Google Apps Hacks

103  - ADJUST YOUR GMAIL LAYOUT

HaCK 41:



By adding a user stylesheet to your browser, you can tweak the

design of any web page, including Gmail.com.

The default Gmail layout is already good, but you might want to adjust some details to improve on it.

For instance, you might think the font size of messages is too small to comfortably read. One thing

you can do is press Ctrl-+ (Command-+ on the Macintosh) in your browser (this works in Internet

Explorer 7 or Firefox 2, among others). But, depending on your browser, this technique may also

change other web pages that you read.

Another approach to tweak the Gmail layout is to add a user stylesheet. Stylesheets—or CSS (short

for “cascading style sheets”)—come in two avors: user stylesheets and author stylesheets. An

author stylesheet is created by the webmaster and delivered to you from the server. (In theory, the

webmaster can create several author stylesheets, one for each medium—printed hard copy, mobile

devices, computer screen, and so on.) A user stylesheet, on the other hand, is stored locally on your

computer, and can override the settings of the author stylesheet. Together, the two styles will be

merged into what you will see displayed in the browser.

Let’s use a simple stylesheet that will turn the background of every web page (not just Gmail) gray:

body {

background-color: gray !important;

}