Gmail got even better with IMAP support

Google has now officially rolled-out IMAP support to all gmail users. Gmail has previously offered POP3 support for free (something that Yahoo! still only provides to paid users), but IMAP has a few advantages over POP3 that makes it more appealing to other users.

According to wikipedia, IMAP's (Internet Message Access Protocol) advantages over POP3 includes:

Connected and disconnected modes of operation
When using POP3, clients typically connect to the e-mail server briefly, only as long as it takes to download new messages. When using IMAP, clients often stay connected as long as the user interface is active and download message content on demand. For users with many or large messages, this IMAP usage pattern can result in faster response times.

Multiple clients simultaneously connected to the same mailbox
The POP3 protocol requires the currently connected client to be the only client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP protocol specifically allows simultaneous access by multiple clients and provides mechanisms for clients to detect changes made to the mailbox by other, concurrently connected, clients.

In practical terms, if you're a typical Gmail power user that has more than a gigabyte of messages, IMAP would result to faster response time on your email client as messages are downloaded by demand. When clinking to your inbox, by default only message headers are downloaded. On my account where I had more than 1000 emails in my inbox, my client listed all my emails almost immediately. Also, labels that are applied to my messages are also downloaded as folders by my client, which is very neat especially if you're using labels to organize your emails.

The second advantage is especially useful if your using diferrent computers to access your Gmail via a destop email account (a laptop, office, or home computer for example). IMAP keeps all the changes made to each client (computer) concurrent or synchronize. For example, when you have read a message on one client, that would be marked as read on any other clients you're using. When you delete a message or move it to a diferrent folder, that change will also be reflected on the other clients.

To enable IMAP, you need to enable IMAP on your Gmail settings page:



Make sure your email client also supports IMAP. Some of the popular email clients out there with IMAP support includes Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution for Linux and even Opera's built in mail client.