But anyway…

Here is what is really important:  Gmail has always supported signatures, but they were lame. You could write in plain text and split it into multiple lines. This all changed today when Gmail introduced “rich text” signatures, so I thought I’d walk through what you can do now.

Part 1: Rich is mostly about formatting

To see your signature, go to Settings and then the General tab. You’ll see the signature window about half-way down the page.

As you can see from my screenshot above, rich formatting gives you that toolbar that you’ve seen above your Gmail for so long. Using the simple buttons like bold, italic and underline, you can add basic flourishes. There are also font options, colors and high-lighting for your spicy new signature. One of my favorite additions is that you can insert true links into your emails.  For example, you can put a link to “my site” rather than spelling out the web address of your homepage.

Part 2: Inserting photos

Inserting photos into your signature is now much easier, although it still requires a bit of work. The first step is to click on this little button:

Once you’ve done this, you’ll be asked for a website where you’ve stored your photo. Yes, I realize that it’s a bit of a pain to have to keep the image online, but as you can see, once you have the link it is very easy to include a photo – even a very stupid one.

When you’re done typing the address, you should see the image appear in the box below the address field (as mine did above). Click OK to finish.

When you’re done with part 1 and/or part 2, don’t forget to save your work! You wouldn’t want to lose it!

Have fun with the new signatures. Feel free to brag about any cool ideas in the comments!
~ab

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Part of the video that I find particularly interesting is the conversation around the magazine cover.  When I was a kid, I got a subscription to Rolling Stone and I’d read it cover to cover.  However, it was the cover art that drew me into each volume, enticing me with (admittedly half-naked) beautiful shots of my favorite stars and short, but catchy taglines.  Here is a link to one of those covers.

I think the issue is larger than just magazines.  We’ve started a fantastic conversion from paper to e-whatever.  However, we’ve forgotten some of our favorite parts – the things that made us read in the first place.  As much as we’d love to pretend, it’s not all about the text.  There is a reason that artists have labored on the surrounding graphics for centuries.

Right now, I’m reading 20,000 leagues under the sea by Jules Verne.  It’s a surprisingly easy read, filled with adventure and lovely science.  The kindle version I’m reading has been cleaned of all images and I can’t help feeling like I’m missing out on half of the experience.  Take a look at this cover (left) of the original book in 1871.  I love the little sea explorers in the bottom left corner and the varied beasts battling it out.  This image was not in my version and I’m glad I went to Wikipedia to find it.

In the end, my thoughts haven’t changed much since I reviewed the kindle for the first time.  The graphics and layouts are the next step.  For the web, we have CSS (cascading style sheets), a method of organizing pieces of HTML (that’s the web language) into a magazine like format.  I apply a “float left” to the image above and the text magically wraps around it.  This can be understood by nearly every browser in the world.  Why can’t we do this for e-books and e-magazines?  We could apply CSS to the dull text of our digital texts and include images without developing anything new?

Anyway, them’s my thoughts.  I’d love to hear what others have to say.  Enjoy the video!

~ab