Gmail Labs: Which Feature Do You Like ?

The Gmail team has finally released their much anticipated Labs edition and hence now users have the opportunity to try out some exciting new features while they are in the experimental stage. They are rolling it out to all the gmail users and to check whether you’ve got it, you need to go to the settings page in your gmail and check if you have a new tab named ‘ Labs ‘.

I checked mine and I’ve got the Gmail labs and started trying out the features too. So first I’ll quickly run through the features, as they are mentioned in my Labs page and then I’ll give my opinion on it.

Features

1: Quick Links

Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.

2: Superstars

Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature, you can choose which icons you wish to use in the “General” Settings page.

3: Pictures in chat

See your friends’ profile pictures when you chat with them.

4: Fixed width font

Adds an option to the reply dropdown menu that lets you view a message in fixed width font.

5: Custom keyboard shortcuts

Lets you customize keyboard shortcut mappings. Adds a new Settings tab from which you can remap keys to various actions.

6: Mouse gestures

Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse left to go to a previous conversation, move it right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the inbox view. Works best on Windows.

7: Signature tweaks

Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures. Can’t use this and the “Random signature” Labs feature at the same time.

8: Random signature

Rotates among random quotations for your email signature. Can’t use this and the “Signature tweaks” Labs feature at the same time.

9: Custom date formats

Adds options to the general settings page allowing the date and time format to be changed independent of language. For example, you can use a 24-hour clock (14:57) or show dates with the day first (31/12/07).

10: Muzzle

Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends’ status messages.

11: Old Snakey

Kick it old school with Old Snakey! Enable keyboard shortcuts and hit ‘&’ from the main page to play a game of snake.

12: Email Addict

Lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat.

13: Hide Unread Counts

Hides the unread counts for inbox, labels, etc.

My Opinion

I think this is a very good step and through this the gmail team will also get valuable user feedback about the various labs features. There are a lot of time saving features, like the Quick Links Feature. You can save your frequent searches too. Previously if you wanted to do that then you had to use a greasemonkey script made for that purpose.

There is also something for both keyboard shortcuts fanatics ( Custom Keyboard Shortcuts ) and Mouse Lovers ( Mouse gestures ). So overall, I think those are some pretty good features and worth trying out.

Caution

Keep in mind that these are all experimental features and they could cause problems. If you have trouble getting in your account after you started using a Labs feature then there is a escape hatch- you need to go to this link- http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 to recover your account.

So which Gmail Labs feature do you like the most ?