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.