The GMail team announced that the https connection will be used by default when you login into your Gmail account. This option is not new and is already exist since 2008. So, what is HTTPS? An excerpt from Gmail’s help:

HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is a secure protocol that provides authenticated and encrypted communication.

It is good that Gmail enable it by default from now on. But there is a drawback, using https connection is slower that using the normal http connection. But for better privacy/security protection, I guess that it is better to use https connection.

Another new feature in Google! Just notice this when I was searching something using IE8. Can’t get it to work in Firefox though. :/

ps: The video is recorded using ScreenToaster. Pretty easy to use. Will probably write a post on it in the future.

I notice that breadcrumb navigation is now showing in the Google search result. It is quite random and not all search results have it. Maybe need some SOE. Better result discovery/navigation? What do you think?

Someone of us might be waited for this for a long time (but not me :p), Google finally added the IMAP functionality in Gmail! So, what exactly is IMAP and why is everyone is so excited about it? IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is one of the two protocols that most mail client support. Another more common and widely used protocol is POP (Post Office Protocol). But why people prefer IMAP over POP? The reason is because POP will download a copy of your email when you retrieve your mail using an email client. The email will still available in the server even though you deleted it from your client (ie: Outlook Express, Outlook) However, this is dependent on your mail server provider. For example, Gmail allow you to change the setting of POP. You can choose to either archive, delete or keep a copy (in the mail server) after you download your email to your client. But with IMAP, the client will synchronize with the mail server. So, if you mark you email as read, it will also be reflected in the mail server. You can also check the explanation/advantage of IMAP in the Gmail help page over here.

I’ll post a step-by-step guide on how to setup the Gmail IMAP account in Windows Live Mail later.