Enhance Gmail experience with 'Better Gmail' addon for Firefox.

Folks at LifeHacker have created a Firefox extension called 'Better Gmail'. 'Better Gmail' is a firefox plugin that has 25 Gmail enhancement scripts. This plugin makes Gmail with Firefox an ultimate experience. These scripts need Greasemonkey to be installed in Firefox.

It has a collection of 25 small scripts to enhance Gmail utility. Some of these scripts are absolutely useful. Let us review few of the best tools.

Filter assistant

It adds a 'filter assistant' button on the individual mail page. By clicking the button, the filtering options window is displayed with the from address is filled by default. See the screenshot:

Click to enlarge

Mailto: links compose in Gmail

I love this one. It adds a small Gmail icon wherever there is an Email link. The icon means, when we click the email link, it will open Gmail compose box, instead of default mail clients like Outlook or ThunderBird.

Attachment Reminder

This reminds you to attach a file to your Gmail if it appears that you have not, based on whether you have the word attach(ed, ment, etc) in the body. Brilliant Idea!

Attachment icons

Shows relevent icons in mails with attachments. See screenshot:

Note the zip icon and jpg icon. This is cool. The old pin icon is boring.

Conversation Preview

This is one of the the very useful tools. Right click any conversation to see the preview in bubbling window. This tool saves us time that we spend clicking the mail and clicking inbox or back button to return to inbox again. Simply superb. Look at the screenshot:

There are many other features like adding Google calendar or Reader in the sidebar, many skins, etc.

Overall its a good work by lifehacker folks.

How to make 'Better Gmail' work? Installation guide for dummies.

Step 1:

Install Greasemonkey if not already installed.

Step 2:

Install Better Gmail.

Step 3:

Restart Firefox.

Step 4:

Click on 'Tools' and then 'Addons' in Firefox menu.

Step 5:

Click on 'options' on Better Gmail entry in Addons list.

Step 6:

Customize it the way you want.

Step 7:

Refresh Gmail to see the changes.


Thats it.



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