Googlemail (aka Gmail) is just lovely, but there are a few features that converts from desktop email clients might miss. One such facility is the concept of templates.

Message templates (called Stationery in some clients) are a feature whereby if you regularly send the same basic information in an email, or lay it out in a particular format, you can save a base message that you can reuse when composing a new email instead of writing a new one from scratch.

For instance, a potential template for a very communicative shop owner might be:

--
Dear xxx
Thank you for buying xxxxxxx for £xxxx. I hope you enjoy using it greatly.
--

But, the Poorhouse hears readers say, Gmail doesn't have that feature yet! Well not built in, but with careful use of URL parameters, you can fake it rather well. To save an explanation involving words like "hexadecimal", just get yourself down to the Gmail-template Generator.

Whilst it's actually a module for Google's Personalized Homepage, you can use it to generate templates for other purposes by pressing the "Play with live preview" button. Simply write out your template as desired in that mode, and hit Generate. You'll get taken to a page in Googlemail with the message filled in in the style of the template.

Before doing anything else, bookmark or otherwise record the address of this page from the address bar in your browser. This URL now constitutes your Gmail template. Whenever you want to write a message in the template format again, simply direct your web browser to it.

As an example (for Googlemail users only), here's one such resulting address.