24 Aug 2009

Stop Waiting for Gmail to Load on Your Mac with Fluid App

Gmail is slow. Really slow. How much time do you think you've wasted staring at the loading screen?

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If you're using a Mac, I've devised a way to save you months of wasted time in your precious life with Fluid. Fluid is a thin wrapper for WebKit that lets you wrap any website up into something that resembles a desktop application.

Here's how to get this working:

1. Go to http://fluidapp.com/ and install Fluid 

2. Download the Gmail icons at http://csi.nfshost.com/goodies/. You'll need this for your dock icon to look pretty.

3. Create a Gmail Application by running Fluid.

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4. Once you have your Gmail App running, you'll need to tweak a few settings. This is the important time saving piece so pay attention. Click on "Gmail" in the menu, "Preferences," "Behavior". Look for the, "Closing the last browser window," setting. Check that box in so that when you close the browser window it only "hides the window".

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That's it! Now when you close the browser window, Gmail stays running in the background. When you click on the icon in the doc, it loads instantly. As a bonus you get the "New Message" count in the dock so you can turn off the Google Notifier.

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