One thing I really miss when I'm using Gmail compared to Apple's Mail.app or Outlook is the ability to include inline images. Whenever I'm trying to explain almost anything I rely on pictures, and if you can't insert them in the flow of the text they lose their context. It's tough telling a story if you can't illustrate it.
There isn't a technical reason behind their lack of inline images, you can actually insert your own if you're willing to jump through some hoops:
- First upload the image to a website, using ImageShack if you don't have your own
- Open up that image in a new browser window
- Do a 'Select All' in Firefox to copy the HTML for that image
- Paste the HTML into the email composition box within Gmail
Having to upload images a big pain, and still doesn't allow the simple insertion of a desktop app. If there's any Gmail programmers reading, here's what you need to do to enable inline image attachments:
- Set the Content-Disposition header of the image attachment to 'inline'
- Set the Content-ID header to a unique identifier (the cid)
- In the HTML body of the message, reference it as <img src="cid:<that identifier>"/>
Gmail even displays messages created like this correctly, so there's obviously the internal know-how within Google to implement it. The lack of this widely-requested feature several years after launch is a real shame, and part of the reason I've become worried about Gmail's lack of progress. Here's hoping they're busy behind the scenes!
good
Posted by: gopivista | January 31, 2009 at 04:58 AM