Category: Gmail | Aug 19, 2010
Posted by Tristan Schmelcher, Software Engineer
If you’ve been wanting to use voice and video chat on Linux (our top video chat request), then we have good news for you: it’s now available! Visit gmail.com/videochat to download the plugin and get started. Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon.
Category: Gmail | Aug 18, 2010
Posted by Bram Moolenaar, Software Engineer
Where is that presentation? Was it attached to an email? Or in Google Docs? If you’re not sure, you may end up searching several places with the same query in order to find it. With the new “Apps Search” lab, we just made that all a bit simpler.
Once you enable it from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, the “Search Mail” button in Gmail will say “Search Mail and Docs” instead, and your search results will include matching documents and sites in addition to email messages.
We also added “Did you mean?” style suggestions, for those of us who make mistakes (who doesn’t?):
You may notice that mail results show up just as fast as before while non-mail results may take a tiny bit longer. That way, if you’re just looking for an email, having this lab enabled won’t slow you down.
The paint is still wet and we plan to make further improvements the coming months, so be sure to let us know if you have any feedback.
Category: Gmail | Aug 17, 2010
Posted by Alice Brown, Google Calendar Team
Making sure that your calendar is available to you whenever and wherever you need it is important. That’s why Google Calendar works with a number of desktop applications and mobile devices including iCal, iPhone and iPad, Blackberry, Android, Nokia/Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones. Google Calendar Sync for Outlook is also available, but one thing was missing — until now.
Google Calendar Sync now supports Outlook 2010 — our top feature request. Outlook 2010 comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and currently only 32-bit is supported. To start syncing your calendar with Outlook 2010, download Google Calendar Sync version 0.9.3.6. Once you install it, a Settings window will appear. Enter your account’s email address and password, choose your sync option and sync frequency, and you’re done! (Note: If you’re already using Google Calendar Sync, you’ll still need to download and install this new version in order to be able to sync with Outlook 2010. If you need help, take a look at our getting started guide.)
Category: Gmail | Aug 13, 2010
Posted by Paul Truong, Creative Technologist
Webmail has come a long way in the past few years but it’s all too easy to take for granted practically unlimited inbox capacities and responsive interfaces backed by the power of search. While I’m not on the Gmail team, I felt a little celebration of how far we’ve come was in order, so I wrote a little HTML5 game, in part as a “thank you” to the Gmail team for their ongoing work to improve the webmail galaxy. If you’re into games, or just like the idea of flying m-velopes that shoot bad guys, give it a try (make sure you’re using a modern browser that supports HTML5 first).
Category: Gmail | Aug 10, 2010
Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager
We’re constantly reviewing user feedback about Gmail, and for a while now the number one request has been for a better contacts experience. You’ve asked us to generally make Contacts easier to use, as well as for specific improvements like sorting by last name, keyboard shortcuts, and custom labels for phone numbers. So, by popular request, we’re happy to announce that an overhauled version of Gmail Contacts will be rolling out today.
Contacts now works more like the rest of Gmail, so if you know how to use Gmail, now you should automatically feel comfortable in Contacts too. And you’ll see a bunch of the features you’ve requested, including:
While we were at it, we also improved our layout and made it easier to get to Contacts and Tasks. You’ll see these links are now up at the top left corner of your account (along with a link for “Mail” that takes you back to your inbox).
If you’re not interested in Contacts or Tasks, you can hide these links by clicking near the right edge of “Mail.” Overall, there’s now a smaller header area that puts the first message in your inbox about 16 pixels higher on the screen than before.
If you use Google Apps, you won’t see these updates to Contacts quite yet. We’re actively working on making domain-specific features work well in the new interface and plan to make this new version of Contacts available to Google Apps customers too.
Please keep the feedback coming, we are always working hard to make Contacts, and all of Gmail, better.
Category: Gmail | Aug 5, 2010
Posted by Macduff Hughes, Engineering Director
I have a couple different Gmail addresses that I use for different purposes. Historically, Google Accounts – including Gmail accounts — have only let people access one account at a time per browser, so using both accounts has been a bit inconvenient. I’ve either had to sign out and sign back in, use a second browser for my second account, or use a Chrome incognito window. And I’m not alone; lots of people have asked us for a better way to use multiple accounts at once in the same browser.
Now, you can visit google.com/accounts and click the link next to “Multiple sign-in.” After you sign into your first account, you can sign in with up to two additional accounts from the new accounts menu in the upper right hand corner of Gmail, then easily toggle back and forth between them. You can even open multiple Gmail tabs — one for each of your accounts.
Please keep in mind that this is a feature for advanced users, and there are a couple things to watch out for:
1) Not all Google services support multiple account sign-in yet. For the services that don’t support it (like Blogger and Picasa Web Albums), you’ll be defaulted to the first account you signed in with during that browser session. So if you click a link from Gmail to Blogger, for example, you’ll be logged into Blogger with the first account you signed in with, even if you clicked the link to Blogger from your second Gmail account.
2) We’re still working on making Gmail and Calendar work offline with multiple sign-in. If you rely on offline access, you probably don’t want to enable this feature quite yet.
3) Multiple account sign-in only works on desktop browsers for now, so if you use Gmail on your phone’s browser you won’t see this option yet.
Since Google Apps customers can already sign in to their accounts at the same time as their personal Google Accounts, we won’t be adding this new feature to Google Apps until the new infrastructure is in place.
If you use more than one Google Account, we hope this makes you more efficient. If you have any questions, check out our help center.
Category: Gmail | Aug 3, 2010
Posted by Adam de Boor, Software Engineer
Dragging and dropping files is an easy way to save time in Gmail. We’ve previously blogged about dragging files to upload as attachments and dragging images into new messages. Now, if you’re using Google Chrome, you can also drag attachments out of messages you receive to save them to your computer.
Let’s say you have an email open containing an attachment. Hover your mouse over the attachment’s “Download” link or its file icon and a tooltip appears that says: “Click to view OR drag to your desktop to save.”
Simply click and hold, then drag your cursor to anywhere in your file system that you want to save the file. Release the mouse button, and voilà! Your attachment is saved (for large files, you may see a progress dialog).
Category: Gmail | Jul 19, 2010
Posted by Cody Bratt, Google Chat team
Two weeks ago we asked you to submit photos of you video chatting with your grandma. Thank you for all your submissions! As promised, we’d like to highlight a few photos that particularly touched us.
Emmanuel from Israel submitted this photo and wrote “My grandmother lives in Nice, France and could not come to our wedding in Israel, this is as close as we got to having her with us.”
Charlie from New York City sent in these great photos of his daughter Maayan’s first video chat with her grandparents in Portland.
And Niranjan from Bangalore submitted this photo of him video chatting with his grandmother in Mumbai while away at college.
Thanks again for your submissions– and happy video chatting!
From: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OfficialGmailBlog/~3/mA0THdFTVf4/video-chatting-with-grandma.html
Category: Gmail | Jul 12, 2010
Posted by Michael Davidson, Software Engineer
We’ve been posting a bunch recently about new Gmail features built on top of HTML5 and other advancements in browser platforms, but so far you’ve only be able to drag in attachments and drag images into messages in Chrome and Firefox, and the ability to have new windows outlive your original Gmail window was limited to Chrome. Now, all three of these features work in the newest version of Safari (Safari 5) too.
Category: Gmail | Jul 8, 2010
Posted by Mark Knichel, Software Engineer
Rich text signatures have long been one of our most widely requested features. Some of you have tried your own solutions, including Greasemonkey scripts, browser plugins, and even using canned responses from Gmail Labs. Others have simply lived with frustration of not being able to change the colors or font size of your signature, or insert images and links. Either way, you’ll be happy to know that today we’re launching the ability to write your own rich text signatures right in Gmail.
The next time you log in and visit the Settings page, you’ll see a rich text editor in the signature section. Here, you can customize your signature by adding pretty formatting, links, and images — or decide to leave things nice and simple.
Gmail also now supports a unique signature for each email address associated with your account. So, if you send mail using a custom “From:” address, you can use a different signature for that address. From the Settings page, you can edit the signature for each account by changing the email address that appears in the dropdown menu.
Currently, only the latest desktop version of Gmail supports rich text signatures and multiple signatures. The older version and HTML version of Gmail, along with the mobile versions, use a plain text version of your primary account’s signature.
From: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OfficialGmailBlog/~3/ksuSYUrm7HA/rich-text-signatures.html
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