Six features graduate from Gmail Labs

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 25 Feb 2010 at 09:17

Google has promoted half a dozen experimental features from its Labs into the full Gmail service.

Gmail Labs contains dozens of trial features that users can choose to add to their inboxes on an opt-in basis. However, the company has now decided that six of the features have sufficiently matured to integrate them into Gmail by default.

Perhaps the most notable of the graduates is the forgotten attachment detector, which looks out for certain keywords in your email that indicate you meant to include an attachment, and then pops up a warning if you don't. PC Pro has been trialling this Labs feature for some months, but found its success rate to be erratic.

A more useful feature is the YouTube preview, which plays a video from within the Gmail message if someone sends you a link to a clip on the Google-owned video site.

Other newcomers include the option to choose your own colours for Gmail labels, set the equivalent of an 'out of office' auto-reply, and auto-complete in the Gmail search box.

Google's also ditched five of the less popular Labs features, including fixed width fonts and - perhaps with the recent Buzz privacy outcry still fresh in its mind - a feature that automatically added your location to the signature of your emails.