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Gmail’s rich-text editor has never been very powerful, especially if you look at other web applications like Google Docs or Zoho. An important missing feature is inserting images in a message: you can attach photos, but they’re usually displayed at the bottom of the message and not all mail clients show thumbnails. One workaround was to upload the images to a website, open it in a different window and then drag it to Gmail’s editor.

Now you no longer have to do this since Gmail added inserting images as a Labs feature. After enabling the feature, you’ll notice a new photo icon when you compose a message using the rich editor. You can insert images from your computer and images published online, by typing their addresses. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t use the new Flash uploader, so you can’t select more than one photo at a time.

“Keep in mind that Gmail doesn’t show URL-based images in messages by default to protect you from spammers, so if you’re sending mail to other Gmail users, they’ll still have to click Display images below or Always display images from … to see images you embed,” mentions the Gmail blog.

To enable the new feature, go to Gmail Labs, search for “inserting images”, select the “Enable” radio button and don’t forget to click on “Save changes”.

Tip: if the uploaded image is too large, click on it and choose from the available sizes (small, medium, large) or resize the image by dragging one of the corners.

Source: GoogleSystem

LifeHacker is reporting that Google is finally enabling Google Gears support in GMail. The first question you might ask is “what the heck is Google Gears”? Gears is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser:
Let web applications interact naturally with your desktop
Store data locally in a fully-searchable database
Run JavaScript in the background to improve performance

So when Gears is enabled you can access your Gmail from your browser any time… even when you’re not online! Essentially, Offline Gmail uses Google Gears to download all (ok not ALL, but MOST) of your email to your desktop. When you use Gmail in offline mode it works exactly the same as using it normally—except that when offline mode is enabled in your browser, Gmail is that much faster. When you compose an email in offline mode they get put in your outbox, and those emails are automatically sent once you’re back online.

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Google announced it will release a brand new open source web browser called Google Chrome. Yesterday a site went up, and has subsequently been taken down at http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en (as of this morning clicking this link take you back to regular old Google).

According to Crunchbase the features include:

• Tabbed browsing where each tab gets its own process, leading to faster and more stable browsing. If one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t go down with it
• A distinct user interface that places tabs on top of the browser window instead of right below the address bar
• An “incognito” mode that lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity
• A new JavaScript engine built from the ground up for speed
• Malware and phishing lists that automatically update themselves and warn you of bad websites
• A default homepage that displays your most commonly used sites and other personalized information

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