I remember when I was first introduced to Gmail. It was back in 2005, and I was a dedicated Hotmail user back then. The girl I was dating told me all about Gmail and sent me one of the exclusive beta invites. What won me over to the service? Well, beyond having a cute girl tell me that it was the better service (it’s amazing how effective that sales pitch is), I liked the minimalistic design and the ability to archive emails. Back then, though, that was the core of what Gmail offered. Over the last six years, the service has developed in innumerable ways – especially when it comes to productivity.
It’s this litany of features that makes Gmail more difficult for beginning users to pick up, and is probably the reason why the more simplistic Yahoo still holds the “top free webmail service’ title. But for those interested in narrowing down the number of enabled features, Google product manager Paul McDonald (one of the more prominent public voices behind Gmail) has constructed a list of the top seven features. Those features are (in alphabetical order):
- Auto advance. This Gmail lab automatically sends you to the next email in your inbox after you hit “Send,” “Archive,” or “Send and Archive” on your last message.
- Background send. This new feature, covered in a recent entry here on SEJ, allows users to move onto the next message while Google sends their last message for them.
- Inbox preview. This lab creates a simplified HTML preview of your inbox that’s displayed after login while the full-featuredGmail is loading.
- Keyboard shortcuts. You can now review all the shortcut commands, and quickly enable shortcut keys, by pushing the “?” button on your keyboard while logged into Gmail.
- Priority Inbox. This feature automatically promotes or demotes messages in your inbox based on their perceived importance (e.g., newsletters will be demoted, emails from your best friend will be promoted).
- Send and archive. This Gmail lab creates a new “send and archive” button on your email toolbar. The “send and archive” command does exactly what it says it will.
- Show more than 25 messages. You can alter your Gmail settings so your inbox displays 50 or 100 messages instead of the default 25.
What are your favorites – from this list or outside of it?
[via the Gmail Blog]
