Hacking Gmail

Chapter 3 — Gmail Power Tips
17
If you’re not using Internet Explorer — and for the sake of this book, at least, I recommend
you do not, and employ Firefox (as I am in this chapter’s screenshots) or
Mozilla instead — this is a drawback to the keyboard shortcuts. Grasp your mouse,
and click the Send button instead.
The keyboard shortcuts come into their own when dealing with spam. Figure 3-4
shows my Inbox full of the stuff.
FIGURE 3-4: An Inbox full of spam
(I have to be honest here — Gmail’s spam filters caught all of this before it hit my
Inbox. I just moved it out there for the sake of this demonstration.)
If you wake to find an Inbox full of such nastiness, it’s easy to get rid of. Press o to
open a message, and when it has opened, press the exclamation point (!) to mark it
as spam. By using my left hand to press the Shift+1 to make the exclamation point,
and my right hand to press o, I find I can get quite a satisfying rhythm going and
my Inbox clear in little to no time. Making “Pow!” noises is also recommended.
You can, of course, use the mouse to select the ones you want and then hit an
exclamation point.