Gmail recently updated its contacts manager to be a little smarter and more useful, but webmail-based PIMs like the one in Gmail still have one huge drawback -- filling in forms outside of Gmail.
For instance, say you're on a site that has a "send to your friends" form and you want to pass something along via e-mail. Better hope you know all your friends' addresses or you're going to have to head into Gmail and start using some cut-and-paste trickery.
Or, you could install the Google Contacts Autocomplete Greasemonkey script.
The script creates a UI experience similar to what you get when filling in the "To" field in Gmail -- autocomplete suggestions based on what you've typed -- but enables that feature on any web form.
There are some drawback though. For instance, if you're used to Google suggestions, which are ranked according to how often you e-mail a contact, you may find the Greasemonkey version lacking since it uses purely alphabetical sorting.
The other potential annoyance is with forms where you just want to enter your own e-mail address. Google Contacts Autocomplete will automatically make suggestions for every e-mail form, which might make it more annoying than useful.
Still, if you've been looking for an easy way to get e-mail address autocomplete outside of Gmail, Google Contacts Autocomplete fits the bill. Naturally you need to be using a browser that supports Greasemonkey for the script to work.
[via Google Operating System]
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