E-mail may often be considered a medium of communication that tends to be between two individuals. However, it has been made so that it can be a one-to-many communication medium in addition to being a one-to-one communication medium. Electronic mailing lists have been in existence for a long time, so e-mails have been sent in bulk without them being considered spam for a long time. Also, websites that are often updated tend to include the option for users to receive updates about them via e-mail. Some websites simply send e-mail alerts to users who have accounts set up on them by default. This type of e-mail gets sent out so often, the term “Bacn” was coined for it. Users can limit the amount of Bacn that they receive by not subscribing to e-mail lists, and by subscribing to RSS feeds instead whenever possible. However, e-mail updates can sometimes be necessary.

E-mails from mailing lists and websites tend to be characterized as being sent from the same sender, and these e-mails tend to have similar text in their subject lines. Therefore, users can easily set up filters in Gmail so that messages that match characteristics of Bacn that they receive can have appropriate labels applied to them. For example, I use a WordPress plugin named “WP-DB-Backup” to send myself backup copies of the database that this blog uses via e-mail. The e-mails sent by this plugin all list “WordPress” as the sender of them, and have “Jake Kasprzak Online Database Backup” in the subject lines of these e-mails. As these e-mails have these characteristics, I was able to set up a filter so that all messages that have these characteristics will have the label of “blog backup” applied to them. Therefore, any time I want to display only the backup copies of this blog that I have received via e-mail, I can select the appropriate label. There may also be times that I may not want to see my inbox cluttered with Bacn such as this. As I tend to label the Bacn that I receive, I display only unlabeled messages to filter out the Bacn in my inbox. There are Greasemonkey user scripts for displaying only unlabeled messages in Gmail, and I use those ones. One titled “Gmail Unlabelled” can be used with the older version of Gmail and the version of this script that can be used with the newer version of Gmail can be found here.

There are other reasons to use these labels. This is because e-mail account inboxes are sometimes used for purposes other than storage of messages from other people. When e-mail services offer large amounts of space for storing messages, users use these services for storing large files. The storage capacity offered to Gmail users is one of the reasons many Gmail users, myself included, use it to store files. In fact, GmailFS was created for storing files on Gmail accounts. However, Google’s terms of use prohibit the use of their services by any automated means or any means other than through the interface provided by Google, so GmailFS violates these terms. Nevertheless, Gmail can be useful for storing files, albeit through non-automated means. I sometimes store files there, and I sometimes perform searches through Gmail’s interface to find these files. I also create filters that apply labels to essentially save the searches that I perform most often.

In the time that I have spent blogging, I have sometimes found that I have needed to send notes to myself. I sometimes need to e-mail links to myself, and I annotate these links with information on them. I am often at different locations when I find interesting information on the web, and so I often have my information stored on and accessible from my Gmail account. As you may have surmised, sending myself many e-mails leads to clutter in my inbox. I have found that when I e-mail information such as links to myself, I tend to use similar subject lines. I often include the word “notes” in the subject lines of these e-mails that I send myself. Therefore, I can create a filter that looks for what I tend to include in the subject lines of these messages, and applies appropriate labels to them. I can also have these filters search for appropriate text within the messages that I may want to bring up at later times.

What I have mentioned here may certainly not be considered novel or innovative by those who already try to get the most out of Gmail. I do not plan on being one of those who will submit a video on how I organize my Gmail inbox. However, there may be many who may not be getting the most out of Gmail, and may find that it is even more useful than they thought it was. This blog entry is intended for those who have yet to see how useful Gmail can be. E-mail accounts may often be used for storing personal information, and Gmail seems to have been designed with that in mind. Gmail truly is an e-mail service that has been made better than users have previously imagined an e-mail service could be.

I recently received a request from an Internet Explorer user to modify my Greasemonkey user script that redirects users to the older version of Gmail after logging into Gmail so that it could be used with Internet Explorer. And after discovering that I could simply remove the code for toggling whether or not the secure version of Gmail is to be used to make it compatible to Internet Explorer’s add-ons for running user scripts, I made these changes. This option for using HTTPS while using Gmail may have been obsolete for the last few months, as it was a few months ago that Gmail began giving this option for using HTTPS while in Gmail. I tested this modified version of the script with an add-on for Internet Explorer known as Trixie and found that the script worked with that add-on. I also copied and pasted the script code into a script that comes with an add-on called IE7Pro and found that it worked with IE7Pro, although not as efficiently.

This version of the script can be retrieved from here. This script might also work with Safari when its add-on for running user scripts is installed. However, I have been unable to use this add-on, titled GreaseKit, to determine whether or not Safari users can use this script. I have also been unable to test out this script on Google Chrome when it is used with Greasemetal, although users of Google Chrome might possibly be able to use it. This version of the script, however, does not work with Opera. However, I may take the time to make this script work with Opera. Once again, whether or not I will ensure that this script will work with other browsers depends on whether or not there will be demand for this support from users of these other browsers.

After I removed only one ASCII character from the script’s source code, it worked as intended once again. Although I only needed to remove one byte of data from the script’s code, I did consider it an accomplishment for me to correct that error at the time it was corrected. And the main reason I am surprised that I was able to get this done without the error being reported on the script’s web page is not because I am still unable to work with my own personal computer. The main reason I am surprised that I was able to get this done is the main point of this post. (I am not dedicating an entire blog post to the removal of eight bits of data from a script.) And this main point I am making involves some more important information that I need to give about this script.

Although this script is one that has been downloaded and installed more often than any other Greasemonkey script I have written so far, as you can see here, it is actually not one that I myself often use. When I wrote this script, it was not written so much for myself as much as it was for those who preferred the older version of Gmail to the newer one. From the time that I first wrote the script, it always was one that was designed as a quick fix to solve what many others viewed as a problem. I personally do not mind the newer version of Gmail, and thus I would not be expected to use this script that I wrote very often. Therefore, if it needs to be updated, it is not likely that I would be one of the first to know about the need to update the script.

I suppose that one could be amused by the irony of how what appears to be my most frequently used script is a script that I personally do not often use. However, with many people apparently using it, it fortunately appears to be the one with largest user base to report errors and suggest solutions to errors. I would say that I had done well in updating it considering that I received no notifications of the script not working and considering that I have recently been unable to work with a browser with Greasemonkey installed on it. However, I have written this for the users who want it, and I will try to maintain it for the same reason.

The updates made to Gmail have been well-documented on Lifehacker. In fact, you can see some of the updates that have been made to Gmail, in reverse chronological order, if you click here. Most recently, a few more keyboard shortcuts have been added to Gmail, as noted here. In fact, a number of updates to keyboard shortcuts have apparently been made after the update was made to add a keyboard shortcut reference guide to Gmail. And something interesting was said by Gina Trapani after that update was made to Gmail’s interface. She said that with this reference guide’s similarity to what was available through a Greasemonkey script, there seemed to be a “development arms race underway” between those who write Greasemonkey scripts and those actually employed at Google. After reading that, I considered writing a post here in which I would have written about what appears to be a race between these two groups of developers. I would have said that I do not think of this as a race. I would have said that, as Ms. Trapani said regarding who would win this race, the Gmail users are the ones who will ultimately be considered the winners. And I would have said that it was ultimately the users of Gmail that will be kept in mind, and these two groups of developers actually complement each other. This will lead to an increase in the number of features that Gmail can have, and it may all happen at a rate faster than I’ll be able to document.

My last blog entry here was published shortly after I found out about updates to Gmail. And I am not sure if I will be giving more immediate responses to what gets mentioned in the blogosphere. However, what I work with and write about has been changing at a rapid pace. And although I do prefer quality to quantity, I am going to need to write more to keep up with these changes. Those responsible for these updates have kept me busy, but in being busy, I’ll keep the end users in mind who will ultimately benefit from the reason I will be kept busy.

Many of the blogs that would be expected to have entries informing its readers of these changes have reported these updates that have been made to Gmail. In addition to this news being posted on the Official Gmail Blog, information on these updates has been posted on Lifehacker, and on Google Operating System. It was the post on Google Operating System in which it was said that Gmail “doesn’t cache messages so aggressively” anymore. And it certainly was quite important that this change was made to message caching, as this caching was apparently what caused Gmail to run slowly. If the feature that enabled users to add colours to labels were the only one added to Gmail, then this upgrade may have been considered equivalent to giving a car with engine problems a new paint job. There are those who may like having improved versions of features available via Greasemonkey scripts added to Gmail, but it was more important for the Gmail team to focus on the main issue that many users had with it.

Gmail may be considered by many to be the best web-based e-mail service currently available. However, there will continue to be changes made to it in attempts to improve it. In fact, it seems that another feature that may be inspired by a Greasemonkey script may be on its way. According to what was written in the post by Dave Cohen on the Official Gmail Blog, “work to add some folder-y-ish functionality” is being done by those working on Gmail. And so it seems that the next Greasemonkey script for Gmail to be made redundant by new Gmail features is the one known as Folders4Gmail.

Perhaps features we will see in Gmail in the future will be based on scripts that I mentioned in my last entry here. As you can see, one of these scripts has been rendered redundant, and another mentioned there may be considered unnecessary soon. And maybe a few new features will be based on those that can be used when one has the Better Gmail or Better Gmail 2 extensions installed on Firefox. According to some comments that I have read, not everyone seems to be pleased with the new features available in this new version of Gmail. However, there will be improvements made to it that could make more of its users prefer using the newer version. And so hopefully in the future, it is this script for redirection to the older version that I have updated that will be considered redundant.

However, since this new version came out, some new and updated Greasemonkey scripts that work with this new version have become available. And coincidentally, news on Lifehacker was posted today about the Better Gmail 2 extension being updated with new scripts to give it new features. And here, I list some of these scripts that make some improvements to this version of Gmail. They are listed in no particular order. Those who would like to see them ranked in order of usefulness may collectively decide on which of these are most useful by participating in the poll at the end of this entry. And without any further ado, here are ten scripts that can be used with the new version of Gmail.

1. Gmail Filter Assistant. This script allows you to quickly set up a filter for e-mails after you display a message. This is convenient for when you decide that you would like to quickly create a filter for e-mails that are similar to the one that you have just viewed. And this is one of the scripts that worked with the previous version of Gmail, and have been updated to work with the new version of it. In fact, the original version of it was once named the “Download of the Day” on Lifehacker, as you can see here. There may be those who find that the “filter messages like these” feature in the newer version makes this script unnecessary. However, the “filter messages like these” feature directs the user to a longer process for setting up filters. As the author of this script says, this script makes setting up filters much easier.
2. Gmail Beautifier 2.1. Would you like to be able to widen the body of the e-mail you are viewing, and remove what is on the right side of the page in order to widen it? In addition to giving you this option, this script makes other improvements, such as the improvement of the appearance of buttons.
3. Gmail Real Estate (Minimize Header, Nav or Ads). This is similar to the previous script listed here, except that it allows the user to minimize the header at the top of the page, the navigation panel on the left side, and the panel on the right side. It is also an updated version of a script that worked with the older version of Gmail.
4. (New) Gmail Bottom Posting. This script is another one that worked with the older version, then was updated to work with the newer one. The original script, which can be found here, puts the cursor at the ended of quoted text when replying to an e-mail. And so if you would like to have the cursor after quoted text instead of having it before the text in the e-mail you were sent, then this script is for you.
5. Gmail Fixed Navigation for Newer Gmail. If you want the panel on the left side to always be visible and accessible regardless of how far down the page you have scrolled, then this script is one you would want. However, unlike some other scripts that are listed here, there is no version of this script that works with the older version of Gmail.
6. Gmail Unlabelled 2.0. Those who have used the original version of this script, which gives the option to display all unlabelled conversations, may be interested in this one. This is the new and updated version of the script for bringing up what is not labelled. The original script for selecting unlabelled conversations that works with the old version of Gmail can be found here. And more information on these scripts can be found here on the author’s page for them.
7. Gmail + Reader Integrator. As the name of this script suggests, it integrates Google Reader into Gmail. According to the author, this script is still a work in progress. After installing it, you may want to periodically check for updates made to it.
8. Folders4Gmail. It is good to be able to add labels to the conversations that you have. But what if you want to organize the labels that you have so that they are arranged in a folder-like hierarchy? This script, which also works with the older version of Gmail, allows you to have folders and subfolders for storing messages. Instructions on how it can be used can be found here.
9. Gmail Label Colors NG. Here is another script that, like the previous one listed here, allows you to enhance labels by adding special syntax to the names of these labels. And this script, which also works with the older version of Gmail, highlights the labels in colours that you assign to them in the label names. More information on this script can be found here on the homepage for it.
10. Gmail in Blue 2. Some might have noticed that among the scripts listed here up to this point, there are no skins. At this time, not many skins have been designed to work with this new version of Gmail. However, this skin, which was one that was made for the older version of Gmail, has been updated to work with the new version. And for those interested, the original version of this script, which works with the older version of Gmail, can be found here.

Of course, not all scripts that work with the newer version of Gmail are listed here, and scripts for the newer version are being worked on as I write this. So over time, users will have more ability to improve this new version of Gmail. Of course, these scripts do not do anything to solve the problems of lack of speed and stability that are associated with this new version. And some may consider speed and stability most important, and so some may say that the new features that these scripts provide would not matter. However, there may be at least a few who may like to have these scripts available to make it so that the new version would be considered adequate. And the many people who are using the Firefox extension known as Better Gmail 2 must find it good to know that the kind of scripts that it utilizes are being made available. That can lead to Better Gmail 2 being made even better still in the future.

Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

This script may not be considered very useful. And if it were very useful, one like it would have likely been written and made available long before I released it. However, as long as there are reasons to use the older version of Gmail, there will be reasons to use this script. In addition to being able to continue using these previously mentioned scripts that one would want to use with Gmail, there are other reasons one might prefer to be redirected to this older version of Gmail. For example, it was said in comments here that prefetching of messages, which is done in the newer version, may not necessarily be a good idea. However, this script may not be considered useful at all for much longer. This new version of Gmail does have a number of useful features that many users may like to use. And newer Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail are already on the way anyway, and Gmail is becoming more Greasemonkey-friendly, as you can see in what was written here on the Official Gmail Blog. Still, for at least the time being, it is this Greasemonkey script that I wrote that you may want to be using when logging into Gmail.

I was going to write about Firefox extensions that could be written based on the Better Gmail extension code, and these extensions did not yet exist when I first started writing this entry. I was going to mention that the Better Gmail extension may occasionally require updates to the Greasemonkey scripts that it uses. And then this Lifehacker post came out about an upgrade made to a script that Better Gmail uses. So then I thought I should mention this upgrade here, as doing so would help illustrate a point that I was going to make. However, I was also going to write about how I was able to modify the Better Gmail extension to make it work with YouTube. Then I saw this post on Lifehacker that announced the release of a Better YouTube extension, making it unnecessary for me to speculate on when such an extension might appear, as I had originally intended. I then thought that I could at least mention why one might need to upgrade the Better Gmail extension, with the new version of Gmail rendering Better Gmail’s scripts useless. Then on Lifehacker, news was posted saying that a new extension was released, titled “Better Gmail 2″, which contained scripts that work with the new version of Gmail. And with these recent events, you may now understand why this entry is appearing a few days later than I wanted it to appear.

In this entry, I will mention how updates can be made to these extensions that improve Gmail. Occasionally, updates to scripts used by these two extensions do need to be made. And one could wait for the extensions to be updated, or one could perform the necessary updates by going through a fairly straightforward process.

Before I begin outlining this process, there are a few things that I should note. I am assuming that Windows is the operating system being used, as most of those reading this are likely using Windows. I also assume that those following the instructions have the Greasemonkey extension installed on Firefox. Firefox users that do not have it installed can either install this extension or go through a slightly different process to update the files that need to be updated. In addition, I assume that the user would be fine with installing other utilities if they are not already installed, such as the JDK. I should also note that I give upgrading of the Better Gmail extension as an example, as the only difference in upgrading Better Gmail 2 is that a directory name is slightly different. In Better Gmail 2, the directory in the extensions folder is bettergmail2@ginatrapani.org, rather than bettergmail@ginatrapani.org. Finally, I should note that the example given of upgrading Gmail Macros was rendered obsolete with the release of Better Gmail 2. I did not update this example because of a deadline I imposed upon myself in getting this blog entry published, and the reason for this deadline is one that I note at the end of this post. So for those who would like a step-by-step guide on how to perform their own upgrades of the Better Gmail extensions by adding newer versions of scripts to them, here it is.

1. Download the updated Greasemonkey script that you would like to add. You will later need to ensure that you know the name of the file that you are downloading. For example, if you are downloading the new version of Gmail Macros and replacing the old version of it, the name of the file is gmailmacrosnew.user.js.
2. Close your Mozilla Firefox web browser.
3. Go into your profile directory. Instructions on how to find your profile directory are here if you need them. Then go into the Firefox directory. Then from there, go into extensions\bettergmail@ginatrapani.org\chrome.
4. Extract the contents of the .jar file in that directory. 7-Zip is one utility that can be used to do this.
5. Go back into your profile directory, then go into the gm_scripts directory.
6. Copy the file that contains the new script to the user_scripts directory, which is within the content directory that was extracted from the .jar file. For example, to upgrade the Gmail Macros script, copy gmailmacrosnew.user.js to this directory.
7. Delete the original script file from the directory to which the new script file was copied. For example, if upgrading Gmail Macros, you would delete the file named macrosbn.js.
8. Rename the new script file that you copied to this folder to the name of the original file. For example, rename gmailmacrosnew.user.js to macrosbn.js if upgrading Gmail Macros. However, in most script upgrades, you may only need to remove “.user” from the filename.
9. Through a command prompt, go into the directory where the .jar file was first extracted in step 4. You may need to download the JDK and install it first, and the JDK can be downloaded from here. Then the command that can be run would be “jar cvf bettergmail.jar .” to create the new .jar file.
10. Start Firefox. Better Gmail should work with the new script now.

One may prefer to add more scripts to the Better Gmail extensions, instead of overwriting scripts already used by these extensions. And after working with the source code in the Better Gmail extension, I can say that adding new scripts to these extensions can be done more easily than one might think. Of course, the process of adding new scripts is more complicated than the process of updating existing ones. I could outline each step that would need to be taken in adding a script/feature to these extensions. However, I will leave that explanation out of this particular post. Whether or not one of my next posts here will be one where I give that explanation may depend on how much demand there might be for that explanation to appear here.

It might be considered more trouble than it is worth to add more scripts to these extensions, even though only a few of them can presently be used with Better Gmail 2. And one could simply look for and install scripts that work with the newer version of Gmail when they become available, and simply use them with the Greasemonkey extension. So why would one want to go through the process of adding scripts to the Better Gmail extensions? Well, once should consider the reasons these extensions exist. Having the scripts used by these extensions all grouped together with an interface that prevents enabling of conflicting scripts can be convenient, as some scripts do conflict with others. This is especially true in the case of skins. Also, when one has several Greasemonkey scripts work with all websites, the list of scripts that are available for use with a web page can be a cluttered list. Use of this extension prevents this from happening. And I must say that when I added new scripts to Better Gmail, I was more interested in seeing how adding new scripts to it could be done. Why? Because I wanted to see how I could modify the code in Better Gmail to make it work with other web pages, and with the scripts that work with these other pages. This was supposed to lead into me commenting on the possibility of a Better YouTube extension, however I can at least say I have verified that these extensions that make websites “better” can be easily developed.

There might be some who would want to go through the process of updating and adding scripts used by the extensions that I mentioned here. I am not sure how many people would actually go ahead with this, but the instructions I have listed here can be referred to by those who may want to update these extensions. And with the new version of Gmail coming out, we have recently seen that scripts in the Better Gmail extensions occasionally need to be updated. And with the Better Gmail 2 extension currently lacking features/scripts, perhaps it would have been a good idea for me to include instructions on how to add new scripts to Better Gmail 2. However, I must admit that a reason I decided to leave out those instructions for now is that I wanted to get this entry published as soon as possible. And that is because I wanted to make sure that I got this post published before a fourth event could occur that would make me need to rewrite what I wrote, and thus cause the publishing of this post to be delayed yet again.

I would first like to say that I was flattered that something that I wrote was featured among the interesting material on Lifehacker. However, I would have preferred that they got my name right when mentioning who wrote the featured blog post. And it was my first name, not my often-misspelled surname that was not entered correctly there. And to those interested in how I reacted to seeing that I was twice referred to as “Jane Kasprzak” in that post, I would like to say that I laughed out loud. However, my name being entered incorrectly there was not something that mattered to me very much. The interesting discussions that resulted from what I wrote is a reason my name being entered incorrectly is not something I will focus on here.

Some interesting points were made by Adam Pash, and by those who have contributed comments in response to what I wrote. It was after Mr. Pash asked for comments on Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube (and other related YouTube tweaks) that some interesting comments were made. A few other interesting Greasemonkey scripts were mentioned both here and in the comments section of the Lifehacker post. In fact, when writing last week’s blog post, I considered mentioning that some may prefer the script for removing comments, rather than the one for moving comments to a different location. This is one example of two scripts for YouTube that users may want to have, but conflict with each other. And there are many other scripts that perform many other tasks that may conflict with each other, but are ones that users may still want enabled at certain times. For this reason, it would be good to have a Firefox extension that contains all of these scripts and only allows scripts that do not conflict with each other to be simultaneously enabled. And it is this kind of extension that Adam Pash less-than-subtly suggested be written, and this suggestion led to another discussion that I would like to join.

Mr. Pash alluded to the extension titled “Better Gmail” that contains over twenty-five (25) Greasemonkey scripts that a user can have enabled. Many of these scripts are considered features that can be added to Gmail, and others are considered skins to customize the appearance of Gmail. It is convenient to have an extension such as this, as it saves the user the time that would be spent looking for and downloading each individual script. In addition, with this extension, scripts that conflict with each other cannot be simultaneously enabled through the interface that it has. And so with the many scripts available for enhancing YouTube, would it not make sense for a similar extension titled “Better YouTube” to be made available? Well, such an extension may be on its way soon.

There certainly would be interest in this kind of extension, and it may be available sooner than one might think, because it may be fairly easy to develop. This extension could simply be based on the Better Gmail extension, which in turn seems to be based on the Better GCal extension. After looking through the source code for both of these extensions, it appears that few modifications of the Better Gmail extension need to be made for it to work with YouTube. It may need to be based on the Better Gmail code, as the code for the Better GCal extension does not appear to work with conflicting scripts. It might take some time to determine which scripts should be included in this extension, and to determine which ones might conflict with each other. However, Gina Trapani, who wrote these two extensions, has emphasized in her book that where there’s a will there’s a way. And it is not my intention to pressure Ms. Trapani or anyone else who might write this extension into getting it done quickly. I am only saying it can be done, and that it may be done soon.

When I wrote last week’s blog post, I never did expect it to lead to the kind of discussion that took place here, let alone on Lifehacker. I never did think that this post would lead to anything that might possibly be considered a catalyst for the development of a Firefox extension that many would consider useful. However, I am quite pleased to see this, as this extension that I am indirectly and accidentally responsible for creating interest in is one that I too would like to see.