Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
3 Labs graduations, 1 retirement
May 31, 2011
Posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager
Today we’re excited to graduate three more features from the experimental testing ground of Gmail Labs. Superstars, Nested Labels, and Advanced IMAP Controls are now first-class citizens in the Gmail world, thanks largely to your feedback. We’re also retiring the
Google Search box lab
which was redundant with the “Search the Web” button that’s already in Gmail.
Superstars
Superstars, one of the most popular Labs features, provides different types of stars in addition to Gmail’s basic one. You can assign a certain star to special conversations and use another as a visual reminder that you need to follow-up on a message later. You can now choose your own set of stars from
Settings
:
Once you’ve done that, the stars will rotate with each consecutive click on the star icon.
Nested Labels
Labels are a great way of organizing your email; nested labels give you the ability to organize labels hierarchically. Starting today, nested labels are enabled for everyone along with a couple of small improvements such as a sticky collapse/expand state and better editing options.
To start using them, you can either create a new sub-label from the dropdown menu on the left hand side or just move an existing label under another one using the edit option:
Advanced IMAP Controls
This Labs feature provided a very useful set of advanced controls for those of you who access Gmail through IMAP clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, or your iPhone’s native mail app). Now it’s easier to take advantage of features like syncing only selected labels or limiting the folder size limit to improve your IMAP experience.
True to the
original spirit of Gmail Labs
, we’ll continue to add new features, graduate some, and retire others, so keep trying them out and
sending us your feedback
.
Introducing the people widget
May 26, 2011
Posted by Zohair Hyder, Software Engineer
(Cross-posted on the
Google Enterprise Blog
)
Email is just as much about the people you communicate with as it is what you communicate about. We think it can be helpful to view relevant information in context, which is why over the next two weeks we’re rolling out a new people widget located on the right hand side of your messages. The people widget surfaces content from friends, family and colleagues that is already available to you but may be hard to find and makes it easier to connect with them.
Next to every email message you can now see contextual information about the people in that conversation including recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts, shared documents and calendar events. You also have quick access to a variety of ways to communicate with individuals, start a group chat or schedule a meeting with groups of people.
We hope the people widget will improve your Gmail experience and we’re eager for you to try it out.
Update (6/10/11)
: We're still rolling out the people widget to everyone. If you don't have it yet, you should within the next couple weeks. Thanks for your patience!
Changes and improvements to AIM interoperability
May 19, 2011
Posted by Matthew Leske, Product Manager
From the beginning, we designed Google Talk using open standards so that you could connect to your friends and family using any chat product, making communication as easy as possible. A few years ago, we announced our partnership with AOL which made it possible for people to chat with AIM users right from inside Gmail. Today, we’re happy to report that AOL has now made it possible to chat with AOL contacts across a variety of Google services: not just Gmail, but also iGoogle, Orkut, and Google Talk on Android phones.
If you chat with AIM buddies in Gmail, you’ll notice a few changes. First, you’ll no longer need an AIM account to connect to your friends using AIM. Instead you’ll be able to add your AIM buddies just like you add Gmail contacts to your chat list: using their AOL screennames (for example, username@aol.com). AIM users will now also be able to add Google contacts to their AIM chat clients.
Second, you’ll no longer be able to sign into your AIM account from within Gmail chat since you can now add AIM contacts directly. And lastly, if you previously had a lot of AIM contacts and don’t want to re-add them to your chat list one by one, AOL has created a tool to import your AIM buddies into your Gmail account. See
their blog post
for more info.
Color code your Google Calendar events
May 9, 2011
Posted by Michelle Chen, Software Engineer
If your calendar ends up full of many different types of events (film nights, lunch dates, and doctor appointments, for example), there’s now an easy way to categorize them using colors.
Just click on an event, then click the colored square in the top left of the pop-up bubble and pick a new color. If you don’t see this option quite yet, hang tight — it'll be there for everyone within the next day or so.
Only you and anyone else you’ve given edit access to your calendar will be able to see the colors you choose. This has been a feature request from many of you for some time, and we hope you enjoy using it as much as we do.
Store up to 25,000 contacts
May 4, 2011
Posted by Mike Helmick, Software Engineer
Gmail used to have a limit of 10,000 contacts. For most of us, this was way more than enough, but we heard from some of you who use Gmail to communicate with more than 10,000 people. We want you to be able to store
all
of your contacts in a single place, so starting today, we’ve increased the limit for all Gmail users, including all those of you who use Google Apps, to 25,000 contacts.
Also, previously an individual contact could be no larger than 32KB — big enough for most people, but not always sufficient for those who like to keep a lot of notes on individual contacts. Now, each contact may be up to 128KB in size, allowing you to store more information in the notes field.
How to set up Gmail to power through hundreds of messages each day
May 2, 2011
Posted by Paul McDonald, Product Manager
Gmail offers a ton of customization, and when you get hundreds of emails every day it’s crucial that you have it set up to process mail quickly and efficiently. Working on Gmail, I get asked all the time what settings and features I use to help me power through my mail. Rather than answer my friends and co-workers one by one, I thought I’d put it all into a blog post. So here goes.
Turn on Priority Inbox
. I couldn’t live without
Priority Inbox
. I keep the default set-up with important and unread mail at the top of my inbox and the section for everything else at the bottom.
Show more than 25 conversations in your inbox
. I like to see as many emails as possible per page so I can quickly scan through my mail, so I have this set to 100 (the max possible). Go to Gmail Settings and look for “Maximum page size” which you can change to 25, 50, or 100.
Enable keyboard shortcuts
. Press the “?” key when looking at your inbox to see the list of keyword shortcuts. Make sure they are turned on, then pick one or two to start with and
try to learn more
as you become comfortable. I probably use ‘e’ to archive my messages and ‘j’ and ‘k’ to move through messages the most.
Many of the features I love can be found in
Gmail Labs
(click on the “Labs” tab from Gmail Settings). I have a ton of them on, but the combo of these four work really well for me:
Inbox preview
: Shows a simple, static preview of your inbox while Gmail is loading. While you can’t take action on the messages until your inbox fully loads, it’s great to get a sneak peek and form a plan of attack.
Send and archive
: Adds a button that lets you send a reply to a message and archive the conversation in a single click (keyboard shortcuts work well with this one, too).
Background send
: Lets Gmail send your mail in the background while you move on to more important things.
Auto advance
: Automatically shows the next conversation instead of going back to your inbox after you delete, archive, or mute a conversation. When combined with the “Send and archive” button and background send, this feature makes reading and replying to messages lightning fast.
Try out this set up and
let us know
what your favorite features are.
Faces of Gmail: Petra Cross
April 28, 2011
Posted by Kathleen Chen, Consumer Operations
Last month we kicked off “Faces of Gmail,” a series where we’ll introduce you to some of the members of the Gmail team. For our first post, we spoke with
Manu Cornet
, an engineer in Paris who made some of our favorite themes. This month we’re back in Mountain View with Petra Cross, a globe-trotting gal who builds tools to help make the Gmail engineering team more efficient.
What do you do on the Gmail team and how long have you been at Google?
I have been a software engineer at Google for over six years. I spent my first three and a half years with the search team developing a framework for evaluating the relevance of search results. Since then, I’ve been focusing on internal Gmail infrastructure and building tools that help make other Gmail engineers more productive.
What did you do before joining Google?
After I got my computer science degree from Santa Clara University, I worked for a year at a small Silicon Valley semiconductor start-up. Before I came to California, I studied CS in Slovakia. I’m always doing many things at the same time. While I was in school, I created and sold little black and white
drawings
, taught English classes at a local elementary school, worked as a talk-show host at a local TV station, modeled, and also sang competitively in a choir. I miss singing the most. Today, besides working on Gmail, I’m focusing on
photography
and my husband
Bradford
.
What are the three Gmail features you wouldn’t be able to live without?
Ah, there are so many features I would miss if they went away:
Priority Inbox
helps me point my attention to emails I might want to respond to first.
I use chat a lot to communicate with my co-workers and friends. I also love Gmail’s ability to
call phones
.
I like how Gmail organizes emails into conversation view, instead of putting each email into a separate line in the inbox. It makes it a lot easier to see the entire context of the discussion.
What do you do when you’re not working on Gmail?
I visit my parents in Europe few times a year. To trick my husband into joining me on every trip to visit his in-laws, I try to wrap the trip into a fun package that includes more countries. And so, in the last three years, we’ve visited Belgium, Netherlands, U.K., Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Austria, Jordan (we visited Petra!), Lebanon, Egypt, and we also
got married
in a 13th century castle in Slovakia.
Besides traveling, I’m quite domesticated and I’m constantly decorating our San Francisco home. To my mom’s disappointment, I almost stopped cooking since I joined Google (blame the free Google food!) and started spending most of my days on a computer. I’ve been
blogging
a lot lately and also spending a lot of time photographing people. I can’t imagine what my life would look like without technology. I can’t even sit still on a beach for five minutes. Seriously.
How do you procrastinate?
I don’t procrastinate. I make conscious decisions to not do certain things at this very moment. Like right now, I am responding to your questions instead of coding. :)
What would your last meal be?
Crepes with Nutella and chestnut puree, and a lot of whipped cream. The whipped cream has to be hand-whipped, not from a can. Crepes need to be perfectly browned on both sides. I’m up for a crepe-off any time!
Photos by
Cody Bratt
, Google Talk team
Google Calendar Sync upgrades Outlook 2010 support
April 27, 2011
Posted by Gregory Yakushev, Google Calendar Team
Google Calendar sync
started supporting the 32-bit version of Outlook 2010
back in August. Outlook sync has continued to be a top feature request, which is why we’ve continued to improve upon it and are pleased to announce that Calendar Sync now supports the 64-bit version too.
To start syncing your calendar with the 64-bit version of Outlook 2010,
download Google Calendar Sync version 0.9.4.1
. When the Settings window appears, enter your email address and password, choose your
sync option
and frequency, and you’ll be all set. Note that if you’re already using Google Calendar Sync, you’ll need to download and install this new version in order to be able to sync with 64-bit Outlook (we’re in the process of auto-updating everyone but reinstalling will ensure it works for you). For more info, take a look at our
getting started guide
.
We want you to be able to access Google Calendar anywhere, anytime. If you have any feedback please drop us a line on Twitter (@googlecalendar) or in the
Google Calendar Help Forum
.
New in Labs: Background Send
April 25, 2011
Posted by Patrick Doyle, Software Engineer
We’re always looking for ways to make Gmail faster. One of the most common delays happens after you hit that “Send” button, when you’re waiting patiently for a couple seconds for Gmail to send your message. If you send a lot of email, that can add up to a lot of lost time.
To help give you that time back, there’s a new feature in Gmail Labs called Background Send. Once you turn it on from the
Labs tab in Settings
, you can get on with what you’re doing while Gmail quietly sends off your mail in the background. You can keep reading your inbox, compose new messages, chat with people — all the things you’d usually do. You can even send more than one message in the background at the same time.
If anything goes wrong (maybe you got that email address wrong, or maybe your connection had a hiccup), you’ll see a warning message that prompts you to go back and fix the issue or try again later.
The “Send errror” message will stay around until you decide to fix things, so you don’t have to stop whatever you’re doing right away. The only catch is that you should wait for your mail to finish sending before you close Gmail or shut down your computer. If messages are still being sent in the background when you shut down,
your messages are probably going to be lost
. You’ll know you’re good to go when you see a message like this:
We’ve been trying out Background Send for a while here at Google, and we like it a lot. We hope you like it too, and we hope it gives you back a little bit of your day!
Long label names in Gmail
April 21, 2011
Posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager, Gmail Enterprise Team
Today we’re making a small change that makes it easier to handle long label names: you can now add and edit label names up to 225 characters. The old limit was 40 characters, which wasn’t enough for some people who had switched from Outlook or accessed Gmail through IMAP.
Label names can get really long, especially when you use
Nested Labels
. When that happens, Gmail will shorten them if necessary to avoid cluttering your view.
You can always mouse over to see the full label name and use
colors
to better distinguish your labels from each other.
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