New York — Search engine titan Google yesterday unwrapped a new Gmail Labs feature dubbed Inbox Preview, making it a little more user friendly that should please Gmail users to preview their inbox messages while the webmail service is loading using slow internet connection, and earlier this week rolled out some attractive range of new logos for its services, updating the Google Labs, Google Code and Google Moderator pages so far.
Now while Gmail is loading, all the waiting with sluggish internet connections may not be so troublesome after all. The official Gmail blog now reveals a new Inbox Preview feature that enables users to preview unread messages in their inbox while the AJAX interface is loading.
Targeted for users with slow connections, the feature displays a quick preview of the 10 most recent messages while Gmail’s rest of the account loads.
To enable this feature, goto “Settings” and then click on “Labs Tab”. Select enable next to “Inbox Preview” option and click save changes button.
The in-box preview shows you the latest 10 messages in your in-box while Gmail quietly loads in the background. (Credit: CNET)
However, you cannot actually read the complete email messages, but you can quickly see if you have new ones. Users on a fast connection will only see the preview for a mere second or two before the in-box opens up. Google is looking at this as a simple way to see if those latest messages are worth the loading wait.
For example, if you are on a trip to some remote place with a sulky connection this new feature could just save you some time.
Also, the redesigned Google logos are being rolled out over the coming weeks and are intended to improve consistency and freshen up the look of the company’s services across its sites. However, the colorful Google logo remains the same, but the product names now appear in a lowercase blue font.
While it might take a while until they appear on all Google sites, some new logos have already appeared for Google Labs, Google Moderator, and Google Code. More will be unveiled for Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs, and other products in the near future. They will also be appearing in other languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, here is a preview of the new logos.
Gmail also added a functional translation feature this week. As the name of the feature suggests, with one click you can turn gibberish into some phrases that actually make sense — and that is including those foreign spam messages clogging your inbox.