<p>The universal deployment of Gmail's new compose experience seems to have come at the expense of Rapportive, perhaps its most useful plugin. Rapportive connects addresses entered into the "to" field with the intended recipient's social media profiles, pulling information such as job title, location and recent tweets into a well organized snapshot in the message's sidebar. With the sidebar eliminated due to compose's new format, Rappotive, at least in the case of new emails, is gone too.</p><p>The redesign doesn't totally destroy Rapportive, it just renders it non functional for Gmail users writing new messages a key point of need for a plugin which not only gives important context about a message's intended recipient, but is also useful for verifying and guessing email addresses. When an email is guessed correctly, Rapportive information populates, saving users the trouble of sending emails blindly until an undeliverable reply does not come back.</p><p>The workaround</p><p>For Rapportive addicts, not all is lost. There is a clunky workaround that can be used to surface the information Rapportive digs up, it's just not in the compose window. While the compose window pops out as standalone window for new messages, it remains as is for forwards and replies. So when entering an email address in those situations, Rapportive still kicks in. Users can thus experience the same functionality by entering an email address in a reply or forward draft and then returning to the new compose window to write the message.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkantrowitz/2013/04/05/gmails-new-compose-breaks-rapportive-perhaps-its-most-useful-plugin/">Keep reading...</a></p>