We wanted you to be the 878,444th person to know, so we’re going to post it here:

Google Enterprise today announced the arrival of offline Gmail, the latest feature in the Labs settings of Google Apps Gmail. It ain’t perfect, but basically works.

As suggested last week, Gmail seems to be emerging as the prevailing point of engagement for many of us using Google Apps. As if on cue, today Lifehacker highlighted the Integrated Gmail Firefox extension that loads any Google App inside Gmail. Not that I am recommending that particular extension. But it goes in the same Google Apps direction so many of us are going, namely, relying on the Gmail UI as the point of first entry to Google Apps.

It has been fascinating to watch the evolution of the user interface changes as the various Google Apps and other Google tools evolve, and none more so than Gmail. Email, uh, Gmail is the core web application for Google Apps users. They may or may not regularly use Google Docs or Google Chat or Google Sites or Google Reader, whatever… but you can pretty much count on your organization’s users relying on the Gmail interface to get basic work done. And with steady additions to the Gmail Labs features and now direct gadget integration into the Gmail interface — for example, the recent additions of Calendar and Docs gadgets that display directly within Gmail – the Gmail UI is evolving as a primary workaday dashboard for integrating and accessing an array of Google applications and tools.

Here’s a particularly interesting description of how one person does it: Making Gmail Your Gateway to the Web. You could make the case that what he really needs to do is get a life, but regardless he has come up with several very smart and creative ways to exploit Gmail to help organize, access and communicate.

Whatever else Google Chrome is, one very gratifying experience today is how much faster it handles my AJAX-heavy Gmail app, which can so often and so annoyingly load pages so slowly. I have never, ever seen Gmail pages load this fast. One probable explanation is that, apparently, Google Chrome is insanely fast.

With our organizational switch over to Gmail 2.0, we have been working on practical, advocate-friendly solutions that work with the updated Gmail 2.0 interface. The initial solutions a few days ago had to do with using Better Gmail 2.0 to give our users mailto functionality that works with our Google Apps, plus nifty new file-type icons and other goodies that come with that add-on package. Done.

The second part of the plan is to exploit the power and flexibility of the Stylish Firefox extension to perform a few modest cosmetic tweaks, while also offering users some options about what appears and does not appear in the new Gmail interface.

Here are the targets of our coding madness today — all real-world examples as of this afternoon from my Google Apps Gmail account — displayed here and familiar to all who are familiar with the default Gmail 2.0 interface, from top to bottom: the two search buttons, one for your Gmail and the other for a general Google search; the Labels menu with its new “color-code/edit-label” boxes to the right of (and partially obscuring) each label; and the indispensible Inbox, illustrated below, with a default design that makes it touch harder than it needs to be to read the labels in the message row:

So you’re asking yourself, “Yeah, I love Gmail. But do I have to live with all this blah design and extraneous stuff I don’t really want?” No, my friend, you do not.

The solution for today’s tech challenge is the Stylish add-on for Firefox. The short version is that Stylish enables you to easily change how things look in your Firefox web browser by simply invoking a new set of CSS rules that control the “presentation” or visual design of what you see, including web applications like Gmail. And there are truckloads of Stylish code bits already available for Gmail 2.0.

But it is even better than just loading someone else’s Stylish code. What you can easily do is cherry-pick a design idea or two from any of the many code samples already available and build your own custom Stylish code set. With a nod to ideas and code lifted shamelessly from Gmail: Inbox with new style and GMail Cleaner, plus a few original ideas for changing the look of Gmail labels in the Inbox itself (to make them easier to scan and more readable) and removing the “color-code/edit-label boxes” (so that they no longer obscure the already-too-narrow Labels menu), here’s how I did my own personal, quite modest makeover of the Gmail interface:

• Install Stylish (OK, you already knew that.)
• In Firefox go to Tools > Add-ons > Stylish > Options. That opens the “Manage Styles” dialog. Click on Write.
• Give your style a memorable name by typing it into the “Description” field. (“I Love Webdogs 2.0″ has a nice ring to it, but it’s your call.)
• Cut-and-paste (or download) the code below, put it into the large edit field below the “Insert” button and then click “Save.”

/*
Stylish code based in part on code and ideas from
"Gmail: Inbox with new style"

http://userstyles.org/styles/678

and "GMail Cleaner"

http://userstyles.org/styles/4118

 */

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("mail.google.com")
{

/* remove web search button */
button[id="1fbh"] {display:none !important;}

/* create hover "row" effect for message lists */
table.N2mZ7b tr:hover,
table.tlc tr.rr:hover { background-color:#FFEB86 !important; }
table.N2mZ7b tr.rfza3e:hover,
table.tlc tr.ur:hover { background-color:#CDF39F !important; }

/* restyle how Labels display in message lists */
span.s75Nkf b { background-color:transparent !important; border-color:#C0C0C0 !important; }

/* remove "color-code/edit-label" boxes */
div.qn0D4e b b { display:none !important; }
td.BFvfre { display:none !important; }

}

What does this get you?

• You now have only one “Search Mail” button. The “Search Web” button is gone.
• When you hover your mouse over a message, the whole message row is now highlighted. Can you say, “Easier to scan and click”?
• The Label names still have a low-contrast appearance but the font and border style are easier to scan, plus the backgrounds of the labels are transparent. Can you say, “Easier to read”?
• The “color-code/edit-labels” boxes are gone, revealing more of the Labels menu. Can you say, “Well, OK, maybe I like that, maybe I don’t. I’ll get back to you.”

Don’t like something? Just remove or edit the offending CSS code. But you get the idea: Play with other folk’s Stylish code by installing any number of Gmail styles to get some useful ideas of what you like and then what you really want. Then cut-and-paste and recode and add code as suits you and create your own master Stylish code set.

To coin a phrase, “It’s all good.”

As a coda to last week’s post about turning on Gmail 2.0 for Google Apps, it is worth noting that doing so will effectively kill some Firefox add-ons that you may be accustomed to using to spiff up the appearance of your Gmail interface, including some commonly used Greasemonkey Gmail scripts and popular Userstyles.org Gmail scripts that rely on Stylish. You should update those, as needed.

For LSNC perhaps the biggest deal is having a solution for mailto links, so that the Gmail 2.0 “Compose Mail” page opens whenever the user clicks on a mailto link.

One of the easiest solutions to this dilemma is to have users install the Better Gmail 2.0 Firefox add-on.

To get the “Compose mailto Links in Gmail” feature to work with your Google Apps domain, click on the “Advanced” button in the Better Gmail 2.0 console and then simply add your domain. Problem solved. Well, for the most part. Once set, if the user has Firefox open and is already logged into Gmail, whenever the user clicks on a mailto link it will open to the Gmail Compose Mail page. If not logged into Gmail, clicking the link will trigger Gmail opening to its default Inbox page. Hey, but no harm, no foul.

With the Better Gmail 2.0 add-on you also get several other useful options, including a very helpful “Attachment Icons” display that substitutes file-type specific icons for the Gmail default paper clip icon. Useful stuff.

This is not exactly new news, since it is a new Google Apps option I had not noticed when it was implemented two weeks ago. But for those who have adopted Google Apps for their organizations, it will be of interest: Google Apps administrators now have the option of changing the system default so that newly enhanced features in various Google applications that have already been implemented in the “consumer” versions are automatically implemented in your organization’s Google Apps. No more waiting for Google Apps upgrades, people!

About two months ago Google rolled out Gmail 2.0 to its “consumer” Gmail accounts with a host of enhanced features. Of course, the proverbial problem for Google Apps users is that changes made in the consumer version of Google applications can take a long, long time to migrate to the Google Apps versions. Well, in response to demand, Google now permits Google Apps administrators to opt-in to the changes immediately.

To do so, go to your Google Apps control panel and select Domain settings > General > Control Panel. At the bottom be sure to select both “Next generation” and “Turn on new application features to my domain before they are rolled out to all Google Apps customers,” as illustrated here:

I turned ours on today. It took only about 4 hours to kick in. Nice, very nice. Really dig the way improved Contact Manager.

Hot damn! Google has announced that Google Apps non-profit accounts now have access to its email migration tools. Apparently this newly updated API can handle email account migration from anywhere, not just IMAP as had previously been the case. Good news, people.

This week the How-To Geek has done a great series of tutorials on implementing the new Gmail support for IMAP with individual articles on how to configure it with Outlook, Thunderbird and Windows Vista Mail. Yet another example of why I think the How-To Geek is, day-in, day-out and pound-for-pound, the best site out there right now for practical help and short-form tutorials useful to tech-savvy average joes and janes. Sure, the more serious geekers salivate daily over the latest, ever voluminous but all-too-often-irrelevant-to-real-life posts at Lifehacker. For my money, the How-To Geek is the go-to guy. He relates.

Gmail 2.0 has yet to hit the Google Apps accounts, but if you have a personal Gmail account, you should be good to go. True, the roll out of Gmail 2.0 has been bumpy but the feature enhancements sure seem worth all the transitory trouble. Not only is the way improved Contact Manager to die for, there are many other, more subtle goodies now available in the new Gmail interface you are going to really like, including these five little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about.

Earlier this week Google announced code changes to prepare Gmail for the future, notably this week for both IE7 and Firefox 2.0 users. The roll out of the updated interface has already hit those of us with personal Gmail accounts. As is the norm, those with the no-cost, non-profit Google Apps Gmail accounts are on the back end of the roll out. It’s coming but the changes haven’t hit the free Google Apps people. At least it hasn’t hit us at LSNC.

The first-glance, apparent changes are seemingly cosmetic and involve minor changes in functionality: Larger fonts for input buttons; an always resident contacts search field on the left that in the older version only displayed when the user opted to turn on Gmail’s integrated chat feature; and more keyboard shortcuts. At least for now users have the option, illustrated here, to roll back the interface to the “older version” –

But there are deeper things going on, including a much improved Contacts manager. Truth be told, in the older interface some aspects of the Contacts features were among the worst implementations in Gmail. You could smoothly import and export contacts, yes. And, well yes again, Gmail has a superb implementation called contact sharing that automatically integrates new shared domain email users to your Contacts. OK, and Gmail’s AJAX implementation of auto-completing email addresses as you address an email message is, well, the best. But my point here is that managing your Contacts was always a cumbersome process: Adding, viewing, editing and deleting contacts was way harder than it should have been. And the worst frustration was no direct or efficient access to your contacts without opening Gmail and drilling down a few levels, at least, to get the contact information you’re looking for.

Things have changed. The Contacts manager in Gmail has had a serious, structural makeover with way better feature integration. For example, here’s a screen shot of my work entry displayed in my personal Gmail account:

Nice.

And for those with personal Gmail accounts, here’s a trick for opening the new Contacts manager its own browser window: Assuming you’re already signed into your personal Gmail account, use the URI https://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager to create a shortcut or hotkey to open the Contacts manager. And even though the new Contacts manager may have not yet been implemented openly in your Google Apps version of domain-hosted Gmail, there’s a good chance you may be able to do the same thing with this URI, substituting your domain as indicated:

https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/contacts/ui/ContactManager

All these changes in Gmail coding have made Firefox a bit funky this whole week. I have experienced repeated funky, buggy sorts of problems with Firefox while using Gmail both in my personal account and my Google Apps version. Change is hard, I guess. But regardless, try it. You’ll like it. Or not.

Not much. And there are lessons learned from the experience. Several weeks of no email and no feed pulls has done a very good job of cleaning my e-palate. When I returned and opened up the three Gmail accounts I rely on and fired up my feed reader (I’m a long time devotee of FeedDemon), I was confronted with 5,000+ new email messages, 12,000+ additional messages efficiently tagged as spam by Gmail (one of things it does best) and 6,000+ unread feed items. Quantity does not equal quality. But you already knew that.

Faced with this daunting clinical record of what my message-content lifestyle is really like, I acted to tighten up how I integrate my three Gmail accounts and have pruned my feed list from a 250+ pig-feed-fest to a more lean, low-carb and scan-worthy list of about 60 sites. And of those, there are only seven that I “missed,” which is to say I was curious to read the content that arrived while I was gone. It felt good to read them again. Most of the others? Not so much.

Here are the details of my post-trip reload of my “connected” life, such as it is as of today:

Three becomes One

I had something like this in place already but I finally got around to tweaking my three Gmail account settings to give me both what I want and what I need:

• I use one regular Gmail account for all my tech lists. It is an easy, efficient way to remember which account, username and password I use for that particular content genre.
• I use a second regular Gmail account for all things personal, which is to say family, friends and personal consumer things like Amazon.com, Netflix, and so on. (Ditto on the ease and efficiency.)
• I then set up both of these accounts to auto-forward all messages to my “lsnc.net” domain-hosted Gmail account at work, which serves as my global “inbox.” It becomes the gateway through which all review-if-not-read-worthy messages from the other two accounts flow.
• In both the tech and personal Gmail accounts I also set up filters and labels to so that incoming messages that I know are likely to be ones I want to “archive” automatically skip the inbox and go to specific Gmail labels (which work both as folders and tags) for long-term storage. That way I know I have already archived all essential messages that come into these two accounts, regardless of what I do with the same messages forwarded to my work Gmail account. I can delete them in my work account with relative impunity. Works for me!
• Needless to say, I set up filters and labels in my domain-hosted Gmail account at work to manage the flow of incoming messages and for selective archiving by labeled category, but to somewhat different purposes. In my work Gmail account the two top-tier labels are set to catch messages filtered by my personal and tech list Gmail accounts, as illustrated here. That way, whenever viewing my work account, I get an immediate visual cue that new messages have arrived from the other two accounts.
• The final detail in my work account is that I set up the labels into logical (for me) clusters by using special characters to control the order of display. There are different ways one can do this sort of thing, for example by preceding label names with numbers. I opt for using special characters in this descending order:
  • …
  • ..
  • .
  • ~.
  • ~

Whatever.

The seven sites I missed reading

This is one of those de gustibus moments, people. When I got back and was feeling a touch tech parched, these are the magnificent seven that I looked forward to catching up with, whether by feed read, email or doing a quick browser drive-by. They are all good for the reasons stated:

• the How-to Geek – of all the tech emails I receive daily, this is the one I always read. Real tech for real people. The type of tech site Tony White at Bay Legal would run if he had time to do it.
• A List Apart – the New York Times of web design and the editorial brainchild of Jeffrey Zeldman (see the next item). The one site for web site developers that is a must-read, even if you don’t read everything published there.
• Jeffrey Zeldman Presents – the godfather of designing sites with web standards. Since he got a real life his postings are episodic, not daily. But it pays to pay attention to what he has to say.
• Google Operating System – while a huge fan of the creative movement and momentum of all things Google, I also know Google is not the cure for cancer. That said, the Google Operating System is my favorite way of staying clever and au courant with the Google industrial complex.
• SearchCap – the easiest and most efficient way to tune into the web search world about things that are likely to be of interest or matter to you. And they do.
• Occam’s Razor – let me put it to you this way: GIS is so 2006! Get over it. The new new in the legal services community is getting on board with search technology and how it will inform how you work and what you know. Avinash Kaushik’s site (and books) are an optimal way to begin to gear up for the next big thing.
• David Pogue – technology for the hoi polloi. I must admit I really missed reading the New York Times every day while traveling abroad. (Yes, the International Herald Tribune is a great read and includes a lot of NYT content, but it just isn’t the same thing.) And one of the things I missed most is reading Pogue’s musings whatever form they take. Not as useful on a daily basis as the How-to Geek but way more entertaining and consumer friendly. The moral of this story: One cannot live by the geek alone.

Most of the feature enrichment that comes with the free Google Apps Education Edition, also available to 501(c)(3) non-profits, impact the few that manage (easily) the Google Apps account because the features are system-level enhancements for email migration, single login security and API tweakers. But one feature you are certain to want to exploit for the benefit of all your users is the option to turn off all linked ads in all the Google Apps services (Gmail, Calendar and Docs & and Spreadsheets). Your people will love you for it because it noticeably reduces the optical noise for the user reading the message. Here’s a real-world example of the before and after:

Got someone on deck who actually wants the ads? Tell ‘em to get their own Gmail account.

At the risk of reinforcing the view some have that all I do is twiddle with Google stuff all day (I don’t), I weigh in here with yet another Google post to mention a few low-profile tweaks implemented last week in the free “standard” Google Apps configuration used by LSNC. LSNC relies on Google Apps primarily for domain-hosted Gmail, but also as a vehicle for promoting use of web-based individual and collaborative tools, principally Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Notebook, all of which have integrated “sharing” features. Google Apps is not the cure for cancer, but it has a lot to recommend it for non-profits ready to tap its various, typically (but not always) user friendly features at essentially no cost and with minimal maintenance effort.

The latest Google Apps tweaks are modest but helpful and worth noting. Some, most notably the email migration feature, are not freebies. But even the Google App minimalists like us got several real goodies:

Shared LSNC Contacts: OMG! (Oh my Google!) Domain-hosted Gmail now offers a system-level share-contacts option that automatically integrates all domain email addresses into one’s Gmail “contacts.” What this means in practice is hugely helpful. LSNC staff no longer need to add or delete LSNC domain email addresses to their Gmail contacts. The names and email addresses are just there (or not, as staff are removed from the domain). Now when composing I just begin typing the first few letters of any LSNC staffer’s name or email address and Gmail offers it as an option to insert as an email address, without my ever needing to add them to contacts.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets Integration: Since the get-go, our version of the free Google Apps has always included Google Gmail and Google Calendar. Well, last week Google finally integrated its wonderful Google Docs & Spreadsheets features directly into the mix. Now we have direct access to Google Docs from within our LSNC Gmail accounts without having to login separately. Sweet.

(Never used Google Docs? Check out the Google Docs & Spreadsheets video training, a product overview that also explains how you can use it to collaborate with others. Think of the possibilities.)

Option to Open Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in Google Docs: It gets even better, although this is a feature that has long been available in premium versions of Google Apps but only debuted in the freebie version last week. Now that the standard version of Google Apps integrates Google Docs, whenever you receive a Microsoft Word document or an Excel spreadsheet as a file attachment, you will now see a link at the bottom of the Gmail message for opening the attached file directly into Google Docs.

Option to View PowerPoint Slide Shows: This is a new feature for all. If someone sends you a PowerPoint presentation as a file attachment, you will now see a link at the bottom of the Gmail message for viewing the slide show within your web browser. No, you do not need PowerPoint installed on your computer. Really. It works.

While viewing PowerPoints in Gmail this way is new, Gmail has long offered similar functionality for a slew of other file types.

Well, at least I’ll try and keep it brief. It’s like this:

A few weeks back in my Google miscellany post I alluded to the practical reality that some Gmail features in the freebie version of Google Apps lag some behind regular Gmail service and, presumably, the for-cost versions of Google Apps. The good news today is that it looks like Google has finally implemented mail fetcher in its freebie version of domain-hosted Gmail, or at least it has done so for ours:

This development prompted choruses of “Oh Happy Day” among some LSNC staffers. They now have multiple ways to manage and manipulate their domain-hosted Gmail, including:

• Automatically forward all of one’s individual Gmail to another email address;
• Automatically forward selected emails using Gmail filters;
• Configure Gmail to do POP3 downloads of all of one’s Gmail to an external email application like Outlook (whatever); and/or
• Use mail fetcher to download via POP3 up to five other email accounts directly into to one’s Gmail account.

One additional note: If you go the freebie route with Google Apps, you don’t get all the optimal integration of the various apps that for-cost Google Apps seems to be promising. And in the freebie version, this slight is compounded somewhat by a misleading “more” link that suggests but doesn’t deliver anything more than a laundry list of Google apps and services. Here’s a better way to go for the freebies among us: Assuming you have set up a general Google account using your domain-hosted Gmail account, quick click to get to the Google home page and then in the upper right-hand corner click on “My Account.” Bingo! That link takes you to a comprehensive list of links to all your personal Google services linked to your email address:

Rajen Sheth Demonstrates Google Apps is a 17-minute YouTube promo demo piece by Google to draw attention to its Google Apps business model, but nonetheless it is an interesting and effective overview of how basic fetaures in Gmail, Gmail Chat, Google Calendar and Google Docs relate and play with each other. A nice bit to share with others still scratching their heads wondering “What’s with all this ‘web collaboration’ thing people keep talking about?” (As you watch it, be aware that the demo is based on the Google Apps premium edition. If you go for the freebie model, at present only Gmail, Google Calendar and a stripped down version of the Start Page are integrated.)

And since we’re talkin’ Gmail today, for those who missed the Google joke last week about Gmail Paper, here’s what the Gmail no-longer-there “welcome” page looked like last Sunday. Being a one-day joke, Google by the next day had changed the Gmail welcome page back to its original state but, as it does with this sort of thing, has memorialized Gmail Paper for all web time.

A few thoughts about our institutional use of the no-cost version of domain-hosted Gmail (now part of the Google Apps industrial complex) and some other Google tools, prompted by questions over time that have come to us from other legal services field programs:

• LSNC is only a few months shy of a full year’s experience with domain-hosted Gmail, but the experience as a whole has gone very well. The service has been extremely reliable, vastly more so than the hosted service we used previously. Over time, almost all LSNC users have moved over and are now quite comfortable with the Gmail web-based interface. There are a few Outlook and Outlook Express hold-outs, but most folks found the switch irresistible once they bought into the convenience of universal access from work and home and wherever.
• Prior to the changeover, complaints about spam were the number one tech problem; since then, spam questions have dropped off the radar. Totally. I can’t even recall the last time someone asked me about spam problems with their LSNC email account. That said, should you consider switching to Gmail for your domain, be sure to have users import their Outlook or Outlook Express contacts into their Gmail contacts, which will tell Gmail to shield those email contacts from being shuffled into the Gmail spam folder. It matters, big time.
• There is no apparent limit on the number of email addresses you can request when signing up for Gmail as part of free Google Apps, but be sure to ask for plenty of them so you can get set up quickly from the get-go. Otherwise, you will need to cool your heels while awaiting approval for more addresses. A suggestion: Figure out how many email addresses you need (employees and volunteers) and then double that number. Even triple it, depending on how fast you think the demand may be for your organization. Be assured, as you use the service, you will find a growing need for more email addresses. (The Gmail admin panel is a breeze to use, by the way. And you can set up multiple individuals with admin privileges.)
• When setting up your domain email accounts, consider setting up your users at the same time with a general-purpose Google account with that same email address. At first, we “encouraged” users to set up their own general Google accounts but passed off to them the task of setting up the general Google account so they could use the same email address for accessing Google Docs and other Google apps. But then we realized how inefficient it was to do that, and that approach just seemed to confuse folks unnecessarily. This is what we do now: There is a central Gmail administrator who creates and manages all our domain Gmail accounts. At the same time that she sets up a new account, she also sets up the new user’s general Google account. The new users are then told they can use the same LSNC domain email address and password to access not only their LSNC email account but also their accounts for other Google apps. And to the extent that varied Google apps are integrated, even with the free apps (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs) the shared login username and password makes it all pretty effortless.
• OK, so let’s say you have set up general Google accounts for your users. What other Google tools can we recommend? There’s lots to recommend, but we especially value Google Bookmarks, the vastly improved Google Reader and the underrated but very handy Google Notebook.
• With the formal debut of the Google Apps business model, be mindful that a dichotomy has emerged between the freebie families-and-groups service cluster and the for-cost small business and enterprise versions. This is not just a difference in things like storage space and support service levels. There are some basic Gmail functions and integration features that have long since debuted in regular Gmail and are available in the for-cost Google Apps services (e.g., mail fetcher and Google Docs integration) — but are still not yet available in the free domain-hosted Gmail accounts. LSNC hardly views these as deal breakers, but certainly you should assure your organization is getting what you need or want.
• The free version of domain-hosted Gmail integrates very nicely with Google Desktop. Yes, you can set your Google Desktop preference so it indexes your Gmail account, providing you with off-line access to all your email. Nice touch.
• That said, Google Desktop will index your Outlook contacts but not your Gmail contacts. (Boooooo!) It obviously would be extremely practical to be able to locate a contact to get an address or phone number via a Google Desktop search without having to open the Gmail interface, but there you have it … or shall I say, not.

It’s a fool’s paradise as Google announces it’s latest web suite enhancement: Gmail Paper! The beta tester testimonials totally sell the concept. And it makes your email absolutely virus and spyware proof!

Here are a few additional Firefox/Greasemonkey/Gmail goodies we are currently promoting for use by LSNC advocates:

DragDropUpload – one of the limitations of the default Gmail setup is that you have to use the browse file dialog, one file at a time, to add multiple file attachments to your Gmail message. But the DragDropUpload extension eliminates all that inefficiency. Install it and you can just drag-n-drop all your files in one fell swoop on top of the “Attach a file” link and BAM! you are good to go! This is absolutely a must-have Firefox extension if you use Gmail.

Wouldn’t it be handy if you could “save” specific types of searches of your Gmail content? Turns out you can. Install Greasemonkey and then saunter over to the Gmail-Greasemonkey page at Google Code, where you’ll find several Gmail goodies including the Saved Searches script. Install it and your Gmail account will automatically save your Gmail searches for you. Comes with a couple of handy dandy “saved searches” already set up for you including “Attachments” and “Last Week.” Killer.

You would not be the first person to grumble, “Yeah, I love how Gmail works but, whew, is it ever butt ugly!” That’s being a bit harsh, I think, but if you are needin’ some serious Gmail beautification, there are plenty of options out there. For starters you could install the Stylish Firefox extension (think of it as a Greasemonkey alternative) and then go wallow in all the UserStyle.org Gmail extensions. Need to hide the ads in Gmail? Want a cooler look to your left-side navigation and list of labels? Think the Inbox is way overdo for a makeover? It’s all there for you. And if you’re motiviated, dig into the scripts for each of the individual extensions and tweak the CSS code to make the colors your own. Sweet.

Of course, this had a lot of play in the tech press last week (prematurely) and this week (for real): For those suffering Gmail envy, this week Google opened up its public Gmail service to everyone on the planet. You no longer need to be “invited” or use your mobile phone to get in. Now you can go directly to Gmail and sign up. Among the advantages of having a private Gmail account is that you can use it to manage all your other email accounts, both incoming and outgoing! To encourage folks to sign up, the crack(ed) Gmail team has mounted Gmail Puppet Theater in four acts to reveal four really good reasons for going with Gmail: spam control, message threading, great searchability, and instant messaging.