Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Faster Gmail Compose Bookmarklet

I read about making a gmail compose bookmarklet here but I guess this method works a little differently now that Gmail version 2 is out. The url I got as a bookmark from following the steps in this article looked like this:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=340ae8adsd673&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&ver=7fwl31x2aq9vivp2k9w0elmjy#cmid%3D1

This version of the bookmarklet takes forever to load for me and sometimes doesn't load at all. I took off the #cmid%3D1 and the loading time got a little faster and the page no longer froze while loading.

I continued removing stuff and changed from ui=2 to ui=1 and eventually got a significantly faster loading compose window with something that ended up looking like this:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1

This is the fastest version of the bookmarklet I could make that retained the auto-complete javacript for recipient fields. For a super fast version, you could switch to HTML version of gmail and bookmark the compose page, but I really like having the autocomplete for addresses.

To add my version of the bookmarklet, drag this link into your Bookmarks Toolbar:

g:

I also made a javascript version of the bookmarklet that opens a new, small window, kind of like the capital-C shortcut works in Gmail.

Here is the javascript, open in new window, version:

G:

This javascript bookmarklet is the one I have ended up using. Enjoy.

** UPDATE **
This appears to be faster now:
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1

G:

5 comments:

Goryo said...

it appears that the current url is no longer being pasted onto the body of the message, which was one of the features i liked the bookmarklet to begin with.

mmm

Ryan Haigh said...

When my bandwidth is being throttled or I am forced to use a slow connection I prefer to use the mobile version of gmail. I have the following as a bookmark that loads in the sidebar. There is no auto-complete for contacts and I have not tried looking at the other bookmarklets to fill in the subject/body but maybe someone else could.

gCompose

The fact that the page is designed for a mobile means it works great in the sidebar.

raj said...

hi,

I really liked this and found extremely useful addon to my chrome browser..

Keep it up

Austin said...

I found this bookmarklet to be just as fast and it doesn't lose the link or title. I don't know where it came from though.

Affinity said...

Great, just what I was looking for. Thanks a lot.