Harsh J

Agreed using a mail client for GMail would be an easier and better task than using the Web interface, but still, there are many who love the web interface!

So if you don’t wish to join the IMAP and POP crowd by running Thunderbird or Evolution, etc, this mini-guide by HowToGeek is for you.

First off, open up your text editor (GEdit or whichever it is you use) and type the following into it:

If you are using Firefox:

#!/bin/bash
firefox https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed ’s/mailto://’

Or for Opera:

#!/bin/bash
opera -newpage “https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed “s/mailto://”`”

Save the file as gmailto (No extension’s required).

Now right click the file and go to Properties and under the Permissions tab, check the “Allow executing file as a program” check-box. Like the following:

Now issue the command:

sudo mv gmailto /usr/bin/gmailto

(Assumes your gmailto file was in Home directory. Replace with location if not.)

Now head to System > Preferences > Preferred Applications and in the Window that appears, choose Custom in the Mail Reader field and give the Command field as:

gmailto

Refer this image to understand better:

Hit Close and you’re done. For testing it out, click this link - mail@someone.com. That should automatically take you to GMail’s Compose page with the address in it automatically, just like how clients handle it.

Credits to HowToGeek.

P.s. Also works for all types of Linux distributions running GNOME I suppose.