REACTIVEradio

Just today, I was browsing the Something Awful Forums when I happened upon a thread about a new Firefox add-on called “Better Gmail”. It claims to add a bunch of new features to Gmail when you install it along with providing a few skins to redesign the look of the site. At first, I was pretty skeptical about what it could do for me because I was of the mindset that Gmail was as damn close to perfect as any software offering would ever get.

Boy, was I wrong.

First of all, the “Super Clean (BETA)” skin is a “Web 2.0″ take on Gmail; it adds a bit of flash while still maintaining the minimalistic feel that all Google products are famous for. It doesn’t add any bloat, but it definitely adds character. I guess for some people this might be one of the features they love most about all of Google’s offerings, but I think that after 6 or 7 years of every product looking exactly the same, it’s time to bring them into this century.

Second of all, they’ve added a feature to include Google Reader right in the Gmail window. For those of you who don’t have a lot of experience with RSS readers, I’ll give you a quick rundown of what they are and how they work. Websites (primarily blogs like this one, but some major news sites have them as well) publish what are called RSS feeds. These feeds are like a list of the most recently created or updated articles on the site. You would use an RSS reader to subscribe to these feeds (subscribe is a bit of a misnomer as there is no money involved) which would then give you the latest news from any of the providers of these feeds. You can subscribe to as few or as many as you like, which can make a day go by a lot quicker if you’re constantly bored at work, for example.

The add-on also lets you remove certain sections of the Gmail homepage that you may not have any use for, such as the Labels or Invites sections that normally take up the left hand side of the screen. I don’t have any labels that I use on even a yearly basis, nor are the invites really that important to me, since anyone can signup for a new Gmail account on the login page, so by simply checking a couple boxes, my eyes are no longer drawn to a portion of the screen that serves no purpose (to me.)

I definitely recommend it to anyone who uses Firefox and Gmail – it takes a great product and makes it even better.

Add-on Link @ mozilla.org