Installing Firefox 3

GVimail actually requires Firefox version 3, which is in status beta for now. If you don't have Firefox 3 installed yet, go download a version in the language you prefer. Pick the right OS of your computer (Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux). At the time of this writing, the download page is at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html , you could also search for keywords download firefox3 with a search engine.

Installing Vimperator

After you have installed Firefox 3 (or if you already use Firefox 3), you must also download and install the great extension called Vimperator. You have to download 0.6pre version (or newer). 0.5 branches won't work. 0.6pre is available from cvs, but there are daily snapshots you can just pick up and install from Daniel Bainton or Calmar's sites.

Setting Vimperator plugins directory

Vimperator is a Firefox plugin that is pluggable. On Windows, the vimperator plugin directory is in %HOME%\vimperator\plugin or %HOMEPATH%\vimperator\plugin. On Unix, it is ~/.vimperator/plugin . If such directory doesn't exist yet, you have to create it.

Downloading

GMail is an evolutive application. The structure of the HTML page and javascript associated can change at any time and without notice. Extensions like GViMail need to follow such change as soon as possible and release a patch as necessary. On the other hand, users of GViMail need to update their installation as well.

For this, the preferred way to get GViMail is by Subversion, but this is also a complicated one. You need to install a Subversion client and know how to use it. The other and simpler method is to stay tuned, download an archived copy, unpack and play.

Getting source by SVN

If you want to download a SVN client, go to the subversion tigris links page and follow a link to any SVN client. Follow instruction of installing and using it. I'm on Windows and I'm using TortoiseSVN (Only Windows and some MAC OS X users need to be told what is SVN :) )

The Google code's source page informs you of the parameters needed to get the GViMail source by SVN. Download trunk, and put it anywhere you prefer, let's say in /users/me/gvimail. Now you should have a file gvimail.js in /users/me/gvimail/trunk/plugin/.

Now, place an empty file called gvimail.js (whatever name you choose will be okay) in your vimperator plugin directory, and put in it these 2 lines of code: (replacing the path with correct one)

var viberator = typeof(liberator) == 'undefined' ? vimperator : liberator; viberator.io.source("/users/me/gvimail/trunk/plugin/gvimail.js", true);

Getting gvimail by download

Go to http://code.google.com/p/gvimail/downloads/entry and download the latest version there. Unpack the folders plugin and colors into the parent folder of your vimperator plugin directory. In other words, the file gvimail.js should go to vimperator/plugin folder, and gvimail.css to vimperator/colors folder.

Each time you'll download newer version of GViMail, unpack like this and restart Firefox.

Adding Vim-ish style to Gmail

For a better experience, download teramako's plugin called stylechanger and install it at your vimperator's plugin directory. Restart Firefox. Type

:colo gvimail

and voilà.