Gmail as Default Email Client in Ubuntu
January 7th '08 - Problems/Issues
There are some issues with this script that could potentially lead to a temporary loss of access to your Gmail account. Please see the user comments for more details.
The How-To Geek has posted some really useful instructions for setting Gmail as the default email client in Ubuntu. How-To Geek starts his post by saying:
Every Geek uses Gmail… it's pretty much required. And now you can set Gmail as the default client in Ubuntu without any extra software.
I think his opening statement is a slight generalisation :) Having said that, I am indeed a geek and I do use Gmail so he may have a point! Anyhow, I followed the instructions and the hack works well. I did deviated slightly and placed the shell script in my bin directory; this way the script can be called by name as it sits within my system path. For future reference the script I used has the following content:
#!/bin/sh
firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`
echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`,new-tab)"
Note: The Firefox command actually sits on one line.
Once I'd placed the script in my bin directory, I then simply needed to change my preferred mail application:
System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications
When email is slower than snail mail
Talking of Gmail and email, I've been experiencing some technical issues with email across several domains. Apparently these issues stem from Gmail greylisting one of my hosting providers mail clusters. You can't imagine, unless you've experienced it, how frustrating it is to receive email more than 48 hours after it was originally sent.
I apologise if anyone is waiting on a reply from any messages sent between 30/11/07 and 03/12/07. Your message will probably never arrive at its intended destination; I can only imagine that your message is floating aimlessly around cyberspace, either that or it's been sucked into a black hole :(
Looking on the bright side, I also use another more reliable [read more expensive] hosting provider and I've moved my email operations to their servers. I've also been looking into using Google Apps for all my email needs; however, I'm slightly apprehensive about paying out on a service that has been in Beta status for more than 3 years. Does anyone have any experience of using this service? If so I'd really appreciate some sensible feedback about it.
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