The Elvidge Family

Here are some tips to turning GMail into a more user friendly interface.

1. Work Offline.  By installing 'Gears' add-on for your browser, you can access your archived e-mail/calendar/docs even if you are offline.  simply install the Gears add-on for your browser (or just click the 'Offline' link at the top of the page and follow the prompts.

2. Use different signatures for each e-mail accounts (and with multiple options per account).  Download and install the'Blank Canvas GMail Signatures' add-on for Firefox.  To set-up, simply compose an e-mail message and you'll notice a new menu that allows you to create your signatures using HTML code.  Somtimes this feature doesn't work and requires you to re-start your browser.

3. Enable additional features in GMail (not included in the Labs settings).  Install Greasemonkey which is needed to run Better GMail 2 which has a number of tweaks for Gmail such as hiding chat & spam folders, tree-style labels (which is GREAT!) and a few other tweaks.

4. To add spell-checking.  When typing in the browser - right click and select 'check spelling' .  The spell checker is now enabled.  Right-click again and you can add English-British & other languages.

When using webmail (GMail) I missed the ability to send e-mails/files directly from Office programs or windows explorer that I did have with Outlook. This can be fixed by using one of the following solutions that become your default windows e-mail program and send the mail & attachment to your draft folder in the webmail app.

• gAttach - is a simple Gmail soulution - I downloaded and tried this but it didn't work (mails didn't appear in my drafts folder)
• Affixa - is a little more flexible and works with both webmail accounts and desktop accounts - letting you choose which account to use. I am using Affixa as it worked straight off for me.
• 1. Download and install Affixa
• 2. Enter your Webmail & Standard Mail details
• 3. Then when you 'sand to' in Windows - you can choose how it's sent. Also with v. large files Affixa uploads the file to a server and sends a download link in the e-mail instead of the attachment.

If you fail to log-in to your Gmail / Google account, it may have been locked.

Go to this link to unlock it

I use different computers at home, work and have two laptops. Foxmarks is an easy to use firefox addon that will automatically keep all your bookmarks up-to-date. Just google search for 'Foxmarks' and install the plugin on each computer.
For added security (if you decide to also synchronise passwords) make sure you set a master password in Firefox (Tools - Options - Security - and select 'Use Master Password' )

NB: Foxmarks has now been taken over by XMarks which is now compatible with other browsers (Opera & IE) and can also securely synchronise login details.