I have spent months finding the perfect Mail client, I tried: Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Postbox, MailPlane, etc. Yet I always would come back to the web based interface for Gmail. My biggest issue though – as with any web app – is the fact I have to keep it contained within my browser of choice. I am the type of person who needs visual cues of what is going on – icon badges, Growl notification, and the ability to “tab” through my applications and see their respective icons.

Then I came across one of those “Must Have Apps for OSX“. It had the usual : QuickSilver, Cyberduck, VLC, etc. . . but what got me was #2 : Fluid Browser. Now this wasn’t the first time I had heard of Fluid Browser, I have seen it posted on random site before, but this time this mention had a little screenshot along with it – Gmail as a Dock Icon with an Unread Message Badge.

I was in Web App Nirvana.

I quickly downloaded Fluid Browser, and the setup was incredibly easy: put in URL, name for the App, and an Icon. For the icon, I wouldn’t use the favicon – instead I would recommend a nice set of Google Icons – I used the 256px PNGs. This makes them scale nicely in the Dock and in Finder.

So it was in a matter of minutes all my Email App woes were put to rest. For a free solution you cannot beat Fluid Browser, it does its job perfectly with out complicating the whole situation. I now happily read my email from an interface I quite like, all the while Safari does what it is meant to do – surf the Internet.