Need another way to express yourself when sending e-mail via Google Gmail, and changing the text color just won't do?

Now you can insert all sorts of emoticons, such as animated smilies, stars, exclamation points, and mini clip-art of objects such as a computer, cell phone, or baseball. Inserting emoticons is simple:

1. Compose or reply to a message in Gmail.

2. If the "Rich formatting" link is shown, click it to switch from plain-text to rich-text formatting. You'll need to use this mode to insert graphical emoticons.


3. Click the "Insert Emoticon" button above the area for the message body (it looks like a smile).

4. A list of emoticons appears - just click one to insert it into your message! Note that there are more emoticons available; click on the tabs underneath the emoticons to switch pages.

Note that for those recipients viewing received e-mail from Gmail accounts in plain-text, emoticons will not be converted to their plain-text equivalents and will only show up as image placeholders, if at all. For example, for those using the Alpine text-based e-mail software, a happy-face smilie will not show up as :) but merely as [IMAGE]. Emoticons will show up as attached images, however.

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