Use Gmail for iPad in Google Chrome

Google has recently released a version of Gmail optimized for iPad, Apple's lightweight computer. Gmail for iPad is similar to the iPhone version, but the main difference is that Gmail has a reading pane.

"We're launching an experimental two-pane user interface to take advantage of its large touchscreen and tablet form factor. Building upon the Gmail for mobile web app, this new interface displays your conversations on the left and your messages on the right hand side."

Here's how to create a Google Chrome shortcut that launches Gmail for iPad:

1. launch Chrome and go to http://mail.google.com

2. create a shortcut by clicking on the page menu and selecting
"create application shortcuts"


3. you'll see a Gmail shortcut on your desktop and you'll need to edit it. If you use Windows, right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties", go to the target field and append a space, followed by this value (a short version of iPad's user-agent and a new Chrome profile):

 --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; iPhone OS 3_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 Mobile/7B314" --user-data-dir="%tmp%\gmipad"


4. close all Chrome windows and click on the desktop shortcut for Gmail.


Obviously, Gmail for iPad works in other browsers, as well. You only need to change your browser's user-agent to:

Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10