Get Plugged into the Plug-in Experience

Happy New Year!

Last year – errr, week - we blogged about our new favorite themes. (I've been using the Football theme myself. It just puts me in the right mood for the college bowl games. If you haven't already, try it out and pick your personal favorite!) This week, we want to you let know about other new features we added to the latest beta release of webmail.

Plug-ins

If you're an avid webmail user, you've probably already used the AIM® plug-in to chat with your friends. In this release, we've added even more content which you can get without ever leaving your inbox. You may have also noticed that we've added a gallery and a sidebar to help you manage all the plug-ins.

To browse the gallery, click on the + button at the top of the sidebar. You'll see tabs for different categories of plug-ins. We now offer a wide range of plug-ins, from TMZ to weather, latest news headlines to daily horoscopes, handy sticky notes for all your "scribbles" and shortcut to Mapquest®, etc. Take a look under the tabs and click "Add It" for any plug-in you want to add.

For me, I can't live without AIM. I also like to keep on eye on my Yahoo!® and Gmail_TM accounts and the latest celebrity gossip. The plug-ins I selected are added to the sidebar and marked as such. After you add all the plug-ins you want under each tab, you can even reorder the icons in the sidebar by drag and drop.

Gmail Plug-in

I mentioned that I like to monitor my Gmail account while I'm in AOL webmail. To do this, simply add the Gmail plug-in via the gallery. Once the Gmail plug-in is selected, you'll be prompted to login as you normally would to the Gmail account. You'll get a preview of your Gmail inbox, right inside your AOL inbox. Talk about convenience!

We've been working hard to make your webmail experience personalizable (sic), whether it is picking a seasonal theme or adding a useful plug-in like real-time stock quotes. Take a look at the new beta, customize your experience and, as always, let us know what you think! We'd love to hear about your favorite plug-ins or suggestions for future plug-ins.

Enjoy!

Written by Rose Jen, Product Manager

AOL Mail Team on Facebook

About the Blog

This blog is published and maintained by the Mail team at AOL.

Please share your comments with us. You can bookmark this blog at: http://mailblog.aol.com or use AOL Keyword: Mail Blog

P.S.: Constructive criticisms are encouraged, but any comments with profanity, non-advancing communications, defamatory, objectionable, offensive, venting content will be removed. Please keep the topics product-related. Thanks for keeping this area "family-safe."

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

1. Can we get a Comcast Webmail plug-in?

Posted at 11:43PM on Jan 5th 2009 by espy15228

2. I suggest a "Facebook plug-in" and I'd like to a weather international:I haved set "NY City" but I'm from outside the Usa...

Posted at 1:50AM on Jan 6th 2009 by stefanoscurati

3. The question I am most often asked is how to make AOL Webmail the default email app so that clicking on an email link brings up AOL Webmail and not Outlook.

You can do this with gmail and others. Is there a way to do this with AOL Webmail?

Thanks

Posted at 4:27PM on Jan 8th 2009 by Dave Johnson

4. @Dave Johnson: This is actually not so much a feature of AOL Webmail - or any other web application for that matter - but rather a feature of your Operating System. This is a setting within you'r operating system. While this can be done manually it is obviously not very convenient. We will provide a tool (you need a piece of software on your machine to change those settings) which will make it simple to do this.

@espy15228, @stefanoscurati: Thank you for your suggestions. They are a great idea and we will look into them right away.

Posted at 3:36PM on Jan 9th 2009 by marcelbmbecker

5. Why don't you program the text message thing to store texts that are sent to you while you are logged out of AIM? I very often send texts to cell phones of friends and family members from AIM when logged into my web mail and I think it's a great feature but sometimes I'll send a text to somebody's phone, then AIM will get logged out on its own, then the person tries to text me back but their text doesn't get through to me if my AIM is logged out and then I have to apologize to them that this "super cool feature" I told them about made them send a text that didn't get through to me. If somebody else with an AIM account sends me a message when I'm logged off I'll still be able to see their message when I log back in but I wish that would also work with people sending me texts from their phones.

Posted at 12:07AM on Jan 11th 2009 by Christian

6. Dear AOL/AIM,

This is important: Please give back the Insert Pictures option. This was a unique feature of AIM/AOL mail which Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. are not giving. Please give back this option. Kindly email (owner/moderator of this blog can see by email address) me and let me know why did you take that feature away and let me know when will you give it back. It should be back immediately really!

Thanks,

--

Posted at 12:44PM on Jan 11th 2009 by sunnierstudent

7. Where in my email page could I find the web camera action to call my relatives, I wish to see them. Long years I did not see them.

Posted at 11:29AM on Jan 12th 2009 by Felipe Caal

8. I can't seem to make the new feature stay when I sign out of AOL Mail. Can anyone tell me why?
How do I fix this?

Posted at 8:20PM on Jan 12th 2009 by babistar84

9. @Christian: This is an excellent idea. We will talk to the AIM team and maybe we can have something like this pretty soon.

@sunnierstudent: You should actually see an explanation when clicking the insert pictures button. We do regret that we had to take it out as much as you do. We had to temporarily disable this feature because it was using AOL Pictures to achieve this functionality. Since AOL Pictures has been discontinued we were forced to take the feature down as well. However, the team is working with other partners to bring this feature back asap and make it even better, more useful and more open (You will be able to use any media product out there, not just AOL Pictures).

@Felipe Caal: Video Chat is not supported by Webmail. You might want to try AIM (http://www.aim.com). AIM supports video chat.

@babistar84: Are you going back to http://beta.webmail.aol.com when signing back in again? Remember, that those new features are only available on beta right now - not on http://webmail.aol.com

Posted at 3:37PM on Jan 14th 2009 by marcelbmbecker

10. Thanks for taking note of my idea.

Posted at 1:29PM on Jan 15th 2009 by Christian

11. hey marcelmbbaker i would really like if aol have interoablity with like yahoo messgner and window live messgner in aol mail web client using aim cause i hate having two account just like have aol just my main account for mail,instant messgner this would keep a lot aol user and new user can u and the team think of something neat to this also can update aol calander and myaol with some new theme and custom color include ajax cause it look old and how about youtube as plug in aol mail i like hear ur feedback aol is really changing thing up

Posted at 12:28PM on Jan 16th 2009 by aol user

12. Hey , does anyone know how to get the addresses to AUTO select, I have not had to type in every email address before. Now I do , waste of time. WHY did this feature change? Please help
me.....

Posted at 10:11AM on Jan 21st 2009 by nick meletis

13. @Nick Meletis: This feature did not change and should just work as it always does. It might be that your Addressbook has trouble syncing. You can try two things if this problem still occurs: Add a dummy contact to your addressbook, save it and wait to let it sync (you can delete it again). If the problem still exists after that, shift-click on "help" and click on "Reset" next to Address State.

Posted at 11:54AM on Jan 21st 2009 by marcelbmbecker

14. I used to be able to see in my inbox what time of day the emails were sent to me. Now I only see the From, Attachment, Subject, Date, and Flag. How can I get the Time category back?

Thanks!

Posted at 3:09PM on Jan 21st 2009 by Sara Grier

15. @Sara Grier: I assume you are using AOL Webmail (http://webmail.aol.com). There is no "Time" column - however we do show the time a mail was sent if it was sent "Today". If the date of the mail is -1 of the current date we only show the date.

Posted at 8:52PM on Jan 21st 2009 by marcelbmbecker