Gmail launches multiple view options
Posted by Jacque on February 6th, 2009
Gmail Labs has a new feature they call “multiple inboxes” which gives users the ability to view up to five different panes in a choice of position on the page — to the right, above or below your regular inbox.
To turn on Multiple Inboxes, go to Gmail “Settings,” then select “Labs.” Scroll down a bit until you come to Multiple Inboxes, check “enable” and save your new settings. After you have enabled the feature, you can select it from the settings option to configure what you want to see, as well as set the number of messages displayed and the positioning of your panels from the Multiple Inboxes.
For users who frequently label their messages and have saved searches, this upgrade will make Gmail even more efficient. Creating a pane seems to be a little counter-intuitive, says TechCrunch. “You’ll need to manually enter the Gmail ‘code’ of your label (for example, “label:friends” would display a list of messages tagged with the friends label). But the system is also flexible, as it allows you to combine multiple attributes into a single pane (for example, “is:drafts OR is:starred” would show messages that are either drafts or starred).”
And for those who were expecting to actually see the inboxes of multiple email accounts, advises Google Operating System Blog, you can achieve this by using Gmail’s mail fetcher, which automatically labels the messages fetched from other accounts and archives them. You can then create panes that have the following format: label:myotheraccount@gmail.com or to:myotheraccount.com.
While looking closely at your Gmail, you may also notice a recent button redesign.
Designer Douglas Bowman says, “The buttons are designed to look very similar to basic HTML input buttons. But they can handle multiple interactions with one basic design. The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior. They’re also easily skinnable with a few lines of CSS, which was a key factor now that Gmail has themes.”
