Google Enhances Gmail with New Features

Posted by Vaibhav

October 31, 2008

In an effort to enhance the experience of Gmail users, search leader Google recently announced the release of several experiments for Gmail. Now, Gmail users can get access to additional sidebar options from Gmail Labs that allows them to add and look at the gadgets Google Docs and Google Calendar, without opening the hosted applications.

One of the key attributes of the new gadgets is its capacity to view Google Calendar quickly as well as get event alerts. For example, Google said that the users can utilize one of the gadgets to view their Calendar agenda and stay alerted whenever a meeting gets scheduled. The other gadget can display a list of recently accessed Google Docs for the users and let them perform search across all the documents available within Gmail.

As per the search engine giant, these gadgets, in their current state, are mainly planned for developers, and are still in the sandbox mode. The gadgets can be added by simply pasting the URL of the gadget’s XML file.

Possibly recollecting the recent user backlash over iGoogle’s latest navigation style, Gmail engineer Dan Pupius expressed that the company is not tied to the left-navigation panel as a primary way to extend Gmail, but thinks that it is relatively limited and does not offer scalable real estate. He said there are also some shortcomings in the iframe-style gadgets that are used today, one being that they can sometimes decelerate the page. Stating that the company is fanatical about speed, Pupius affirmed that it will keep a close eye on performance.

The decision to act on the gadgets was taken by Google after several demands by the company’s users. And hence, both the gadgets can now be enabled by accessing Google Labs, and ready to use by saving the new settings.

Pupius hopes to obtain more feedback and suggestions from users regarding the new gadgets, as he said that the company realizes it not being very user friendly as of now. Moreover, he noted that not all of the new gadgets are wholly compatible to Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (HTTPS). This may therefore allow users connecting to Gmail through an HTTPS connection to see content warnings that are caused by parts of the gadgets being served over HTTP.

Being well known for innovation, Google Labs is just another example supporting the ideology of Google. With a range of features to enhance the experience of its hundred plus million users, Google has conducted some exceptionally brilliant experiments through Google Labs over the past month. No wonder, Google has been able to include emoticons, canned responses, advanced IMAP controls, contact improvements as well as Mail Goggles, in just about a period of one month.

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