How To Make Gmail the Default email Client In Firefox 3

You Might have come across this issue on the web, usually when you click on a mailto link Firefox would try to launch the default email client on your machine, usually Outlook for Windows users, if you have configured Outlook then it’s ok but most users don’t use desktop email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird , It would be great if it opened Gmail Instead.

This can be achieved by two ways,

1.The first one involves Installing the Google Toolbar for Firefox which provides an option to make Gmail the default email client.

The Google Toolbar also adds some pretty useful features to your browser like the ability to access your Google Bookmarks, check the Importance of a particular website in Google’s view with the PageRank Info, highlighting your search terms on a webpage and auto completion of search terms in the search bar.

2. The Second option is to add Gmail as the default application in Firefox which handles mailto links.

Here’s a Visual walk through on how to make Gmail the default email client for your Firefox browser

Method 1:

Get Google Toolbar for Firefox and Install it and restart your browser, you should now see Google Toolbar on your browser Go to the Settings option on the toolbar and click on Options

You should now see the Google Toolbar Options  window

Click on More and under the Page Tools options check Send with Gmail option and click on OK,from now on Firefox will launch Gmail whenever you click on a mailto link.

 

Method 2:

Go To Gmail and Login into your account, once at the Inbox paste the following code into the Address Bar and Hit Enter.

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")

 

 

You should now see a Firefox prompt asking for your permission to add Gmail as the application to handle mailto links

 

Click on Add Application, you should now click on a mailto link, click this mailto link.

You should now see a Application Selector window, select Gmail and check the option Remember my choice for mailto links and click on OK and you are done. (You don't need to send an email to me)

In future if you want to change the application which handles the mailto links you can do so by going to Tools –> Options –> Applications and searching for mailto and selecting the application you want.

For Linux Users of Firefox it’s under  Edit –> Preferences –> Applications.

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Sync your Thunderbird lightning Calendar with Google Calendar

Provider for Google Calendar is a Thunderbird add-on that let’s you synchronize your events in Lightening with Google Calendar in both directions.

First step is to Install the Provider for Google Calendar add-on second we need to obtain the Private feed address of your Google Calendar, for this Login to your Google Calendar account and click on Settings option located at the top right beside your email address

Click on the Calendars option

Find the Calendar that you want to sync with under My Calendars and click on it, In my case I have only one calendar.

Scroll Down to the Private Address field and click on the XML button there

You should now see the Calendar address window, this is the address that we need to sync the Lightening calendar with

Open Thunderbird Lightening and go to File –>New->Calendar

Under Create New Calendar Choose On the Network option and Click Next

Choose Google Calendar and enter the feed address obtained from Google Calendar in the Location Field

Click on Next , give the newly created calendar a nick name and specific a color for the events and click on Finish.

You now have all your Google calendar events perfectly synched to Thunderbird and viceversa.

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Tag your Entire Music Collection with just a few clicks using Winamp player.

 

Winamp’s newest version Winamp 5.5 has a Cool new feature called Auto-Tag  it basically tags the tracks in your music collection with the right artist and album name and other details by queering the grace note media database

It not only tagged all the music in my English collection perfectly with the right artist and album name but also songs from other languages like Hindi and Telugu, quite Impressive.

Here’s a Visual walk through

First You need to have all of your music collection in the Winamp Library, if you haven’t already done that during the setup of Winamp on your machine here’s how to do that

      

Click on Library at the Bottom in the Expanded mode, you can also access this option by clicking on File at the top left of the Winamp window and select Add Media to Library , you should now see a window

Browse to the Parent folder of your Music collection and select it and also check the box Scan folder in background and click on Add, all the tracks would be added to the library making it also easier to search and find a particular track.

Once all the songs have been imported to the Library select all of them by pressing ctrl+a, right click on them and select send to –> Auto-Tag

You should now see Auto Tagger window

Wait till the Status of all the songs shows up as Done (this would take some time depending on the size of your collection) and then click on Apply Changes and your Done.

 

You now Have a Perfectly Tagged Music Collection.

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How To Access your Linux Partitions / Drives In Windows

If you dual boot to Linux and Windows Operating Systems regularly then you might have come across this Issue of not being able to access that Imp file you have saved on a Linux Partition from Windows.

Though Linux supports accessing of windows file systems like Fat 32 and NTFS the same is not true for Windows, Windows does not support accessing  Linux ext 2, ext 3 file systems natively but It’s possible to access Linux Partitions or Drives from Windows using other applications.

There are a lot of free software out there but the following three are the most prominently used ones and out of these three my vote goes for Ext2 Installable File system.

1.Ext2 Installable File System installs to the Operating system kernel giving windows the ability to read and write to it directly, you can access the Linux Partitions from with in Windows Explorer as you would access any other file on a windows partition unlike the other two software's below which use a separate interface to access the Linux Partitions and save files.

During the Installation it scans for all Linux partitions on your hard drives and asks you to assign a Drive letter to each of them, once you have assigned a drive letter you are good to go and use it.

It also provides access to Ext 3 file system but does not support journaling.

 

2.Explore2fs comes as a simple executable file in a zip folder, double click the executable and allow to Run the file whenever you need access to your Linux Drives, it launches a separate window with all the Linux partitions.

 

Right click on a file that you need access to and click on Export file option this launches a window from which you can select the location where you want to save the file to.

          

Note: It doesn’t have the capability to write to a Linux Partition.

3.DiskInternals Linux Reader Installs as a separate program on your computer , run the program whenever you need access to your Linux partitions.

It scans your Hard drives each time you launch the program and displays all the available partitions on your Hard drives.

 

 

You can also access Linux images by mounting them using the option Mount Image marked by the red arrow in the above pic.

To copy a file to your windows partitions right click on the file and click on save-> Next

Browse to the Location where you want to save the file to

Click on Next –> Finish and you are done.

Note: It doesn’t have the capability to write to a Linux Partition.

 

Know of any other good software's other than these, do let me know in the comments, I would love to try them all.

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4 Essential Thunderbird Extensions

Mozilla Thunderbird The Desktop Email client from the makers of Firefox comes with the same USP of Firefox, that's Customization.

You can customize the look and feel of thunderbird by adding themes and Icon packs and many extra features through extensions.

Let's look at some of those essential Thunderbird Extensions:

1. Minimize to Tray & Minimize to tray enhancer

2. Contacts Sidebar

3. Zindus

4.Lightning

Minimize to Tray:

This thunderbird extension does what it says, it minimizes thunderbird to the System tray freeing that precious Taskbar real estate every application in your machine fights for.

You need to use the key combo of Ctrl+Shift+M to use it or click on File -> Minimize to tray Or Get the minimize to tray enhancer add-on which adds a blue Icon to minimize to the tray and other useful configurable options like Always minimize to tray instead of to the taskbar, which can be accessed by going to Tools-> Add-ons->Options

Contacts Sidebar:

The Contacts Sidebar add-on moves the contacts to the sidebar providing easy access to the contacts.

You can compose an email by a simple double click on the name in the sidebar.

It also add’s some Pretty Useful search options to search with, by a word it contains or Begin’s with making it easy to locate that elusive email address you use regularly but can’t seem to remember.

Zindus :

Zindus is a add-on that let’s you Import and synchronize your Gmail contacts with your Thunderbird contacts list.

It has a few glitches under certain conditions when syncing with Gmail contacts but works well most of the time , if you come across any issues then checkout this FAQ for Thunderbird contact sync page at Zindus, it has very well written explanations with examples.

Lightning :

Lightning converts Thunderbird into a full fledged organizer by adding a Calendar application which makes it easy to organize and schedule your daily tasks.

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