Google Adds New Features To Gmail, Removes Others

Users of Google’s Gmail are going to notice a few changes that have been made recently. Google has added new standard features to Gmail that were Labs experiments previously, but the search giant also cut a few existing features.

Overall, Google has added six new features and removed five previously available ones. Listed below is a summary of changes:

New Features

Search Autocomplete:

  • When users begin typing in the Gmail search box, a list of suggestions appears which is similar to what occurs when searching on Google.com. The Gmail suggestions now include contacts, labels, and search operators such as “from:” and “to:”.

Go To Label:

  • This is a method of getting to a Gmail Label quickly. Users search for a label by typing “gl” and the “label:” search operator will appear. Now users can enter the first letters of the label and the label will automatically appear, all messages included. The feature requires users to enable keyboard shortcuts, and the cursor cannot be in the search box at the time of typing “gl”.

Forgotten Attachment Detector:

  • Alerts users if they forget to include an attachment in an email. The feature analyzes the email for words such as “attached” and “included”.

YouTube Previews:

  • If users receive an email with a YouTube video linked within, the video will be viewable from within the email without the need to click the link.

Custom Label Colors:

  • Users can now use various colors to organize their different labels. Google indicates that users can choose from over 4000 color combinations for each label.

Vacation Responder:

  • Users can now define their vacation in advanced by setting a beginning and end date for the vacation auto-response.

Removed Features

Muzzle:

  • Muzzle was a subtle feature that removed users’ friends Gmail chat status messages. This was done to increase screen space.

Fixed Width Font:

  • This is an option found in the “Reply” menu that allowed users to view messages in a fixed width font.

E-mail Addict:

  • This feature shut down a users Gmail for 15 minutes so that they could be productive and stop being addicted to mail.

Location in Signature:

  • Location in Signature displayed a users geographical location as part of a users Gmail signature usually found at the end of an email.

Random Signature:

  • This feature inputted a random famous quote at the end of email signatures.

[PCWorld]

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