fixed width font in Gmail

Does Gmail have a setting somewhere to make message text appear in a fixed width font? 'Cause if it does, I sure can't find it...

To force it to use a fixed width font anyway, I added the following to userContent.css in my Firefox profile:

div.msg div.mb {
  font-family: monospace !important;
  font-size: 12px !important;
}

(Firefox's 'View Selection Source' came in real handy trying to figure out these classnames; regular View Source is a pain on Gmail because the whole thing's Javascript-generated.)

css
coding
gmail

posted Wednesday, July 21, 2004

comments

1. posted by P01 at 23:19 on July 21, 2004

Per user style sheets have been popular these days.

Though the chances that that CSS rule may interfere with another site are small, I suggest you to try one of these extensions :

* URIid ( http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/uriid ) which adds an id of the form www.milov-nl to the body tag of every page you visit.

* MyOwnCSS ( http://www.raphinou.com/cgi-bin/myowncss/main.cgi ) does the same as URIid, except that the CSS are stored on an external server and shared between the users. In a way, it the del.icio.us of the CSS customization.

Notice, that I haven't tried them yet, but I gonna install URIid and give it a try.

2. posted by milov at 00:04 on July 22, 2004

Neato... And add these two extensions to really make the most of it:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/chromedit
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/editcss

3. posted by P01 at 00:11 on July 22, 2004

Yep, EditCSS is a must.
damn, I love FireFox.

4. posted by milov at 00:18 on July 22, 2004

*sniff* I've known Firefox since it was just a little Phoenix, standing no taller than 0.1... It's certainly grown up to be one fine browser. http://milov.nl/1594

5. posted by huphtur at 09:48 on July 22, 2004

Web Developer Extension comes with it's own "Edit CSS".
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/

6. posted by yahoo.com,rwoudsma,Woudloper at 09:16 on July 23, 2004

As I do not have a qmail account and I am a regular reader of your blog I would like to know what the use is of a 'fixed font size' for the mail?

And indead 'EditCSS' is a must for everyone who is editing (and doing other stuff) with websites!

7. posted by milov at 09:25 on July 23, 2004

Woudloper: It's not about the size, it's about the width. I like the characters in my mail to be evenly spaced; I'm used to that from way back, when every mail reader used a fixed width font, that way ascii art etc. doesn't get all squished together.

I even forced Outlook Express to use fixed width by setting its 'Proportional font' to 'Courier New'.

8. posted by yahoo.com,rwoudsma,Woudloper at 11:50 on July 23, 2004

milov: you are absolutely right. I was reading 'size' in-stead-of 'width'. My mistake...

Does this fix (or tweak) also works for HTML email messages or did you set your presence (if that is possible within QMail) to ignore HTML messages?

9. posted by Mathieu 'P01' HENRI at 12:22 on July 23, 2004

fixed font size is a must to make CODE pasted as is in the body of emails readable. Not to mention, in text editors. Damn, it always scares the s**t out of me when I see some body using a proportionnal font in a text/code editor.

10. posted by gmail.com,gillamhall,g. at 03:52 on August 26, 2004

used your code above in Firefox's serContent.css with no luck (Mac OS X, Firefox 091). Idea as to what I could have done wrong? Seemed so straightforward ...

11. posted by gmail.com,crazymagsters,Maggie at 18:17 on May 20, 2005

i waz just wondering how can u change the color or size or font of the typing if u no plz email to me how crazymagsters@gmail.com

12. posted by gmail.com,sysprv,ohshady at 08:18 on October 07, 2005

Just thought I'd give something back :-)

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2004Aug/0135.html

@-moz-document url-prefix(mail.google.com/mail/), domain(mail.google.com)
{
div#rc {
display: none !important;
}
font, div#mb_0 {
font-family: monospace !important;
font-size: 12px !important;
}
}

13. posted by ohshady2 at 06:50 on November 12, 2005

We can do much better;

@-moz-document url-prefix(mail.google.com/mail/), domain(mail.google.com) {
/* the cell that contains the message, utils, ads */
td#fi {
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px !important;
}
font[size="-1"] /* print view */, div#msgs /* conversation view */ {
font-family: monospace !important;
font-size: 1.2em !important;
}
}

14. posted by orcon.net.nz,hl,Hugh at 02:45 on December 02, 2005

Re: oshady2,

Thanks for the great code! How would one go about getting the composition textarea to also display in monospace?

Thanks again,
Hugh. ;)

15. posted by mash at 16:51 on December 06, 2005

Very useful modification. I have had trouble making this work. I have copied the relevant text and used the mozilla chrome editor extension to insert it (I've tried both userContent.css and userChrome.css) but to no avail.

Do I need to tell Firefox to check these files?

Is the code still working for you all?

16. posted by orcon.net.nz,hl,Hugh at 07:10 on December 09, 2005

Hi,

Yes it still works for me. Try editing the files manually:

Go to Start > Run and type "%AppData%" without the quote marks.

Navigate to \Mozilla\Firefox\Profile\Chrome and edit/create userContent.css, filling it with the code in post #13 above.

Hope this helps,

Hugh. :-)
mailto:hughlilly##NOSPAM@GMail##NOSPAM.com

17. posted by gmail.com,prehor,Petr Rehor at 17:11 on December 24, 2005

Thanks for your idea. There is my userContent.css:

@-moz-document domain(mail.google.com)
{
body,td,input,textarea,select,button {
font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif !important;
}

.ab,.cd button {
font-size: 100% !important;
}

.mb {
font-family: monospace !important;
font-size: 100% !important;
}
}

18. posted by Stephan Walter at 21:40 on January 13, 2006

I played with the CSS a bit and came up with some code that also makes the compose window have a fixed-width font.

For easier cut&paste, get the code from

http://stephan.walter.name/Gmail_CSS_tweaks

19. posted by martynov.info,sergey,Sergey Martynov at 17:24 on November 24, 2008

There's a greasemonkey script, which adds a button in gmail interface and allows you to turn fixed font on and off easily: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/37471

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