Gmail has IMAP!
Finally. Many thought this would never happen.
And just like Free software usually, it seems to be the handiwork of someone scratching an itch.
Notes:
- IMAP folders are Gmail labels. Gmail labels show up as folders in your client, and moving a message to a folder in your client simply adds that label in Gmail.
- In particular, be careful creating folders, and avoid making a mess. Try reusing the default Gmail labels: Set your client’s drafts folder to “[Gmail]/Drafts”.
- Messages with multiple labels appear in each of those folders. So there is some duplication at the client end, of course, but this is unavoidable; the price you pay for forcing a tagging philosophy on software that has different beliefs.
- Conversely, if you want to apply multiple labels to a message through your client, you can use the “poor man’s tagging” that has always been possible — copy the message to each of those folders.
- If you delete a message from a “folder” (other than “[Gmail]/Trash” and “[Gmail]/Spam”), Gmail only removes that label. It is still present in “All Mail”. To actually delete, move to “[Gmail]/Trash”. What happens if you delete email from “All mail”?
- Recommended IMAP client settings: Don’t save sent messages on the server; any mail sent through gmail’s smtp is automatically copied to “[Gmail]/Sent Mail” folder.
- In general, actions sync neatly; see the full table.
- IMAP and POP work with messages, so if you move only one message from a thread to a folder, only that one will get that label, but the Gmail web interface will show the entire conversation with that label. Note that this is only a display thing — it’s not that opening Gmail will give all the messages the label, and when you reopen your client suddenly things are different. (I need to actually check this.)
- You still have Gmail’s amazing server-side spam filtering.
- Some things don’t work.
- Some other things are alleged not to work that I don’t even understand
- Everything.
They got everything in order, made all those pages, and turned on IMAP without making any advance announcement…
The Lumber Room 
“To use IMAP, you must have your interface language set to ‘English (US)’.”
How unfair.
Preyas
Fri, 2007-11-16 at 19:21:35
Localisation always takes time… but in this case it’s irrelevant anyway: at most, you’ll need the en_US interface to turn your IMAP option on, and can switch back immediately.
shreevatsa
Sat, 2007-11-17 at 02:43:05
@Preyas: Here at least they are saying it explicitly. I was getting quite annoyed that I didn’t have maps in Picasa albums, while Kshitij did. Turned out that I needed to switch from en_GB to en_US. And I didn’t find this explanation anywhere in the official Google Help pages.
P
Sat, 2007-11-17 at 04:36:15