail” button and try the below link to see what happens.

mailto:example@example.com

learn more

September 29, 2010

Turn off threaded email view in Gmail

If threading of the email is the only thing that stopped you to use Gmail, now you can turn off the conversations, and see the emails like in Yahoo mail or Outlook.

You will be seeing this option (to turn off Conversation view) in the Settings page soon.

Read the official post

Have a suggestion for Gmail?

August 31, 2010

Priority inbox and Phone calls in Gmail

Gmail’s Priority inbox brings your important emails to the tops and make it much visible for you.

How this works?

Gmail automatically tracks the actions you do with your g(e)mails, and identifies the important email messages for you.

1. If you are frequently sending email to Bob, then an email from Bob is important for you.

2. If you always read emails containing “Soccer”, a message containing “Soccer” is important for you

3. The contacts whom you often reply, or whose emails you often “star” are important for you.

4. The emails which you archive without reading / delete are the unimportant ones

5. If you don’t do any of the above, you can use the “Important” and “Not Important” buttons in Gmail, to train Gmail to identify the priority emails for you.

If you are a pro, you can define a filter that tells Gmail, what is important for you.

More about Priority inbox Official blog post

Call from Gmail Official blog post

September 13, 2009

Access Google Latitude from GMail

In order to use Google Latitude from Gmail, you should have enabled Gadgets in Gmail.

Once you have done that, go to the Gadgets tab in Gmail settings.
Give the gadget’s url as http://www.google.com/ig/modules/fv.xml and add.

Now you are set to use Latitude from Gmail. The Latitude gadget appears on the left navigation bar of the Gmail page. When you click on your photo in the gadget, it gets launched in its canvas view (full screen).

August 16, 2009

Access Orkut from GMail

This is an update to my previous post on “View your Orkut Scraps in GMail”, the gadget is updated to have the Canvas view.

Now you can click on the gadget title link to launch it in full screen, canvas view.

Please read my previous post for How to add this gadget to your GMail page.

August 15, 2009

Developing GMail Apps (gadgets) with full (Canvas) view

In one of the previous posts , we saw about how to add iGoogle gadgets to GMail.These GMail gadgets need not be only in the small sidebar, which of less than 200 pixels width.

Since iGoogle now supports gadgets with Canvas view, GMail gadgets can also be with canvas view (full view).
We will see how to develop a simple GMail app, with Canvas view enabled.If you can code html, check the simplest form of a Google gadget below.

The Gmail gadgets are same as Google gadgets, just appearing in the GMail page.For the Canvas view application in GMail, the ModulePrefs tag should look like
<ModulePrefs title=”Gadget title” description=”Gadget Desciption” author=”Karthik” author_email=”manikarthik84@gmail.com” category=”tools” screenshot=”http://screen-shot-image-url-here.jpg” thumbnail=”http://thumb-nail-image-url-here.png” height=”30″><Require feature=”dynamic-height”/> <Require feature=”views”/> <Optional feature=”maximize”/> </ModulePrefs>

Here, we have enabled different type of views, Canvas and default using <Require feature=”views”/>And maximizing the gadget is enabled using <Optional feature=”maximize”/>

Let us now go to the sidebar view part (i.e the default view.It should look like,
<Content type=”html” view=”home, profile”><![CDATA[this is sidebar view. Code your content here.<center><a href="javascript:goToView('canvas')" >Launch Full View</a></center> ]]></Content>

The link, javascript:goToView(‘canvas’) can take us to the full view.Even the sidebar can some content which can be coded in the above CDATA section.Now the Canvas view can have the basic form as below.

<Content type=”html” view=”default,canvas”><![CDATA[this is full view.We can adjust the height as below.<script type="text/javascript">gadgets.window.adjustHeight();</script>]]></Content>The complete xml file should be like,
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?><Module><ModulePrefs title=”Gadget title”description=”Gadget Desciption”author=”Karthik” author_email=”manikarthik84@gmail.com”category=”tools” screenshot=”http://screen-shot-image-url-here.jpg”thumbnail=”http://thumb-nail-image-url-here.png”height=”30″><Require feature=”dynamic-height”/><Require feature=”views”/><Optional feature=”maximize”/></ModulePrefs><Content type=”html” view=”home, profile”><![CDATA[this is sidebar view. Code your content here.<center><a href="javascript:goToView('canvas')" >Launch Full View</a></center> ]]></Content><Content type=”html” view=”default,canvas”><![CDATA[this is full view.We can adjust the height as below.<script type="text/javascript">gadgets.window.adjustHeight();</script>]]></Content></Module>
After coding the complete gadget as above, upload the xml file somewhere.
Now, you have the xml file uploaded somewhere, and its url ready.

How to add the gadget application to GMail?
1. In Labs tab, under Gmail Settings, Enable “Add any gadget by URL” feature, Save changes.
2. Now Go to the Gadgets tab in Gmail settings.
3. Give the gadget xml file’s url, and add the gadget. (for eg, http://www.google.com/ig/modules/datetime.xml)

Twitter application for GMail

July 7, 2009

GMail – out of Beta ! Do you still want beta label?

Many of you might have noticed that Google has removed the Beta label from GMail today.

Didn’t notice yet? check your GMail !
(want to Change the theme ?)

In addition to GMail, Google Calendar also is out of beta version.

Not happy with GMail without beta label ? Do you still think GMail should be called beta ?

Google provides an option for that !

Go to GMail Labs

Enable “Back to Beta” !

Save the changes, and You are all set with the Beta label again.

Enjoy GMail Beta !

GMail Labels get promoted in the page

Since GMail uses Labels, instead of Folders, which many users were not used to, Labels were not used much initially.

Many of the email providers, email clients have the concept of folders. But GMail has Labels which has many advantages like,

1. You need not hide the email message from inbox, if you want to categorize a email message.

2. Adding multiple categories to a single email message was never possible.

Even though Labels have these advantages, users liked the traditional Folders in email.

For attracting users, Google added a button to GMail, called “Move to”, which simultaneously applies label, as well as archives the message. This gave a feel like moving to Folders, but still having the pros of Labels.

Until few days back, a list of labels were appearing below chat box.
Now, these links for Labels have moved above Chat Box, and you also can Drag and Drop emails into Labels.

This hopefully will attract more users to use labels.