<p>Emoticons: either you love them or you hate them. Personally, I'm closer to the 'hate' camp, but when it comes to expressing an emotion, why use ten words when a winking smiley face will do? Google clearly knows that many people love emoticons, as it's now added a choice of well over 1,000 of the things to its new compose window in Gmail.</p><p>You'll find them by hovering your mouse pointer over the '+' symbol next to the attachment icon. If it's enabled for you (one of my accounts has a 'coming soon' message, the other has them activated) you'll be able to scroll through pages and pages of emoticons everything from a traditional smiley face to the likes of an animated unpeeling banana, a ringing bell and a launching rocket.</p><p>Now, Gmail's had emoticons for a long time but they're new to the recently-redesigned compose window, and the choice has been massively expanded. We counted a total of 1,287 in the new menu versus just 158 in the old one, which may sound like overkill, but hey, choice is a good thing, right?</p><p>Of course, if you hate emoticons, watch out, your inbox might be about to get flooded with your 'wacky' friends' 'fun' messages. Bah, humbug.</p><p><a href="http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/02/08/love-emoticons-gmails-got-you-covered-you-can-now-add-more-than-1000-of-them-to-your-emails/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.webpronews.com/gmail-now-has-a-bunch-of-new-emoticons-yay-2013-02">Gmail Now Has a Bunch of New Emoticons (Yay?)</a> (WebProNews)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=daLSND9POIYAXdMkG7wasVuiR4s9M&ned=us">2 additional articles.</a></p>