Power User Tip: Send Yourself a Quick Gmail from Firefox's Sidebar

Sean Buscay — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:31:54 +0000

Need to send yourself an email quickly, without interrupting your work flow?

Here's a Gmail tip I found on LifeHack.org. It was also published on Web Worker Daily as part of a great article titled, "10 Ways to Pimp Your Gmail."

Here's how:

(Modified slightly from the version on Web Worker)

Quick compose tip:

The Task: Set up a quick compose bookmarklet in Firefox to send an email within Gmail.

From within your Gmail account,

1) Click on "Compose Mail" in Gmail, and then click on the "New window" pop-out button on the right hand side of the compose area to bring it to a new window;

2) Once the new window has opened right-click on any part of the blue space within the opened window. In the drop down menu that opens, select "Bookmark This Page" and save it in your Bookmarks Toolbar folder.

3) Minimize the compose window. On the Firefox bookmark toolbar, right-click on the new bookmarklet you've just created, select Properties and check "Load this bookmark in the sidebar".

Now just click on this bookmarklet at any time when you want to send yourself a new task, or send someone else a quick email.

Bonus Tips:

If you want to have an email address already filled in when your compose window opens, edit the book mark URL to add the "to" value to the email link.

For example, let's say your bookmarked compose URL is something like:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=22&ik=eff42d89al&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&ver=uzop0vbpl38b3cissfw9n0fss#cmid%253D1

Then add the following to your URL:

to=addresstosendto@gmail.com&

Right after the:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?

and before the:

ui=22&ik=eff42d89al&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&ver=uzop0vbpl38b3cissfw9n0fss#cmid%253D1

Your final URL will look like:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?to=name@gmail.com&ui=2&ik=ef89al&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&ver=uzop9n0fss#cmid%253D1

If you want a quick way to send email to yourself, and want to use Google's alias feature (say, "myusername+mytodolist@gmail.com"), then you can add the following instead:

to=name%2Bmytodolist@gmail.com&

Making your final URL look like:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?to=name%2Bmytodolist@gmail.com&ui=2&ik=ef89al&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&ver=uzop9n0fss#cmid%253D1

Hope these tips help you in your daily work. You can add several pre-addressed quick compose bookmarklets.

SeanBuscay.com - Internet and Technology

Power User Tip: Send Yourself a Quick Gmail from Firefox's Sidebar

Quick compose tip:

Bonus Tips: