Today, I dramatically improved my email experience.

Gmail Offline is a Chrome “app” that stores some of your inbox in localstorage so you can access some of your mail without a connection. It uses (roughly) the same UI as the iPad app:

After going through my unread messages with this new interface, I realized I actually preferred it to the standard gmail webapp. Not only was it simpler, cleaner, and mail-only, I noticed the page also had significantly better load speeds (roughly instant rather than a couple seconds). As an added bonus, it zooms in more smoothly, which is nice on my high-res 11” Air. Best of all, my beloved keyboard shortcuts (j, k, x, I, U, *n) still work beautifully.

I was hooked, but I didn’t want to have to click the app button on the new tab page to access the inbox: I usually prefer to keep my fingers on the keyboard and [cmd]-L my way around the web. I couldn’t find a way to set my default interface to the offline, tablet-optimized look, so it didn’t look like gmail.com was going to be redirecting where I wanted it to.

To get around the issue, I went to Chrome’s custom search engines (settings > search > manage search engines) and created a new one. Since it has to have a search component, I did some snooping: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/637/?mui=ca#tl/priority/^u takes you to unread mail, https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/637/?mui=ca#tl/priority/^i takes you to the raw inbox. So, I put the %s for search after the carat, and can take myself to inbox or unread with a simple “i” or “u”.

This is how my settings look:

and this is how it looks like when I type “off” and hit [tab] in the address bar:

which would take me to the main inbox.

The biggest downside I’ve discovered so far is that the top message in your inbox will *always* be marked as “read”. Since I use my unread box as a to-do list, this means I have to take care when I visit that view, since the top item will be effectively marked as “done” if I’m not careful (ie; hit U before leaving the page). This could also be a nice kick in the pants to get something done, but time will tell.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this; comment below, on hackernews, or by reaching out to me at rattray.alex@gmail.com.

Hi, I’m Alex:

Seattleite through and through.

Class of ‘14 at the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton).

Passionate Pythonista.

Working on Emerald (formerly EssaySafe), an application that allows students to take closed-note exams in class on their laptops. (co-founder, CEO, primary developer)

Projects I am or have been involved with include:

1. PennCycle, a bike share for the University of Pennsylvania. (Advisor. Formerly: co-founder, Director of Operations, developer)
2. DecisionCandy, a web application improving feedback for the fashion design process. Currently dormant. (co-founder, developer)
3. A live-tweeting Musical Toilet that was written about in PandoDaily, Penn’s 34st Magazine, and the PennApps blog.
4. An informal, high-level guide on how to teach yourself to build web applications.
5. Histography, an interactive, annotated graph of world history.
6. Coursegrapher, an interactive visualization of courses at Penn.
7. DecisionCandy HackPack, a mashup of useful technologies to help jumpstart web development at hackathons.
8. 10-G, an interactive visualization of companies using information on their 10-Q’s. Currently offline, but it was pretty cool.
9. Acvte, a blogging platform that uses Google Docs as an editor. Acvte powers DocBlogger, which powers this site.
10. The Backwoods, an independent high school newspaper I founded and ran my Senior year at Shorewood High School near Seattle.
11. Several others

You can get in touch with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or by email at rattray.alex@gmail.com.

This is what I look like: