Lifehacker.au’s “Upgrade Your Life contest winner” comes from Jack M, who submitted a simple but very useful trick: adding Gmail to the search bar in Firefix. Now, if you want to compose an email, you can do it simply by typing the email address into the search bar and hitting return (or clicking the search icon). The plug-in also works in Gnome-do, which is good news for Linux users. Check after the jump for instructions on installing the plug-in.

Installation of the plug-in is very straightforward:

• Click on this link (it’s way less spammy than it looks, we promise).
• Click on the Open Search plug-in Mail button in the bottom right to install.
• Mail will now be available as one of your search options in the Firefox search bar.