Tutorial Thursday
Back in July (my how the time flies) we demonstrated a way that would keep your Spam folder clear in Gmail. Every time Google labeled an email as “Spam” it would be sent straight to your trash. That is a good solution for some people but sometimes it is nice to go flip through the messages before you dump them to make sure you haven’t missed the $1,000,000 you’ve inherited from your second cousin’s aunt’s nephew-in-law who lives in Norway. Yes, you know those emails. 
Firefox users can optionally hide the Spam count by installing the CustomizeGoogle extension but there isn’t anything else that I really use in that extension so it isn’t worth me installing it. This fix can easily be applied to both Opera and Firefox though without installing a single thing.
Firefox users:
- Locate and open the userContent.css in your Firefox profile directory. The file is in the Chrome folder inside your profile. If the file does not exist you will have to make it (see here for more details). Another alternative would be to download and use the Stylish Firefox extension which makes it easy to add custom CSS for websites.
- Copy the following text and paste it into the userContent.css file:
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://mail.google.com),url-prefix(https://mail.google.com)
{#ds_spam b {visibility: hidden;}
#ds_spam b::before {content: "Spam"font-weight: normal;visibility: visible;}} - Save that file and pull up Gmail in Firefox…the Spam counter is all gone!
Opera users:
- Right-click and save this file to your computer.
- Press F12 and choose “Edit site preferences” from the context menu.
- Select the Display tab and in the “My style sheet” section choose the file that you just saved.
- Press OK to save your changes and reload Gmail to see that your Spam counter is all gone!
That is one thing I have always loved about Opera and that is how you can easily add custom stylesheets for websites without having to install anything. There is so much that you can do with creating your own stylesheets to make your web browsing experience a lot better. Hopefully this will just tip the iceberg for you and maybe you’ll start to think up some of your own stylesheets that you can create or maybe you’ll find some nifty ones at userstyles.org.
But, why exactly would anyone want to disable the spam counter?
I prefer CustomizeGoogle. Because it’s easy to enable/disable
yeah, personally i prefer having the spam counter visible. if nothing else, its a reminder to periodically check to make sure no legitimate messages got flagged.
I personally enjoy seeing my spam count. I usually have around 1000, often more. Google deletes them every 30 days so that’s 33 spam emails a day… man I love Gmail. So far its not marked an as spam when they’re not, and I even convinced it to put those damn Bebo and MySpace invites in the spam too.
I’m tempted to start taking bets on what my count is going to be.
Many people don’t like constantly seeing the number there because they feel the need to delete the message every time a new one arrives.
Man I love GMail too, amazing spam filter but I’m not bothered by spam counting tho.
Actually I don’t use Thunderbird any more I just installed a fast and sleek browser (K-Ninja, based on K-Meleon)set GMail as my homepage and forward all my other email addresses to my GMail account.
i used to be a little OCD with the spam too, but i forced myself to let it go.
I’m in therapy right now for it but I am making progress. I just got over having to check my mail every minute.
So are you one of those who stops to check their e-mail on their way back to bed from the bath room?
Only every minute? I check it every ten seconds!
No, seriously, I like the idea of hiding the spam counter, but your way seems like an unnecessary hassle. Not that it would be difficult, but I don’t like having unnecessary edits on my Firefox user-X files.