Gmail Voice and Video Chat for Linux

After two years of waiting, Gmail's plug-in for voice and video chat is finally available for Linux users. "Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon," says Tristan Schmelcher, from Google.


Justin Uberti says that adding Linux support was really difficult. "This release required significant engineering to develop an all-new video rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio handler, along with work to support 64-bit and countless webcam compatibility tests. We spent a lot of effort to make it fully feature-complete, with all the same goodies as the Windows and Mac versions, and we're happy to now support Google voice and video now on all major desktop platforms."

Now that video chat is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, when will it be ported to Android?

On Gmail's Widget for Selecting Messages

Gmail updated the interface last week and many people complained about the changes. Some didn't like Gmail's new hybrid button for selecting messages. To select unread messages or starred messages, you need an extra click. Apparently, many Google employees hated this change, as well.


Michael Leggett, Gmail's lead user interface designer, explains how he came up with this widget:

It IS odd. And yet, both the checkbox and the menu part tested very well in the lab. The people who hated the widget outside the lab also understood how to use it but promised others wouldn't b/c it was so "weird."

We tried a few things (like putting the select actions under "More actions") but I didn't have high hopes for any of them except the widget that launched. It tested better than I had hoped (all of the participants in the usability study were able to select all, unread, and none). We launched it to all Googlers months ago and listened to feedback (everyone was able to figure it out... some just hated the change).

More about why the change: The "Select all" link is used by <1% style="font-weight:bold;">I wanted to simplify the interface and give back that space to users.

Since features like "select unread" or "select starred" were used by a lot less than 1% of the users, it made sense to hide them. Power users can always learn how to use keyboard shortcuts and an extra click doesn't mean too much for a feature that's rarely used.

Michael Leggett also says that the link to Buzz will be added at the top of the page, next to Contacts and Tasks, and users will be able to hide the links to service they don't use.

{ via Ignore the Code. Thanks, Jérôme Flipo. }

Gmail's New Bug Reporting Interface

Go to Gmail and click on the "Report a bug" link at the top of the page. You might see a completely different interface that looks just like the Google Feedback extension tested in March. The main difference is that it works in almost any browser and you don't have to install an extension to use it. (If you don't see the link, then this feature is not yet enabled in your account. Adding your email address to this page might help.)


After clicking on "Report a bug", Google shows this message: "Please scroll until the issue becomes visible. Next, click anywhere in the window to take a screenshot." Click in the window and Gmail loads a new page that lets you highlight the problem, black out personal information and describe your problem. It's a really cool feature which will probably be added to other Google services in the near future.

Gmail's Hidden Groups

In a previous post, I mentioned a trick that lets you create a Gmail group for the people you follow in Google Buzz. The downside was that the group doesn't update when you follow other people in Google Buzz.

It turns out that Gmail already has a built-in group for Google Buzz contacts. The group doesn't have a name and it's not displayed in Gmail's new contact manager, but you can find it in the old version of Gmail: it's the only one without a name.


Since the group doesn't have a name and it's hidden in the interface, you can't use it to send email messages or to post private Buzz messages, but you can select all the contacts and add them to another group.


There's also a hidden group for Google Latitude friends, which includes the people that can see your location in Google Latitude.

Another group lists all your Gmail Chat/Google Talk friends. Some of these people were automatically added by Google if you didn't disable "Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I'm online" in the settings.

For those who miss the "all contacts" group in the new contact manager, here's the built-in group that includes both the people you've manually added ("my contacts") and the people automatically added by Google ("other contacts").

Search Google Docs and Google Sites in Gmail

Gmail Labs has a new feature that extends Gmail's search by showing results from Google Docs and Google Sites. If you enable Apps Search, you'll see a list of results from Google Docs and Google Sites below Gmail's search results. For some reason, Apps Search has a bug and returns incorrect URLs for Google Docs results, but I'm sure this will be fixed.


It's interesting to see that the Gmail Labs feature has been developed by the Apps Search team, which suggests that it's part of a bigger project. Most likely, Google will let you search all your data stored in a Google account from a single search box. If Google's universal search can combine images, videos, books, tweets, news articles in a single search results page, why can't Google develop an unified search service for Gmail messages, Google Calendar events, Google Reader subscriptions, Blogger posts, Picasa Web photos, contacts, tasks, Google Voice history and more?


Tip: If you want to search Google Docs and Google Sites, without displaying Gmail results, add -type:mail to your query.

Unexpected bonus feature: After enabling Apps Search, Gmail will show a "did you mean" message if your query includes misspellings:



{ spotted by Jérôme Flipo }

The Old Version of Gmail Will Be Discontinued in September

When Google released a new version of Gmail, back in 2007, you could still switch to the old version by clicking on a link at the top of the page. At some point, the link has been moved to the bottom of the page, where it's still available.

3 years after releasing Gmail 2.0, Google decided to drop the old version, which doesn't include features like themes, Gmail Labs, Gmail Chat, Buzz, hiding labels or multiple file upload.

"You're using an old version of Gmail which will be retired in September. At that point, you'll be redirected to a basic HTML view. To get faster Gmail and the newest features, please upgrade to a modern browser," informs a Gmail message.

Most likely, Google continued to offer to the old version of Gmail because the new version doesn't work well in Internet Explorer 6. If you visit Gmail in IE6 and you haven't installed this patch, you can't switch to the new version, even if you manually change the URL. Staring from next month, IE6 users will be redirected to the "basic HTML" interface, used for outdated browsers.

Google rarely provides the option to switch to an old version of an application or a feature. For example, you can still switch to the old image search interface, to the old Gmail contact manager and you can still use the classic Blogger editor (an option that will be removed soon). Preserving the old version of a service could be helpful to determine if users like the new version, but it's not a good idea to keep an interface that's no longer maintained. Some users might never try the new version of the application because it doesn't look familiar, while other users might never notice that the initial bugs have been fixed.

{ Thanks, George. }

Gmail's Streamlined Interface and Better Contact Manager

Google launched a slightly refreshed Gmail UI that hides unessential features and uses more screen estate to display your messages. Gmail's logo is smaller, the links to mail, contacts and contacts are grouped in a collapsible panel, while the options that let you select all messages, starred or unread messages are available in a drop-down.

"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," explains Google.


Gmail's contacts section has also been redesigned to better integrate with Gmail. The updated interface supports keyboard shortcuts, saves the changes automatically, adds structured name fields and lets you sort contacts by last name. The notes field is now really big, but I don't think it deserves so much attention.


These features will be rolled out today to all Gmail accounts. The new Gmail contact manager won't be available in Google Apps right now, but it will be released in the near future.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Drag Gmail Attachments to Your Desktop

Gmail looks more and more like a desktop mail client: you can read messages from multiple accounts, attach files using drag and drop and now you can download attachments by dragging and dropping them to the desktop.

If you use Google Chrome 5+ and you want to save a Gmail attachment to the desktop or to a folder that's already opened in your favorite file manager, click on the icon displayed next to the attachment or on the "Download" link and drag it to the desktop, Windows Explorer or other file manager. You can also drag the "Download all attachments" link to save all your attachments to a ZIP file.

"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)," mentions Gmail's blog.


This feature is only available in Google Chrome, but it will work in other browsers when they implement the required HTML5 File APIs.

Upcoming Gmail Features

How many changes can you spot in this screenshot of an internal version of Gmail from the Chromium OS bug tracker?



Here's what I noticed: there are three links for "mail", "contacts" and "tasks" below Gmail's logo, there's a new button for composing messages, a "call phone" option in Gmail Chat, a drop-down for switching between Google accounts and the options that let you select unread or starred messages use less space.

{ Thanks, Mateo. }

A Strange Gmail Bug

Steven Schofield noticed a strange Gmail bug: attachments use more storage than they should.

For example, one of my Gmail accounts used 1567 MB of storage. I composed a new message, attached a file that had about 8.42 MB and saved it as a draft. Gmail's footer message was: "You are currently using 1590 MB (21%) of your 7479 MB." Gmail used 3 times more storage for my message and MIME encoding couldn't add so much overhead. I discarded the message and Gmail informed me I was using 1579 MB. After composing a message and deleting it, I lost about 12 MB.

I composed another message, attached the same file and sent it to an email address. Gmail used 23 MB to send a file that only had 8.42 MB. After deleting the message, I lost once again 12 MB of storage.

The most likely explanation is that Gmail's Flash uploader creates hidden messages for each file you upload. When Gmail launched the Flash uploader, these temporary messages were sent to the trash. Now they're probably no longer displayed.

Update (a day later): it's fixed. Google now shows the temporary messages from the trash.

Gmail's SHVA Parameter

Ever since Google launched a new version of Gmail, back in 2007, some people wondered why Gmail's address includes a parameter called "shva".

"Just curious, what does the SHVA parameter in the new gmail URL stand for? Is it an acronym? I'm not really asking about the technical usage or the functionality; I'm just interested in the choice of name," asked BRKR. "I know GMail is not an Open-Source program so we can trace the code. But every website tries to make the URL shorter so they ideally shouldn't add redundant data to the URL," thinks Omar Dolaimy.


According to Mike Sego, a former Gmail engineer, "shva" is an acronym for "should have valid authentication". Apparently, the parameter is only included after a successful authentication.

Gmail Adds Rich Text Signatures

Gmail added one of the most frequently requested features: rich text signatures. If you go to the settings page, you can edit your signature and change text formatting, add links and images. You can only create a rich text signature if you enable rich formatting in the "compose mail" page.

"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," says Mark Knichel, from Google.


Another useful new feature lets you create distinct signatures for the email accounts you're using when sending messages. If you send mail from different addresses, it makes sense to have a distinct signature for each account.


Unfortunately, the new features only work in the desktop standard Web interface. "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."

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Disabling Gmail Conversations

Grouping messages in conversations is one of the most useful Gmail features. It's also one of the few features that made Gmail unique and innovative back in 2004, when it was released.

(the "about Gmail" page from April 2004)

"Gmail groups all replies with their original message, creating a single conversation or thread. In other email systems, responses appear as separate messages in your inbox, forcing you to wade through all your mail to follow the conversation. In Gmail, replies to replies (and replies to those replies) are displayed in one place, in order, making it easier to understand the context of a message -- or to follow the conversation," explains Gmail's help center.

Some people suggested that Gmail should make threading optional. They assumed that it's pretty easy to disable a feature that's usually offered as a presentation enhancement in email clients. In Gmail, conversations are a core feature and it would be very difficult to disable it without breaking other features.

Last month, Henry Blodget reported that Google intends to make Gmail's conversations optional. "Some Gmail users loathe the Conversations format -- complaining that is confusing and causes them to miss important messages. Google recently handed control over Gmail to a VP named Vic Gundotra. Vic regards Google's prior attitude toward issue as 'tone deafness' and plans to offer another option soon, sources say."

While Gmail's threading doesn't always work properly and it's not always useful, grouping messages and replies in conversations makes it easier to find messages, to read messages and to reply to other messages. Most Gmail features are designed to work with conversations and not with individual messages. For example, you can't label a single message, you can't archive a single message and you can't mark a message as read or unread and you can't detach messages from conversations without deleting them.

If Gmail offers an option to disable conversations, it's likely that Gmail will act like an IMAP client. "IMAP treats messages individually and not as a threaded conversation. If you move a message to an IMAP folder in your mail client, only that message in the conversation will move to that folder. However, in the web interface, the whole conversation will be given the corresponding label. The same rules will apply to labels applied through filters."

If you label a message, Gmail will also label the messages from the conversation even if it will no longer display conversations. I don't think that's a great user experience.

Now that even iPhone's mail client and Hotmail added threading, it's surprising to see that Google decided to make conversations optional and to offer a suboptimal interface that makes Gmail more confusing and difficult to use.

Update: Paul Buchheit, who created Gmail, says that it's not surprised.

It's my opinion that when designing products, especially new products, it's better to have some people [that] will love it than have everyone tolerate it. This generally means aiming for simplicity and philosophical consistency. If you're aiming for "everyone tolerates it", then the approach switches more towards creating a "giant pile of features". I suspect that this change is driven by their desire for greater enterprise adoption (Google apps), where the "more features and checkboxes" approach very often wins out, even if it's ultimately a worse product.

Gmail to Use More HTML5 Features

Computer World reports that many of the upcoming Gmail features will use HTML5. Adam de Boor, a Gmail engineer, said that Google's goal is to make Gmail load in less than a second.

"If the browser supports CSS3, Gmail will render the pages using these specifications, rather than its traditional approach of using the Document Object Model (DOM). The company has found that using CSS3 can speed the rendering time by 12 percent. (...) Gmail will also make use of HTML5's database standards. Now, the e-mail service uses Google Gears to store mail for offline reading, but over time that will migrate to the HTML5 standards."

Another feature that will be added to Gmail allows users to drag attachments to the desktop. This feature is not part of HTML5, but Google says that it will encourage other browsers to use it. Right now, you can drag and drop files from the desktop to Gmail, but only if you use Firefox 3.6 or Chrome.

Adam de Boor revealed how many lines of code are in Gmail: 443,000 lines of JavaScript code written by hand.

Gmail has added many features that used to be available only in desktop mail clients: fetching email from other accounts, threading, powerful spam filters, reading messages offline. Now it's time to better integrate Gmail with the browser or the operating system and to add notifications, a simplified way to handle attachments and a better performance.

{ spotted by George }

Save iPhone Notes to a Gmail Account

Apple's iOS 4 (iPhone OS 4) added an important missing feature: a way to save your notes online. If you add an IMAP mail account like Gmail or Yahoo Mail and enable the notes feature, you can create notes that are saved to your email account.


For Gmail, Apple creates a label called Notes and saves the notes created in the Gmail section to your Gmail account. The notes can only be edited from an iPhone or iPod Touch and the changed are reflected in Gmail.




Some other new iOS 4 features that should be useful for Google users: Google Suggest in Safari's search box, an option to search the Web in Spotlight and the ability to add multiple Exchange accounts.

Gmail's Redesigned Contact Cards

Gmail's contact cards, which show up when you mouse over the sender of a message or a Gmail Chat contact, have a new interface. Action buttons are displayed at the bottom of the card and you can no longer edit the name of a contact inline. When you click on the name of a contact, Gmail opens the contact manager.


Contacts cards haven't changed too much since 2007, when Google released a major Gmail update.


If you'd like to see how much Gmail has evolved since 2007, open Gmail's old version. It's surprising to see that Gmail still offers the old version, which lacks most of the features released in the past three years.

{ Thanks, Itamar and Angelo. }

Better Gmail Multitasking in Google Chrome

This is the second Chrome-only feature in Gmail, after inserting images using drag and drop. If you open the compose page or a conversation in a new window, Gmail uses some tricks to load the new page fast. The downside is that you can't close the initial Gmail tab without also closing the pop-up window.

Here's what happens if you open the compose page in a new window when you use Firefox:



When you try to close the original Gmail tab, a dialog informs you that the compose window will also be closed: "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?".


Gmail's blog says that Google Chrome added some code that makes the pop-up windows "long lived".

"If you're using the latest version of Google Chrome, you can now continue to work in popped out windows after you close your main window (especially handy for those of us who always like to keep an eye on our tasks). For the technically curious among you, our friends on the Chrome team made it possible to transfer the code that runs Gmail from one window to another as the window closes. When the window that hosts the code fires an unload event, we move the iframe with the code to a surviving window. Everything continues to run, including timers and outstanding requests."

The enhancement is great, but I'm wary of non-standard features that only work in a browser. The feature is part of HTML5, so it should be implemented in other browsers. Google Chrome happened to be the first browser that implemented it.

Gmail doesn't have tabs, but you can open many views in a new window by shift-clicking on a link, by clicking on the "new window" icon or link. This way, you can keep a conversation open while composing a message (shift-click on "Compose mail" or Shift+c), open Gmail search results in new windows (shift-click on the results), reply to a message in a new window (shift-click on "Reply" or Shift+r).

Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail as a VoIP Service

Google tests a new feature that makes Gmail chat more useful: users are able to make and receive Google Voice calls from Gmail. A new phone icon opens a Gmail chat window with a dialpad, an option to find contacts, a credit balance and a call button.


Right now, if you want to call someone using Google Voice, you need a phone. You can either visit Google Phone's site on your computer, enter the phone number you want to call and wait until Google calls your phone and connects you for free or use Google Phone app on a mobile phone.

The new feature will allow users to make voice calls over the Internet and it's likely that it won't be limited to Gmail. In April, TechCrunch reported that Google "built a Google Voice desktop application to make and receive calls" and that the application is tested internally. Google used technology from Gizmo5, a VoIP service acquired by Google last year.

For now, Google Voice's integration with Gmail is not publicly available.

{ Thanks, Anon. }

Google Maps Previews in Gmail

Gmail added a new Labs feature that parses your messages and lets you preview some content using web services. This time you can preview the addresses from a message using Google Maps. The addresses extracted by Gmail are displayed after a message and you can load a map preview without opening a new page. Right now, the feature only works for US addresses, but Google promises to address this issue.


Gmail already displays addresses from messages in the right sidebar, but you need to click on a link to open the map in a new page. The new Gmail Labs feature has another advantage: it also previews links to Google Maps.

Gmail's blog says that a map preview feature is now available for Google Buzz, but it only works when you paste a Google Maps link in a Buzz message. Unfortunately, Google's thumbnails is really small and clicking on the thumbnail opens a static map.


To find the Labs feature, open Gmail Labs and use your browser's find-on-page feature (Ctrl+F / Cmd-F) to search for "Google Maps previews". Gmail Labs offers other similar contextual gadgets for previewing links to Flickr, Picasa Web, Yelp, Google Voice messages, Google Docs and the YouTube preview feature is enabled by default. Developers can create custom contextual gadgets for Gmail in Google Apps and hopefully the APIs will be extended to the regular Gmail app.

Gmail's Spam Filter No Longer Effective?

Yahoo has recently quoted a study of the Fraunhofer Institute which concluded that Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have better spam filters than Gmail.

"The Fraunhofer Institute, an independent research firm, found that Yahoo! Mail users saw the least amount of spam out of the five providers tested, with nearly 40% less spam than Hotmail and 55% less spam than Gmail – meaning Gmail users in the study saw more than twice as much spam as Yahoo! Mail users."

If the results are accurate, then either Gmail's spam detection technology is no longer state of the art or Yahoo and Microsoft have dramatically improved their spam filters. Last time I checked, most of the messages from the inbox of my Hotmail account were spam.


John Mueller, from Google, says that Gmail's spam filter is quite effective: "When I first got my Gmail account (it seems like such a long time ago), I purposely signed up to all kinds of mailing lists to try out the filter. It seemed like a fun idea -- but then I noticed that I actually wanted to keep my Gmail account :). About one spammy message comes through each month, but the most important part is that I haven't lost anything that I was waiting for."

I rarely get spam messages that aren't flagged by Gmail, but the spam filter is not perfect. Sometimes Gmail flags legitimate messages as spam, so the algorithms are too aggressive.

What do you think? Is Gmail worse than Yahoo Mail or Hotmail when it comes to filtering spam?

Update: Here's Fraunhofer's press release with a link to the study. Unfortunately, it's in German. (Thanks, Lazlo.)

Update 2: Apparently, the study was sponsored by Microsoft and Yahoo's conclusions are misleading. The "prestigious" Fraunhofer Institute counted all the spam messages received by six users and Gmail users happened to receive more spam messages than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail users. The study admits that Yahoo Mail and Gmail detected correctly all the spam messages, while Hotmail couldn't detect 23% of the messages.

Yahoo concluded that "independent empirical studies done by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute show that Yahoo! Mail is #1 in blocking malware and spam from reaching mailboxes. It's official. No one fights spam harder, smarter, or better than Yahoo! Mail." But so is Gmail, according to Fraunhofer's irrelevant study.