RSSGoogle opens up a lab for others to test new Gmail features
By Ed Oswald | Published June 6, 2008, 12:28 PM
With Gmail finally nearing the end of its nearly four year long beta, Google is looking to test out a few new features before it goes live.
A new tab has been added in the settings menu of Gmail called "Labs." Included there are 13 features that the user can either enable or disable, as well as links to provide feedback on the functionality.
"Gmail Labs is a way for us to take lots of the ideas we wouldn't normally pick and let you all decide whether they're good or not," product manager Keith Coleman said. He added that the company plans to add additional add-ons in the near future.
The most popular features have a good chance of making it in to the actual Gmail product. While currently the company is limiting development to only internal coders, it hopes to eventually open the process up to third parties.
Some of the suggested features, such as Old Snakey -- a keyboard-based snake game -- and E-Mail Addict -- a feature that locks you out of your e-mail for up to to fifteen minutes -- will likely never make it into Gmail, others show real promise.
Among them:
- a quick links function which allows one-click access to any bookmarkable URL within the client;
- the option to view messages in a fixed width font;
- a method to navigate through Gmail using mouse gestures;
- custom date formatting; and
- the option to hide unread date counts.
He also added that the company has a few more features it wants to add into Gmail, but it will finally shed the beta tag that it has held onto since its launch in 2004.
How about speeding up login? Even though they rave about reducing login speeds, it definitely takes longer to login than before.
Also, the mail search speeds and some navigation speeds are pretty abysmal. I feel like I'm on godaddy shared hosting!
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|I didn't know there were any updates to this ancient, clunky, awkward application. I assumed Google had exceeded its knowledge of mail clients.
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|I don't see these new features as very useful. Hopefully something good is still to come from it!
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|I just want a n updated interface. Keep the clean, unobtrusive, original interface, but give us the option of using something a bit more functional.
I'm getting bored with the Better GMail addon....
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|Try Gmail Redesigned....
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|Absolutely fantastic!
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|I never heard of Stylish before, but just seeing what it can do with Gmail Redesigned... WOW! Excellent recommendation, thanks Jon.
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|I totally agree!! Being able to mail contents of a page or a link to a page from Safari would be much more useful, Google notifier doesn't support this.
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|I knew there was a reason I still posted here...(Other than the constant amusement provided by Zaine & Co.)
Thank you.
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|That's strange, I've had gmail redesigned as a part of better gmail. Didn't need the stylish add-on, unless there are other features I'm not seeing?
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|Better Gmail is a collection of addons, bundled as one, AFAIK.
I had seen a whopping 4 skins for it when I was using it. None of them even compared to this though.
Worth a look if you haven't, otherwise, BG worked well for me for quite a while and I can't see any reason why anyone should stop using it if GR doesn't offer anything they want...
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