Filed under: Macintosh, E-mail, Productivity
Mailplane 2.0: desktop Gmail client now supports Gmail video chat
by Jay Hathaway Nov 24th 2008 at 1:00PM
If you use Gmail on a Mac, you should definitely know about Mailplane. It's basically a really fancy site-specific browser for Gmail, getting Gmail out of your browser tab and adding a lot of features you'd demand in a desktop email client. You can drag and drop attachments and sign in multiple accounts at once, just to name a couple. Plus, a release candidate for Mailplane 2.0 just came out, and it adds 37 new features. You can do anything in Mailplane that you can do in Gmail, including the new video chat feature. The new gmail themes are also supported, and you can add your own custom stylesheet. It feels strange to use Gmail in a browser again after playing with Mailplane. Customizable keyboard shortcuts, dragging and dropping, and iPhoto integration are just a few of the handy features that make Mailplane a joy to use. It also supports one of my personal favorite things, Growl notifications
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David said 1:25PM on 11-24-2008
this sounds cool...linux port please? lol
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El Taco said 1:03AM on 11-25-2008
uhm, windows port plz?
ash said 1:54PM on 11-24-2008
If this works like how my brain hopes it works, I can ditch Apple Mail and get Gmail's web speeds through a desktop app?
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Jay Hathaway said 1:57PM on 11-24-2008
Yep, that's right! It loads Gmail in webkit, so it's approximately as fast as it would be in Safari.
ash said 2:03PM on 11-24-2008
Amazing! I just watched their video tour and it's perfect: Growl + speed + desktop app features = can't wait to get home and download it.
smoodin said 2:05PM on 11-24-2008
Windows version or equivalent??
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James said 7:27PM on 11-24-2008
Smoodin, check this out: http://lifehacker.com/5097728/foxglove-standalone-google-apps-portal
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mafteechr said 12:25PM on 12-04-2008
If you're using Chrome, you can use Chrome's "Create Application Shortcut" to have Gmail ran in it's own streamlined browser window with an icon on the desktop.
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Christopher said 1:34PM on 12-05-2008
If you're running multiple gmail accounts you're better off using Fluid to create a custom browser instance for each. (I've tested both.)
Mailplane will only show you how many unread messages you have in whichever gmail account is currently the 'active' one. That's no good if you want to be able to tell at a glance if you have new messages in more than one account.
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