New Gmail Lab Feature: Inserting images

Friday, April 10, 2009

Again, a new Gmail lab feature! Allows you to insert images into a message body. You can upload and insert image files in your computer, or insert images by URLs. Great stuff!

To get it working:

Enable the Inserting Images lab feature
Update Mailplane to at least 2.0.9 or the latest 2.1 beta version
Make sure you use "Rich text" in your message
Click the "Insert Image" button...

Posted by Ruben on 04/10 at 07:44 PM
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Comments

Posted by Felix Geisendörfer (04/11 at 12:34 PM)

Sweet! One of the last things I missed from Apple Mail.

Question: Can I use this with an image in my clipboard from within Mailplane? Haven’t got it to work so far.

Thanks,—Felix

Posted by Christopher R. Murphy (04/11 at 08:59 PM)

Thanks for enabling this so quickly.

Any thoughts to making drag/drop of images into MailPlane actually embed in the message like this, as opposed to just attaching to the email as a file (like it currently works)? Perhaps as an option to do so, if the labs feature is installed. Not sure of the technicalities behind this.

Thanks,
Chris

Posted by Samuel Mikel Bowles (04/12 at 03:15 PM)

Will it be possible in a future update to drag an image into a message the same way you can in Mail.app?

Posted by Ruben (04/17 at 05:59 PM)

@Christopher: To insert a picture, you need to press the “picture” toolbar item above the rich text. Drag and drop doesn’t work (yet?).

@Felix and @Samuel: That would be really cool. Mailplane’s current implementation is a first step, I’ll explore the possibilities to use drag and drop and other means to attach pictures.

Ruben

Posted by Samuel Mikel Bowles (05/20 at 10:57 AM)

Hey Ruben, just wondered if you had learned anything more about the feasibility of allowing images to be dragged into messages a la Mail.app.

Posted by Ruben (05/20 at 11:01 AM)

Hi Samuel,
It’s high on my list, but haven’t started this project so far.
Cheers,
Ruben

Posted by Online Degree (06/17 at 09:02 PM)

Gmail’s rich-text editor has never been very powerful, especially if you look at other web applications like Google Docs or Zoho. An important missing feature is inserting images in a message: you can attach photos, but they’re usually displayed at the bottom of the message and not all mail clients show thumbnails. One workaround was to upload the images to a website, open it in a different window and then drag it to Gmail’s editor.

Now you no longer have to do this since Gmail added inserting images as a Labs feature. After enabling the feature, you’ll notice a new photo icon when you compose a message using the rich editor. You can insert images from your computer and images published online, by typing their addresses. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t use the new Flash uploader, so you can’t select more than one photo at a time.

Posted by Samuel Mikel Bowles (06/25 at 12:00 AM)

Hey, just checking in again with my once a month request ;)

Any progress on dragging images into messages?

Thanks,
Samuel

Posted by Ruben (06/25 at 07:11 AM)

Hi Samuel,
Yes, there’s progress :)
The 2.1-beta version supports image drag and drop with this the “Inserting Image” lab feature.
Here’s how it works:
1) Click the “Insert Image” icon to open the dialog
2) Drag one or more pictures and drop them onto your message window - wait for the upload
3) Select one of the images and click “Insert”

If you like to try it, here’s the download page: http://mailplaneapp.com/download/beta
Hope this helps.
Ruben

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