Looks like Gmail added another new feature!

You now have the option of viewing or downloading image attachments! Read on for details…

When you receive an image file as an attachment (like .jpg, .gif, or .bmp) Gmail now displays two links for each attachment: One is the filename, and the other says “Download”. Clicking on the name link opens a new browser window and displays the image. Clicking the Download link initiates a standard file download.

Other attachment types simply display the filename letting you download the file. Nice touch!

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Looks like Gmail added a new feature!

You can now control “highlighting” of searched words in Search results!

When you initiate a Search, Gmail returns a list of any messages and conversations matching the Search criteria. You can select any of these messages or conversations to view, and Gmail automatically highlights the word(s) you searched for. My sometimes, it’s distracting, so you now have the ability to click on the “Turn off Highlighting” link on the right column. Clicking it again turns highlighting back on. Very nice! And like just about everything about Gmail’s interface, it’s lightning-fast. No need to wait for the screen to re-draw like in most other Web-based email services.

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When you “send” a message, two things happen to it: 1. it gets copied into your “All Mail” view, and 2. it is visible in the “Sent Mail” view. Many email clients and Webmail services let you optionally delete all sent messages by default, but Gmail doesn’t offer this feature. Here’s why…

One of Gmail’s intentions is to get you out of the “trash everything” mindset. This is one of the reasons why they offer 1GB of storage. Providing this extra space gives you the ability to leverage features such as “Search”, “Labels”, and “Conversations”. Most email services limit us to a very small storage space, so we have to continually delete old messages to allow room for new ones. The problem is that though there are definitely many messages that should be permanently deleted, many are important enough to us that we may need or want to keep them for future reference. Gmail’s added space gives us that capability.

In keeping with this “future-thinking” mindset, by retaining the messages you send, Gmail easily and conveniently matches those messages to any corresponding replies onto “Conversations” making following threads of conversation easier. In any case, contrary to some false information being spread, you still retain full control of your messages. Any message, either sent or received, can be easily and permanently deleted as you desire; the same as any other email service.

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I covered this partially in another tip, but I feel it is important to repeat it. One of Gmail’s excellent features is its “Conversations”. Conversations conveniently organize related messages, but this can be potentially dangerous if you don’t understand how to manage both conversations and individual messages. If you aren’t paying attention, you can inadvertently Trash an entire conversation instead of just a single message.

First off, you need to determine if the message is a single message or part of a conversation. While viewing a list of messages (for example, “Inbox”) look in the first column on the left of the message listing. A conversation is indicated by some number in parenthesis ie: “(3)” next to Sender’s name. The number represents the number of messages associated with this conversation. If you click the checkbox in front of the message and select an action, (ie: “Move to Trash”, “Mark as Read”, “Delete Forever”, “Report as Spam”, etc.) the action will affect ALL messages in that conversation. If it is not a conversation, then it will only affect the selected message.

If you want to affect only a single message within a conversation, you must first open the message to view it and then click on the “More Options” link while viewing the message. This allows you to take specific actions on the open message within the conversation.

Conversations are very convenient and powerful, but actually dealing with them can be confusing at times.

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One concept that’s sometimes a bit unclear to new Gmail users is that of “Archiving” messages. I’m not refering to the hype and false assertions of pundits who claim things like “Gmail keeps everything you ever send and receive!” and “Gmail archives your messages forever!” No, I’m refering to the “Archive” button in your Inbox view. Just what is it for, and what does it do?

Plain and simple, clicking Gmail’s “Archive” button simply means that the message gets moved out of your Inbox–nothing more, nothing less. It’s a convenient and slick way to manage your Inbox.

But just what happens to the message? If you applied a Label to the message and then click “Archive” button, the message will no longer be visible in the Inbox. It will be visible in the applied Label view as well as the “All Mail” view. If no Label was applied, it is removed from the Inbox and is only viewable in the “All Mail” view. In any case, all messages, regardless of how thery are classified, can be viewed in the “All Mail” view. Any Labels that have been applied are shown in the listing. If the message hasn’t been “Archived” yet, it will see “Inbox” Label in the “All Mail” view.

Basically, when you “receive” a message, it automatically gets assigned an “Inbox” Label. It’s a Label just like any other Label. The only difference is that the Label is just typically hidden while viewing the Inbox. The “Inbox” Label is, however, visible in other views. To test this, take any email that’s in your Inbox and apply a Label, but do not Archive it. Go to the view of the Label you applied, and look at the message listing. You should see both the Label you applied as well as an “inbox” Label. It’s also visible in the “All Mail” view. When you Archive a message, it simply strips off the “inbox” Label so that it doesn’t show up in the Inbox view.

A little tip is that if you are in any other view other than the inbox view, you can always select a message, click on the “More Actions” dropdown, and click on “Move to Inbox” to move it back!

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Unlike many other Web-based email providers, Gmail offers an SSL-encrypted login by default. This means that your Gmail password is always encrypted when it is sent over the Internet.

Secure HTTPS access is also available by going to https://gmail.google.com directly. This is just another way that Gmail ensures your privacy and security!

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Conversations are very handy. They group related emails letting you easily track what was sent and to whom it was sent.

One thing that you might overlook is that is that you need to remember that when you perform an action on a conversation such as “Print”, “Move to Trash”, or “Report as Spam”, you are affecting ALL messages in the conversation. If you want to affect only one of the messages, select or expand the message and click on the “More options” link. This will bring up a sub-menu with options specific to that message.

One other thing to note is that Conversations are not perfect. By this, I mean that sometimes (but not always), if you have unrelated emails with the same subject, they sometimes get grouped together in the same conversation. Currently, there is no way to manually “ungroup” unrelated messages. Likewise, there is currently no way to manually “group” seemingly unrelated messages into a conversation.

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One often asked for feature has been some sort of automatic notification. Some suggestions ahve been integrating a button tn the Google Toolbar. Another was some sort of System Tray icon. Well, Gmail gave us a notification method that actually works very well…

Open your Gmail account and look at both the “Title” of your web browser as well as the “Button” in the Task Bar. It now shows something like “Gmail – Inbox (2)” where the “2″ is the number of new emails you have. Because Gmail auto-updates periodically, this will update was well. Very cool! This works in IE, FireFox, Safari, and maybe others.

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