Webmail is really a separate application. When I’m visiting GMail, I’m checking mail, not browsing the web. So what’s so bad about using a browser for this?
Minor Gripes
If I keep a browser window running with GMail, now clicking on the Safari dock icon just brings that sucker up instead of creating a new empty window.
I love the GMail key shortcuts and Safari has an annoying tendency to get the key focus wrong so I have to click in the window somewhere after moving up out of a thread to get my shortcuts back.
Safari crashes, I forget to reload GMail, I miss important messages.
Even all that isn’t so bad. For a while I ran Firefox with only GMail open. I could get a GMail notifier so I won’t miss messages… but:
The Real Problem
The final straw is this: Every time I check mail, I’m diving right into the world’s biggest time-sink. My email isn’t usually a waste of my time, but all the windows I’ve left floating around, my bookmarks bar, or a quick Google search are. These are the things that eat up afternoons, and webmail is a gateway to that distraction.
Browsers have lots of features that I don’t need to use GMail: bookmarks, back & forward buttons, a search field, page history, a location bar, and on and on.
My Easy Way Out - the Minimalist Specialized Browser
A while back, I wrote a separate web browser just for GMail.
All it does is load GMail in a nice big window and duck out of your way. No location bar. And no bookmarks.
It says: Go ahead and follow that link your friend (or bug tracker) sent you, but to check BoingBoing, you’re going to have to go over to Safari. Maybe you’ll decide to go back to work instead.
It’s basically the WebKit demo, except that I tried to improve the key shortcut situation a bit, and it has a progress indicator.
I’ve been using it for a while now, and the only features of real browsers that I miss are pretty simple to add - text find, a refresh command. I just haven’t needed them that much. Sadly, one feature I’d love to add to GMail, a key shortcut to “go to inbox”, eludes me, since their Javascript is pretty obfuscated. Update - “go to inbox” already exists as the sequence “gi”.
Meet WebMail.app
If you want to try out this idea without the hassle of writing those ten lines yourself, get a tarball here: Webmail-1.0.tgz and let me know what you think.
The source is in there, it’s BSD licensed, and I’ll happily accept patches that make it more useful for email, but remember that making it more useful for general browsing is kind of not the point.
Oh, and it lacks a real icon. Sorry.
Update much later: a new version that supports printing and attaching files is available here: Webmail+printing+attaching.zip
5:00 am May 11, 2006
under computers, mac, programming, web
Can I ask why you don’t just use Mail.app with Gmail?
The key sequence ‘gi’ will take you to the inbox from a label view or some other search view. If you’re looking at a message and you just want to go back to where you came from, try ‘u’.
Tried it. It’s cool. A way to change font size would be nice. Reflash can be done from the contextual menu, right?
I didn’t know I could use Mail.app with GMail - is there a way to do it that would preserve the searching ability?
Michael: Thanks for the reminder about ‘gi’ - I could swear that wasn’t there the last time I looked at the docs!
Takaaki: Refresh is in the contextual menu, yeah, as is Back and Forward. They come free from WebView, but I find I rarely need them.
I use gmail with Mail.app. The only searching ability you keep is the one that comes with Mail.app. I like to use Mail.app because I tend to organize my emails in boxes, and use email as a todo list. Also, I have other accounts and Mail.app just consolidates everything. And finally, of course, it can be used offline and is faster to browse messages.
I still like to have a browser open for gmail (used to be Firefox, now Camino: much lighter on the computer cpu and memory) to be able to quickly mark email as spam, and check the contents of the spam mailbox. I will definitely use Webmail.app.
My definition of a great idea is: simple, useful, yet you may not think of it and when somebody has the idea, you feel like “of course, why did not I think of it??!?”". I know webkit, I know ObjC, not enough to write Mail.app, but certainly enough to write something simple and useful like this.
Bottom line: This is a great idea!!! Thank you.
charles
charles: you’re welcome.
I organize my mails in boxes too, but that seems to map really well to GMail filters and labels for what I use it for (mostly mailing lists).
Michael, Thank you for a useful app and a neat, small, Cocoa example program! I found your discussion of “The Real Problem” to be insightful and well stated. Sincerely, Joel
Very nice… I can do everything except add attachments in gmail.
sat: d’oh - I forgot about attachments. That’d be a good patch. I wonder how hard it’d be to add…
Right gmail support in Mail.app is pop-based, so you get what’s on your computer, pretty much. So if you need to search all your email, move it to your inbox in gmail, download it with mail.app, and then archive it again. hope that helps…
FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC!
I’ve been hoping someone would make this. I love using gmail, I love the way it groups conversations, but I want it in a separate app from the rest of my browsing.
Possible improvements: I’m sure the idea is to keep it as simple as possible, but I think if you can add some small desktop-app-like features it will totally blur the lines between web and desktop. For example, - LOGIN: Instead of the regular gmail login page you could make a snazzy, login interface that sits on top. - TABS: Another thing I would like to see is tabs, with each tab can opening a different gmail account. - CONTACTS: A button that, with a single click, will pull your contacts from address book and import them into your gmail account.
A regular toolbar would be too big and obtrusive. Instead, I was thinking that you could take cues from the ‘Podcasts’ and ‘Party Shuffle’ windows in iTunes. At the bottom of these sections there’s a flat grey area. iPhoto06 has something similar. Put a bar like that below the title bar of this webmail app, and in that area you could have login stuff (username/password/connect), a button for syncing contacts etc..
As you can see, I really have been waiting for this app. And hopefully something similar will be done for Google’s Writely.
Great little Cocoa app and a real time save for me. Thanks a million!
[...] But he finds that reading it in his normal web-browser is too distracting. Bookmarks, other open windows and the Google search are constantly tempting him away from his work. [...]
What a cool idea. I’m going to give this a try as soon as I get home today. Is this a Universal Binary?
Pretty cool. But how about a preference for text size and a status bar at the bottom? That’s it, that’s all I can think that this needs for what it’s intended use is.
Oliver: your contacts idea is a cool one, but I’m really not sure how I’d get GMail to import data - unless they have some API published somewhere, their javascript is pretty greek to me.
Jeff: It is a Universal binary, but I haven’t tested it on an Intel mac. Let me know if it works…
markflo: text size is a good idea. In the meantime if you are familiar with Interface Builder, it’s relatively easy to edit WebMail.nib inside the app wrapper and set the default fonts for the WebView.
I guess a status bar is useful to see what URL is under the mouse, but I liked the whole no-extra-adornments window look. Have to think about that.
[...] I found the Gmail browser by Michael O. McCracken (http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/?p=44), modified it to work for Backpack and of course released it under the same BSD license Michael did. The source code is available on my site. [...]
Fantastic. Thank you. I can edit the source to get it to access my hosted gmail account too, but it would be nice to have some kind of preference setting for this. Maybe it will push me to finally learn some Cocoa….
This is kinda cool! How about tying in Google Calendar & Analytics. :)
I like the concept, the only problem is that I also want to use this for other web-based things, such as ThinkFree or Writely, Yahoo Mail (Beta) (Gmail is better, but I still need to check my yahoo account), NewsGator Online (online feed reader), among others. There should be something like a simple bookmark bar and tab feature (possibly down the side of the browser instead of on the top) that allows you to go to other services and a preference that allows you to add/remove these.
For the moment I’m going to stick with my setup of Firefox with everything but the status and tab bar removed that auto-loads each of the services I use in tabs upon launch.
How about just making the app just run on small custom bookmarks than launch as normal apps? When you click one, it opens the link within the custom browser. Pretty simple, and people could use the app for whatever webapp just by, say, changing an extension on a weblink.
btw a gmail login should be quite easy with curl (via Curl handel)
This is a great idea, and I’m tinkering with it right now. One thing I’m sorely missing however are the shortcuts that Firefox + Greasemonkey + a couple of scripts can enable. Things like going to labels, trashing messages, even labelling messages themselves, all by typing a simple shortcut. I really don’t like Firefox because of its extreme un-OS X-like experience and incompatibilities, but these Firefox-only scripts turn Gmail into the most functional email app I’ve ever seen.
I’m sure all this javascript is probably not what you signed up for, but I’m wondering how feasable it could be to work stuff like this in. Javascript ninjas? What say you?
Very nice. Exactly what I was looking for… even though I didn’t know it yet. BUT, maybe we can add some support for those of us having Google host their domain? Different login procedure (and once it’s out of beta, I’m sure more and more people will be doing it).
what i’ve wanted for a long time. you rock, man! if you come around cuneo, italy, i owe you a couple of beers ;)
(now, get me a proper icon and i’m set :) )
Michael,
Well done. I have been thinking along similar lines and see a growing need for this type of customized applet.
I just wanted to let you know that I have modiefied your source to be able to use Backpack with it. You can find it at: http://www.geschaeftsmac.de/2006/backpack. I hope this is alright, otherwise I will put it off my website.
This is a really cool idea. I have been looking for something like this but for the purpose of listening to sirius online. Is there any way of easily editing the code so it points to http://www.sirius.com/servlet/MediaPlayerLogin/subscriber ? Let me know
[...] Today I found a new app that continues a new trend in the world of thech these days: Web apps. What are web apps I hear you say? well webappps are very small apps that have one purpose: to display a wpecific webpage. you might think that’s not that handy, but because of the simplicity, they are quite fast and simple (a lot like a mac, but that’s a later post). The new app i found was michael mccracken’s WebMail.app. It is a very handy app for Gmail that means I can ‘apple-tab’ to get to my mail (very handy). [...]
Hi there Michael, i thinik this is a great app. but i think there is something even better than just what you’ve done: you included the source! i gave it a quick squiz, and realised that what you’ve done can be used with ANY website just by changing a small bit of one like. I gave it a go, and in just a few minures, i made one that was dedicated to my blog, and also a Digg one. Man, thanks so much, i just love being able to ‘apple-tab’ to gmail. Cya, Al.
GMail POP3 only supports 1 client, when you access the POP3 server with another computer (ie laptop) the messages are gone from the server. So if you want to use gmail with Mail.app you can only use one computer!
Wow, great concept. I’m using good old OS X 10.2.8 and webmail.app isn’t happening for me. What are the system requirements to run this? I know, I know, I’m way behind and need to upgrage. Thanks,
Any chance to adapt this for Gmail hosted domains?
[...] Just today I ran across another application that sits on top of a web 2.0 service, in this case Gmail. It’s called Webmail and it’s brilliant (link via TUAW). Simply put, it’s a stripped down web browser that is hardwired for Gmail. I started out saying that everything doesn’t have to run in a browser, but the example I use is technically a browser… but is it a browser if you can only go to one site and it doesn’t have features like refresh (in fact, there is no menu bar at all)? The thing that is so elegant about Webmail is that rather than creating an entirely new application to interface with Gmail, McCracken took an existing application (Webkit) and stripped out everything that wasn’t essential. BTW, be sure to check out the source code for this, it’s literally 10 lines of code. Technorati Tags: innovation, web2 Posted in Innovation || [...]
well i have a much better looking one now
[...] otherwise, to download and learn more about this application, visit michael’s site - you can read about the issues that prompted him to create this, etc.. [...]
While I do agree that webapps need to somehow isolate themselves so you aren’t tempted to browse the web after you’re done using them, I don’t understand why you don’t just use Mail.app or any other POP3 e-mail client.
Mail.app has “labels” (as a matter of fact I think Gmail is just trying to emulate the Smart Folders) and if you grab all your e-mail, you can just as easily use Spotlight search technology on the e-mail. If you want to keep your mail on Gmail while downloading it to Mail.app, you can. The search technology in Gmail isn’t any better than Spotlight’s (which isn’t saying either is bad but they’re pretty comparable).
On a side note, I’m not saying that Mail.app had the Smart Folders idea first or anything, but it’s kinda odd that you can create a filter and label it on incoming mail only, but you can’t create a smart filter that does it retroactively on already received mail. If you’re make a product suggestion to Gmail, that’s one of the things that’s already in there, so I’m sure they’re thinking about it.
I can see this app being useful for any other webmail since Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc. charge you for POP3 access, but Gmail is quite usable with Mail.app already.
This is great. Hope you keep improving this Michael. One suggestion, and maybe this is already the default but is it loading regular Gmail or the HTTPS version. Because I know for laptop users perhaps on open WiFi networks its a lot safer to use the HTTPS Gmail.
Thanks, i also think webmail is dangerous for making you waste time.
Thanks for this, a simple solution to a problem.
It would also be nice if the chat service worked, but it’s mostly just a time sink, hardly essential.
Cool little app. It would be cool to be able to adjust easily the font size, from an icon or a shortcut, but not by having to go somewhere inside the app
As I see it, the one thing this lacks that makes it a deal breaker for me is that it doesn’t support GChat. I’ve started using that a lot, and for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to work in Safari (and thus, in this program). Does anyone have a solution for that?
awesome application. It works just like a kiosk browser. :) wishlist: * ability to pass external URLs to default browser. * auto cookie cleanup on quit. * a nifty plugin would be a del.icio.us bookmarklet. This would help bookmark external URLs and read it later on a REAL browser. :D
nice. I’ll be using this from now on.
Webpage to standalone
Webpage to standalone: Michael McCracken spends enough time in Google’s Gmail that he builds an application around it, so that he can avoid “bookmarks, back & forward buttons, a search field, page history, a location bar, and on and on.” Same applic…
Crumbs. Google Calendar really doesn’t like webKit!! I wonder when google will fix that.
[...] (On a pedantic note, I see from comparing his original post with this one, that the browser is built with the WebKit demo from the Web Kit development team. I am still confused about this, despite John Gruber’s post on the differences and Daniel Jalkut’s patient further explanation ). [...]
Michael- Nice. I wanted to write one something like it - a Google App- with tabs for mail; calendar; notepad; maps etc. Some notification in the dock will be nice too. I will try to add some code and upload. I concur with your need to have an application for utilizing all the features of GMail; GMaps etc. without having to load it in ones primary browser.
Shashi
[...] Michael McCracken‘in geliştirdiği Webmail, yalnızca Gmail hesabınız için kullanabileceğiniz, özel bir tarayıcı. Webmail aslında, WebKit tabanlı ve BSD lisansıyla dağıtılan, çok basit bir uygulama. Ama sitesinde yazdığına göre, geliştiricisi içi anlamı büyük ve gerçekten de hoş bir düşünce. [...]
[...] Having seen Michael McCrackens excellent idea to create a single site web viewer (not a browser, becuase you can’t browse!) for Gmail, I thought it might be a nice introduction to mac applications - and Xcode - to have a play around and create a stats viewer for my website. [...]
Hello Michael, i am Frank from Germany and i am an little Developer. I have translate Webmail in German. When you want i sent you the german.iproj.
Thanks
Frank Segebade
Thanks Michael!
Any way to make hyperlinks within a gmail message open in Safari instead of within WebMail?
[...] This trick is OK, but while I was taking this tutorial, I got annoyed by having to constantly flash back and forth between the web page and my Terminal window. The Python tutorial introduces you to ideas that, if you’re anything like me, you immediately want to try out in the interactive shell. I decided to take a cue from Michael McCracken, who recently produced and distributed a dumbed down web browser just for reading Gmail. [...]
The default font size seems a little large, no? Adding
[webView setTextSizeMultiplier:0.8];
to line 40 of MyDocument.m makes things look more “normal” (well, for me at least)
Sweet! Great program!
If you also install MegaZoomer, you get full-screen distraction-free webmail! :)
Any chance of getting something like this for the new Yahoo! Mail beta? (I know, I know… you’re a gmail user, but it can’t hurt to ask, right?)
Scott: I’m probably not going to release a version for Yahoo Mail, but if you want to just change the source and rebuild, there’s only one line in the whole project you’d need to change - just search for the URL where it says “http://gmail.google.com/gmail”, change that to the Yahoo URL and rebuild in XCode.
This thing is great, but I agree that attachment support is necessary. In fact, any interaction that pops up OS windows (like removing a label or sending without a subject) doesn’t seem to supported either. I don’t know if you plan to work on this further, but it’s got great potential.
BTW, I love bibdesk as well.
good very good ….what have you done :)
[...] I found the Gmail browser by Michael O. McCracken (http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/?p=44), modified it to work for Backpack and of course released it under the same BSD license Michael did. The source code is available as well. [...]
Gmail browser… Ive been using deskbrowse which i found realy easy just set the home page to gmail.com.
[...] Michael McCracken tells a story that repeats itself in front of computer screens all over the world: Every time I check mail, I’m diving right into the world’s biggest time-sink. My email isn’t usually a waste of my time, but all the windows I’ve left floating around, my bookmarks bar, or a quick Google search are. These are the things that eat up afternoons, and webmail is a gateway to that distraction. [...]
Is there a way by which a) I can reduce the font size b) make it go straight into my inbox and bypass the login page?
Thanks.
Is there a reason that some of the links don’t work? For example, I cannot use the “Delete all spam messages now” link.
nana: there are people working on more featureful dedicated webmail readers, but I’m not one of them. There’s no way to do what you ask in webmail.app, but you’re more than welcome to add it and share your changes in a patch!
David: I don’t know why some links might not work. Try the site in Safari and see if the problem persists there - if it is really only in WebMail.app, then I don’t really know how that might happen.
This. Rox.
Also because it is a big piece in a puzzle I’m trying to build… may I ask your mail to contact you privately? I haven’t found it here… :(
Is there anyway you’d be willing to make a version of this that would work for Basecamp?
Thanks!
Ben, check out my comment from June 21st: http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/?p=44#comment-171
It’s pretty easy to change this to be anything you want. Make the one URL change and do a global search and replace for WebMail to “Basecamp” in XCode. In Interface Builder, just change the menu labels in the MainMenu.nib file and the window title in WebMail.nib.
I won’t be making new versions of this, unless it’s for something I use every day.
In case anyone else might want it — I took Michael’s instructions, and made a “Backpack Viewer”. Very handy for those that use Backpack. It can be grabbed here: http://bendelaneycreative.com/backpack/Backpack.zip
Michael, who are these other people who are developing this idea and where are their web pages? Thanks.
matt: In the week or so after I first posted this, at least three people emailed me to say they were developing a more-capable version of this, and I even saw one beta version. None of them had announced it yet, and since then, I haven’t seen any movement.
If you’re waiting patiently to use an improved version, I’m not sure what to tell you. Hang in there? Post about it on your weblog and I’ll link to it?
If you’re wondering whether or not there’s room to step in and launch your own improved webmail.app, I’d say there probably is, especially if you release early and often, and there could be a lot of people who’d help out if you were to start an open-source project.
Now I know you guys are into Macs, so what I’m about to say may not be too pallatable. ;) But in the interests of sharing ideas, if not code, you might want to take a look at a recent post on my blog.
It links to a couple of other posts, and has some screenshots, all based around using Sidewinder to managed Ajax applications like KoolIM, GCal, GMail, and so on. One of the latest new features is the ability to intercept the requests for new windows that apps like KoolIM make, and substitute a docked, autohiding, transparent, opaque window instead.
It’s currently Windows-based, with plans to port, but for now I mention it in the spirit of getting some discussion going about what sort of features an ‘application container’ should support.
All the best,
Mark Birbeck
This is great, and I’ve modified it a little in Xcode to make it perfect for me. But how would we hack Gmail Notifier to launch WebMail instead of Safari? I’m using Gmail Notifier 1.8.2.
[...] I borrowed an idea from Michael McCracken and “programmed” my own applications for gmail, 3 Wordpress blogs, Google News Reader and gCal. They take up a lot less memory, since they are just basically web pages rendered on the Safari engine (Mac) and they work for most of my day-to-day stuff. So, back to the website… I’m hoping to get everything moved over to this new page soon, but it’s not that high of a priority right now. I’ve got bigger fish to fry, but more on that later… [...]
Nifty little program, I can find one flaw, when I click on the link in a gmail email that link opens in WebMail not in my browser. A little annoying.
What is cool about this app is I can keep my Gmail separate from my browser but the link feature kind of ruins that.
…the icon you need is here: http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1846
Happily, the navbar links at Gmail (Calendar, Groups, etc.) each open in a new Webmail.app window. I’m not really using it for its intended purpose, but as a thin webapp client it’s very handy. Cheers!
Great concept. I’m using it in tandem with Gcal. Once you graft a better icon onto it, you can command-tab right to the google mail or calendar.
However:
Could this be done based on another rendering engine? Safari/Webkit does not support composing styled text in Gmail. Maybe the next version of it will when Leopard comes out.
Also, attachment support is missing.
[...] Do you get distracted when you’re checking your Gmail though? I’ve never really thought about it really, but Michael McCracken seems to have a problem focusing and BurgerBlog has written a tiny browser to help him out. [...]
This is a great idea. As per the comment above, is there anyway to duplicate this program using a different rendering engine, say, Mozilla’s? That way, the new right-hand side bars would work, as would GCal. But, great idea and program!
[...] there’s this little app to access GMail which uses WebKit and runs outside of any particular browser. It’s nice to be [...]
I made a few tiny changes to the app and posted it on my site. You can read about it at http://brian.maybeyoureinsane.net/blog/2007/02/25/webmailapp/.
Great idea! I added the ability to deal with attachments, and an icon. See http://brian.maybeyoureinsane.net/blog/2007/02/25/webmailapp/
I’ll send you the source if you’re interested.
Great idea! I added the ability to deal with attachments, and an icon. See http://willmore.eu/gmailbrowser
I’ll send you the source if you’re interested.
[...] GMail in a WebKit application: Nice application in separate process. [...]
Now only if you could write it for Windows…
How about some tabs for Calander and spreadsheet
Russ and others - check out http://www.alloutsoftware.com/hana/
I haven’t had a chance to evaluate it yet, but it looks interesting.
[...] I won’t be using Hana, but I found a gem in my travels, Webmail.app, a little bit of webkit, served up by Michael McCracken, it only does gmail, it’s devoid of [...]
Idea: add support for a custon CSS file so that this hack [1] can be used to block gmail ads. Or just bake it in and make it a feature in the preferences to block or not block ads.
[1] http://my.opera.com/kuad/blog/block-gmail-ads
[...] McCracken deserves credit for inspiring interest in this idea early on with his Webmail app, that in turn lead to Ben Willmore’s Gmail Browser application. Bother literally took [...]
I tried to use Webmail and was unable to attach a file to my message. Is that something that will no longer work because of Google’s reconfiguration of gmail to allow IMAP access? Is this something that you will fix?
KVR
Ken, the IMAP change didn’t affect WebMail.app much - it actually never supported attachments.
I did add that to a development version a little while ago and I keep forgetting to post about it. You can find it here. It supports printing pages and attaching things to new messages.
Cheers, -mike
[...] Michael McCracken: Webmail.app [...]
Any chance you will do this for Google Calendar? How much work would entail to change it for that purpose? We might be able to have your standalone Google Calendar handle the webcal: protocol, thus making it easier to “subscribe” to calendars and to add events to Google calendar from other Mac Apps.
@Manuel - other people have run with this idea quite a bit since I’ve last worked on it. For a GCal-specific browser, check out http://chip.cuccio.us/projects/gcal
For links to many other similar projects, check out http://webkit.pbwiki.com/