How To Embed Google Applications Inside Your Sidebar In Firefox

Google Applications have changed many people’s lives…at least mine! It has made it possible to have all of your emails into a single professional web-based account, create, view, and edit all of your documents online, organize yourself with an online calendar, take notes and bring them everywhere, and also chat with everyone without downloading anything.

Yes, this is a pure dream…but could you make it even better somehow?

And indeed you can do so: including all of these incredible services into your Firefox’s sidebar!

In this mini-guide I am going to explain step-by-step how to embed every Google Application in your left sidebar in a matter of seconds.

Gmail

To embed Gmail into Firefox’s sidebar, you really can’t use the normal page: it is too wide, and too complicated to fit in such a small place. So the best way to do it, is to use the Mobile Gmail, the one designed for your mobile phone.

1. Just bookmark this link, http://m.gmail.com, by right clicking it and selecting “Bookmark this link…”, or manually from the Bookmarks menu, and name it as you want (e.g. Mobile Gmail).



2. Now open Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks and look for the site you’ve just added, right-click it, and select properties: you will see a check box that says “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”. Tick it and close the menu.

Now, everytime you click that bookmark, you will get your new embedded Gmail in your sidebar.

Google Talk

To embed Google’s own chat, GTalk, into your sidebar, you will have to repeat the process you have just seen for Gmail, changing the link into http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client

Google Calendar

Again, to include GCal into the sidebar, this is the link to add to your bookmarks: http://www.google.com/calendar/….

Google Notebook

Google Notebook’s link to add: http://www.google.com/notebook/ig?hl=__MSG_locale__

Google Docs

To include Google Docs, there’s an ad-hoc Firefox extension called Google Docs Bar.

It allows you to view your GDocs account directly into your Firefox’s sidebar, upload files using drag&drop, search and filter documents, and more.

Free to download and use.

Link: http://www.gdocsbar.com/