Better Gmail 0.8 adds Mail.app skin and more
Gina Trapani at Lifehacker has done all Gmail users an enormous favour with her Better Gmail extension 
for Firefox.
She has taken some of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail and rolled them into a more user-friendly extension that adds (among other things): coloured labels, a mind-bending array of extra keyboard shortcuts, a fixed font option, larger attachment icons, skins and more.
It almost converted me. Almost.
Now the latest version (0.8) adds even more goodies — bottom posting for replies, Google Reader integration, fixed conversation previews, and a Mail.app skin:
Each option can be enabled or not as you like from the extension’s preferences.
Needless to say, with the labels feature and the extra keyboard shortcuts that Better Gmail provides, it is not very difficult to hack up a very efficient “Getting Things Done” (GTD) system, which doesn’t have all the polish of the tailor-made GTDInbox (formerly GTDMail) extension , but not everyone needs that kind of power.
It also makes managing mailing lists the work of a new keystrokes and can filter work emails from personal emails quickly and easily.
I could go on and on.
Marriage is for life, we like to hope. Mail.app and me are forever (obviously), but — golly! — the occasional harmless flirt with Better Gmail is diverting! Try it out for yourself.
Similar Posts:
- Better Gmail 2: New features, new skins
- GTDGMail: Getting Things Done with Firefox and Gmail
- Better Gmail 2.0 for the new Gmail
- Gmail shortcuts in Thunderbird and Fastmail
- WebKit nightly builds now offer Gmail rich text
Tags: alluring, email, getting things done, GMAIL, GTS, keyboard shortcuts, labels, mail.app, Productivity, skins, webmail
June 19th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Welcome back Tim – you were missed!
June 20th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I thought Mail.app and I were together for ever… but GMail recently stole my heart. I set up a GTD system that works for me, and I couldn’t be happier. Whether I return to Mail.app in the future will depend on the changes in the upcoming X 10.5.
But for now, there are some GMail features that I couldn’t bare to be apart from…. I know MailTag gave us labels, and the new version gives us IMAP users tags, but the GMail system works better for me because I need to access my email on four different Mac’s and a Windows machine, so I need something that is everywhere. .Mac had to go for me, I didn’t want to be tied to the @mac.com email address any longer. The inability to send from another address (without having to enter the reply to address each time) was an incredible oversight.
I could also mention, conversation views, chat logging, the Calendar with FREE SMS messaging etc etc.. but I won’t! :^) No, I don’t work for Google.. I’m just a happy camper who recently switched because I found the GMail apps better suited my circumstances. Trying to share calendars with my wife was not an easy task, I think .Mac actually went against everything Apple usually do, and made life harder. There was also something going wrong with the syncing of calendars for us. Now, I have a menu bar notifier that shows all of my wifes, and my, upcoming appointments, and sends me SMS messages and reminders without fail. It may have been something I was doing, but I never got a reminder from my iCal calendar.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Oooh, very nice, I’ll definitely give it a try.