Dear readers,
For those of you that use Gmail and are unaware, you may be shocked and saddened to know that the E-mails you compose to friends, family, business associates don’t arrive in those individuals’ inboxes as you might intend.
The horrible truth is that your E-mails appear to be composed in 10pt. Arial but, in reality, are composed in and sent as 12pt. Times New Roman. See for yourself:
In Gmail:
In the Recipient’s Inbox:
Of course, this is nothing new. This has been the default setting since Gmail began in April of 2004. Granted, you could always just change the font yourself (which is what I do pretty much each and every time) but what confuses me is why Gmail doesn’t provide an option for the "default font" to be automatically set to your preference for each and every new message composed.
(Also, despite what others may say, this has nothing to do with the default font in your browser…Gmail intentionally displays 10pt Arial as the composition font and most definitely sends the E-mails as 12pt. TNR.)
So, tell Google you’re sick of sending people ugly E-mails and vote now for a default font setting to be implemented.
Just as a side note we wanted to mention that, in the grand scheme of things, this one bit of lacking functionality pales in comparison to the good that Google’s Gmail application has brought to the Web. If it wasn’t for Gmail, we’d probably still be using Web mail applications offering a 10mb inbox, POP and SMTP access only available as a paid feature, 1mb allowable attachments and other ghastly options.
I mention this because Gmail, despite the fact that it’s in a 3+ year beta stage, has made a significant difference in the Web 2.0 world. Because of Gmail, we learned in 2004 that new and exciting options, in regards to functionality and expandability, were ready to be used to produce the next generation of Web applications.
