often times as i visit web sites I see a icon or link to email them. 
The other day i attempted to do just that.  here is my problem, this
link opened up microsofts outlook.  I use only gmail.  how to i evolve
gmail instead of outlook?  michael

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Request for Question Clarification by rainbow-ga on 17 Oct 2006 02:36 PDT

Please follow these instructions and let me know if it works:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10966&topic=1543

Looking forward to your clarification.

Best regards,
Rainbow

rainbow-ga's answer should help you, but if you for some reason don't
want to use any of the above options, and you're on Firefox, you can
install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, and use a script to
force mailto-links to use Gmail. There is also Google Toolbar for IE
and Firefox that can do the trick...

Gmail Notifier: https://mail.google.com/mail/help/notifier/notifier_windows.html
Google Notifier (if you're on a Mac): http://mail.google.com/mail/help/notifier/
Google Toolbar for IE: http://toolbar.google.com/
Google Toolbar for Firefox: ://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/index.html
Greasemonkey extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748/
Greasemonkey userscript to force mailto-links to use Gmail:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5722

I can confirm that all the above options have worked for me.