Integrated Gmail Firefox extension brings all your favorite Google services to Gmail.

If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google News and the other Google services a lot then you might surely love this Firefox extension.

Integrated Gmail is a nice little Firefox extension that brings all (or most) of your favorite Google services to your Gmail page. Once you configure to tell the extension what services do you need in one page it does a pretty neat job of laying out one service after the other on your Gmail page.

It doesn’t stop there. The developers must have cleverly thought about this scenario. Since Gmail boasts those sidebar for navigation and chat and what not, it’s sometimes a screen space that’s not properly used. So the extension allows you to get rid of those sidebars. This would be particularly helpful when you use Google News or Reader or other services that would look better on a full screen.

Start by downloading the Integrated Gmail extension from Mozilla Add-ons site.

Once installed you might have to restart Firefox. Once done, it would be better to configure the extension to suite your need than to compromise with the defaults that it comes with.

Click on “Tools” and then on the “Add-ons” menu. Once on the “Add-ons” dialog locate “Integrated Gmail 2.0.1” (your version number might vary) and then click on the “Preferences” button.

On the Integrated Gmail Options dialog you could see a bunch of options. The most interesting and useful being the “Element Selection” section. You might see “Mail”, “Reader” and “Calendar” options listed there.

If you use other Google services then click on the “Add” button to add new services to the list.

You can arrange it using the arrow buttons below. On to the right-side you can see couple more options that’s mostly to make the extension fit to your needs. Choose the ones that make sense to you.

Once done and when you dismiss all the open dialogs, refresh your Gmail page and you should be able to see the Integrated Gmail extension in play. You can collapse and expand the services that you like to avoid long scrolling.

If you could notice there is a green arrow that’s stacked on the top-right-side, bottom-left-side and at the bottom-right-side. Those arrows helps you get rid of the header and sidebar spaces. You can always reclaim those spaces by clicking on the buttons again.

I was just so impressed with this extension because of the fact that I don’t have to load those many different tabs to get to all my favorite Google services. Of course, it comes with a price that you might incur a minor performance penalty. On my tests it wasn’t noticeable much but depending on the connection speed that you have you might experience. But given the usefulness it’s up to you if you can trade-off the minor performance penalty for the handiness that this extension brings in.

I hope you liked the Integrated Gmail extension for Firefox. If you find any other use of this or if you have any comments on this please share it with us on the comment section below.

Download Integrated Gmail Firefox extension.

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Firefox, Integrated Gmail, Google Apps