Digital Solutions & Online Creative 

Alex runs a small digital creative business from an office in London. It's called Outside In Media.

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SOYREX is a web development and design resource intended as a place for me to share tips and tricks relating to html, css, web design, web development and other internet and web topics. If you like what you read, leave a comment, or send an email. Also, check out my company web site.

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    Currently Reading..
    • Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
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      Blink talks about flash cognition and sub-conscious cognitive activity.. awesome read!

    • Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World
      Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World
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      Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - i knew the world was a big conspiracy.. but this is a gripping insight into how the world really works.

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    Thursday
    Apr302009

    Making the switch to GMail

    For ages i've been wishing i could use my Google Apps account as my primary email without having to step outside their interface at all. Well, i've made the switch.

    Why did I wait so long?

    GMail is a far better way to organise email and helps me keep my inbox zeroed :) So why have a had a Google Apps account for like 2 years and not switched to JUST the web interface?

    Dependancy on my Browser

    I work as a web developer alot. I often break my web browser.. it hangs because of bad JS code, or I forget and have like 7 million tabs open - whatever. The problem is, if i have my mail in ONE of those tabs and the browser crashes.. my mail goes away.. annoying (not a deal breaker.. but irritating).

    Notifications

    I like the Apple Mail dock badges that tell me how much unread mail i have - mostly so I can happily tell myself I've got everything under control (since the count badge is almost never there :) ).

    Also, i like having growl notifications for my mail, and again this isn't possible with a web browser instance.

    The Interface

    The UI for GMail has always been impressively functional, however not really that pretty (in fact - until recently it was ugly as sin). However a few months back Google rolled out themes for Gmail, and a few months later than that the update finally got pushed through to Google Apps accounts (including mine) - so now the Gmail interface isn't ugly anymore.

    Offline Mail Access

    Well, we all know that Google Gears has been around for a while. Well you can now activate offline mail syncing for your gmail account using Gears.. which is perfect. I'm almost never offline, but I like to think that if for some reason I am, I can still refer to my mail - since half my life revolves around it.

    So, the solution? Fluid and Google Notifier

    The latest version of Fluid supports dock badges for GMail internally and also has a greasemonkey userscript that supports Growl notifications. If you combine that with Google Notifier you have badges on the icon, sound alerts AND growl notifications - perfect.

    Fluid also has a nice Black HUD theme that makes my client look all pretty ;) Coupled with the new themes, it fits in with my desktop almost perfectly.

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    Reader Comments (6)

    I just discovered the wonders of Fluid myself. Really great. The one catch is, Dock Badges are not working for me on my Google Apps SSBs. Did you have to do anything funny to get it to work? What URL did you use for your SSB?

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