Gmail and Yahoo! Mail Beautifiers

I always considered the ads in Gmail inbox to be quite annoying. Like most of the webmasters, I am never going to click on a Adsense ad. I don’t mind whether it is on my site or not, I am not going to do that. Hence I searched the internet and found two GreaseMonkey scripts that allows you to remove the ads from Gmail andYahoo! Mail. I have tested the script with Opera User Scriptand it works with Opera too. If you are still an IE user, then you have no other option but switch over to Opera/Firefox or hope that the next version of IE will include support for userscript.

• The first script is Gmail Beautifier by Cipher. The addon hides/shows ads in Gmail, widens email body, removes beta from Gmail logo & gives buttons a better look. Removal of beta from Gmail logo is disabled by default, you will have to enable it by uncommenting a few lines. Personally, I don’t mind the beta part in the logo.
• The Yahoo Mail Beta Ad Remover hides the ads at the right side of the page in Yahoo! Mail beta. Yahoo! Mail already allows you to hide the right ad pane their by increasing the width of the reading pane. But on clicking the next message, the ad pane automatically pops out.

Inorder to install the script for Firefox, you must download and install the GreaseMonkey extension from the Firefox Addon Repository. After installing the extension and restarting Firefox, clicking on the “Install this script” link at the right of the script homepage at UserScripts.org will install will popup an installation window. Click install and reload Gmail /Yahoo! Mail and you are done.

For installing the script in Opera, save the script somewhere on your HardDisk, say C:\\Program Files\\Opera\\Profile\\UserJs\\, or anywhere you like. After that go Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content > Javascript Options in your Opera browser and click the choose button at the bottom of the window and select the directory where you saved the userscripts. Reload your webmail window and enjoy Ad free version of your favorite webmail service.

Before I finish this post, I want to warn all of you that removing/hiding ads from Gmail/Yahoo! Mail is unethical and illegal. It is against Gmail/Yahoo! Mail terms. Due to these reasons and the fact that I always use my mail client for sending and receiving mails, I am not using these scripts. Hence, if you sue these scripts, do it at your own risk. Well, we all know that there is no risk, but still I have warned you :).