How to Open Any Mail in Gmail's New Panels

To contact us Click HERE
If you've enabled Gmail's new interface for composing messages, there's a simple way to open any Gmail message in the chat-like panels:

1. open the message

2. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=

For example, replace:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a111c6f50b9084

with:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox?compose=13a111c6f50b9084


Gmail actually creates a new message with the same content and saves it as a draft. That's the reason why you can edit the message. When you no longer need the message, click the "close" button. You may need to delete the messages from the "drafts" label.

You can open multiple messages using the same trick. After using the instructions above:

3. open a new Gmail message

4. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace ?compose= with & and the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

YouTube's New Interface, Closer to Launch

To contact us Click HERE
YouTube continues to test new user interfaces, but it looks like one of these versions will be finally rolled out to everyone.

There's a new message on the experimental homepage that welcomes users to the new YouTube and explains one of the new features: "What to watch shows you new activity from your subscriptions, recommendations based on videos you've watched and your taste in videos, plus the most popular videos on YouTube". YouTube also links to a page that was used the last time when YouTube was redesigned. You can see the old page in Google's cache, but now the page returns a 404 error message.


YouTube has constantly tested new versions of the sidebar from video pages. This time there's a new sidebar section that shows other related videos. You can "get the search results, feeds, and channel videos you were just looking at". For example, you can perform a search, click one of the results and see the list of results by clicking "more results" in the sidebar, instead of going back to the search results page.

The sidebar is the most important thing about the new YouTube interface because it's always there: on the homepage, the settings page, the search results page and can be expanded when you watch videos.


To try the new YouTube interface, check the instructions from this post.

How to Open Any Mail in Gmail's New Panels

To contact us Click HERE
If you've enabled Gmail's new interface for composing messages, there's a simple way to open any Gmail message in the chat-like panels:

1. open the message

2. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=

For example, replace:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a111c6f50b9084

with:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox?compose=13a111c6f50b9084


Gmail actually creates a new message with the same content and saves it as a draft. That's the reason why you can edit the message. When you no longer need the message, click the "close" button. You may need to delete the messages from the "drafts" label.

You can open multiple messages using the same trick. After using the instructions above:

3. open a new Gmail message

4. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace ?compose= with & and the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

Google Shows Flight Notifications

To contact us Click HERE
Back in August, Google released an experiment that integrated Google Search with Gmail. Besides returning results from Gmail, Google also detects flight-related confirmation messages so that it can show additional information for your upcoming flights. You can try this feature by searching for [my flights], as documented here.


What Google doesn't mention is that it also shows flight notifications. They look just like the Google+ birthday reminders.


Flight notifications aren't a new feature (someone spotted it in September), but I thought it's worth mentioning it. There's a lot of valuable information that can be obtained from Gmail messages, as you can see from the latest Google Now update, which shows cards for flights, packages, hotel reservations, event bookings and more. Maybe Google Now will have a desktop interface and it will replace some of the iGoogle features.

{ Thanks, Matt. }

YouTube's New Interface, Closer to Launch

To contact us Click HERE
YouTube continues to test new user interfaces, but it looks like one of these versions will be finally rolled out to everyone.

There's a new message on the experimental homepage that welcomes users to the new YouTube and explains one of the new features: "What to watch shows you new activity from your subscriptions, recommendations based on videos you've watched and your taste in videos, plus the most popular videos on YouTube". YouTube also links to a page that was used the last time when YouTube was redesigned. You can see the old page in Google's cache, but now the page returns a 404 error message.


YouTube has constantly tested new versions of the sidebar from video pages. This time there's a new sidebar section that shows other related videos. You can "get the search results, feeds, and channel videos you were just looking at". For example, you can perform a search, click one of the results and see the list of results by clicking "more results" in the sidebar, instead of going back to the search results page.

The sidebar is the most important thing about the new YouTube interface because it's always there: on the homepage, the settings page, the search results page and can be expanded when you watch videos.


To try the new YouTube interface, check the instructions from this post.

Gmail's New Interface for Composing Messages

To contact us Click HERE
There are many tricks that let you compose a Gmail message in a new window: you can press "Shift" while clicking the "Compose" button, use the "Shift+c" shortcut or click the "pop-out" icon if you've already started to compose a message. Composing a message in a new window lets you use Gmail's search feature, read other messages and even write multiple messages at a time.

Gmail's engineers spent a lot time improving this feature, minimizing page loading time and making sure that the original message is preserved, but few people use it.
Now Google tries to bring this feature to everyone by opening a chat-like panel inside Gmail's interface when you compose a new message. It's a feature currently tested by Google that will be rolled out in the coming months.

"The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger). This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later."


The new interface also brings a feature from Yahoo Mail: recipient boxes that can be removed or dragged and dropped to other fields ("to:", "cc:", "bcc:"). There's a new icon that shows text formatting features, an icon for attachments and a "+" icon for embedding photos, links, emoticons and Google Calendar events.


Google also improved the interface for replying, but it looks like you'll still reply inline by default. "The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation - replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets."

To try the new interface, open Gmail, click the "Compose" button and look for the "new compose experience" link right next to the "Labels" button. If you can't find it, you'll have to wait until it's added to your account. For now, you can switch to the old interface if you don't like the changes. Some features are not yet available in the new interface: inserting emoticons and event invitations, adding labels to outgoing messages, canned responses.

Google tried to streamline the "compose" window, so many advanced features will be more difficult to find. You'll have to click different icons to find text formatting options, add events or spell check your text. To send mail from another address, you'll have to "click into the 'To' field, then click the 'From' link to select which address you'd like to send mail from". Gmail is suddenly more difficult to use, but the interface looks better.


{ Thanks, Ben. }

How to Open Any Mail in Gmail's New Panels

To contact us Click HERE
If you've enabled Gmail's new interface for composing messages, there's a simple way to open any Gmail message in the chat-like panels:

1. open the message

2. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=

For example, replace:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a111c6f50b9084

with:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox?compose=13a111c6f50b9084


Gmail actually creates a new message with the same content and saves it as a draft. That's the reason why you can edit the message. When you no longer need the message, click the "close" button. You may need to delete the messages from the "drafts" label.

You can open multiple messages using the same trick. After using the instructions above:

3. open a new Gmail message

4. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace ?compose= with & and the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

Replace Gmail Attachments With Google Drive Files

To contact us Click HERE
I was complaining in a recent post that Gmail doesn't properly integrate with Google Drive and doesn't let you upload files to Google Drive instead of sending attachments. The new compose interface added this feature and you can now click "insert files using Drive", upload a file or select an existing one.


It's still not a seamless experience, you have to click a separate button and deal with permission issues, but it encourages users to upload files to Google Drive and use the Google Drive apps. Gmail tries to solve permission issues by prompting with the option to change sharing settings.

Why would you upload files to Google Drive instead of using attachments? You can send bigger files (10 GB files vs 25 MB attachments), you can edit documents collaboratively, write comments, upload new versions of the files and manage revisions, you can delete the file or change permissions.

Unfortunately, when you send links to Google Drive files, it's more difficult to download the files and you can no longer download them with one click.

There's another problem: Gmail offers 10 GB of free storage, while Google Drive offers 5 GB of free storage, excluding Google Docs/Sheets/Slides files. More free storage would make GDrive more attractive.

Google says that GDrive integration is "rolling out over the next few days and is only available with Gmail's new compose experience".

{ via Gmail Blog }

Gmail's New Interface for Composing Messages

To contact us Click HERE
There are many tricks that let you compose a Gmail message in a new window: you can press "Shift" while clicking the "Compose" button, use the "Shift+c" shortcut or click the "pop-out" icon if you've already started to compose a message. Composing a message in a new window lets you use Gmail's search feature, read other messages and even write multiple messages at a time.

Gmail's engineers spent a lot time improving this feature, minimizing page loading time and making sure that the original message is preserved, but few people use it.
Now Google tries to bring this feature to everyone by opening a chat-like panel inside Gmail's interface when you compose a new message. It's a feature currently tested by Google that will be rolled out in the coming months.

"The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger). This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later."


The new interface also brings a feature from Yahoo Mail: recipient boxes that can be removed or dragged and dropped to other fields ("to:", "cc:", "bcc:"). There's a new icon that shows text formatting features, an icon for attachments and a "+" icon for embedding photos, links, emoticons and Google Calendar events.


Google also improved the interface for replying, but it looks like you'll still reply inline by default. "The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation - replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets."

To try the new interface, open Gmail, click the "Compose" button and look for the "new compose experience" link right next to the "Labels" button. If you can't find it, you'll have to wait until it's added to your account. For now, you can switch to the old interface if you don't like the changes. Some features are not yet available in the new interface: inserting emoticons and event invitations, adding labels to outgoing messages, canned responses.

Google tried to streamline the "compose" window, so many advanced features will be more difficult to find. You'll have to click different icons to find text formatting options, add events or spell check your text. To send mail from another address, you'll have to "click into the 'To' field, then click the 'From' link to select which address you'd like to send mail from". Gmail is suddenly more difficult to use, but the interface looks better.


{ Thanks, Ben. }

How to Open Any Mail in Gmail's New Panels

To contact us Click HERE
If you've enabled Gmail's new interface for composing messages, there's a simple way to open any Gmail message in the chat-like panels:

1. open the message

2. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=

For example, replace:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a111c6f50b9084

with:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox?compose=13a111c6f50b9084


Gmail actually creates a new message with the same content and saves it as a draft. That's the reason why you can edit the message. When you no longer need the message, click the "close" button. You may need to delete the messages from the "drafts" label.

You can open multiple messages using the same trick. After using the instructions above:

3. open a new Gmail message

4. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace ?compose= with & and the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

Geotag your Tweets with any Random Location

To contact us Click HERE

On Twitter, if you do not wish to reveal your geographic location in your tweets, you can either completely disable the location feature from Twitter settings or you can can attach some random (read, fake) location to your tweet. →

For instance, here’s a recent tweet that specific my location as the White House in Washington DC though it was written from a place that is at least 8000 miles away.

Fake your geographic location on Twitter

Attach any Location to your Tweets

Now most Twitter mobile clients won’t let you attach random locations to your tweets but there’s a web-based app called PleaseDontStalkMe.com that may come handy here. Here you can pick any location on a Google Map – either drag the marker or use the search box to reach an exact address – and tweet.

Since the Twitter website no longer displays the app name that was used to send that tweet, your followers on Twitter are less likely to know that you faked your location in the tweet. Do remember to limit the length of your tweet to 140 characters else the tweet would fail but without offering an explanation.

You can geotag your tweets from the Twitter.com website as well (click the Location icon near the tweet button) but in that case, you can only attach a city-level location to the tweet and not an exact location.

Also see: How to Fake Twitter Conversations

---

This story, Geotag your Tweets with any Random Location, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 21/11/2012 under Location, Privacy, Twitter, Internet.

Play any YouTube Playlist with VLC Media Player

To contact us Click HERE

Do you know that VLC Media Player, the world’s favorite video player that supports nearly every video format, can also play YouTube videos on your desktop without requiring the web browser or the Adobe Flash player. →

To get started, open the VLC player, press Ctrl+N to open the Network URL dialog and paste any YouTube video URL in the input box.

The Benefits of Watching YouTube Videos with VLC

The streaming videos will play inside VLC Media Player just like any other local video file while offering some additional benefits not available inside the standard YouTube player. For instance:

1. You can choose Video -> Always on Top inside VLC and the YouTube video window will stick to the foreground while you work on other tasks.
2. Press the Loop button in the player controls and the YouTube video will play non-stop in a loop (also possible with Chrome add-ons).
3. You can change the Playback speed of the YouTube video and make it run slower or faster than the normal speed.
4. Use the Tools -> Take Snapshot option to capture a screenshot image of any frame or scene in the YouTube video.
5. Watch the YouTube videos without the ads. I played a couple of movies and music videos inside VLC and none of them carried any pre-roll ads.

Play YouTube Playlists inside VLC

VLC, by default, only supports single YouTube URLs but it also possible to import an entire YouTube Playlist into VLC and watch all the videos in sequence.

You can watch an entire playlist of YouTube videos inside VLC Media Player.

Here’s the trick. Right-click and save this file to your desktop. Now open the VLC installation folder (%ProgramFiles%\VideoLAN\VLC) and move the .lua file into the exiting /lua/playlist folder.

Restart the VLC Media Player and choose Media -> Open Network Stream. Now paste the URL of any public YouTube Playlist here and the enjoy the videos.

Also see: Watch YouTube Playlists on your iPad

In addition to YouTube, VLC Player can also play DailyMotion videos outside the browser. It is supposed to work with Vimeo videos as well but that is currently broken possibly due to a change in the URL structure at Vimeo’s end. Thanks @igrigorik.

---

This story, Play any YouTube Playlist with VLC Media Player, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 21/11/2012 under YouTube, Software.

Download the Evernote Bible for Free Today!

To contact us Click HERE

→

Whether you are an experienced Evernote user or a newbie who is just trying to make sense of the various features available inside Evernote, here’s something useful for you.

The Evernote Bible is a $9.99 ebook loaded with tips on how you can use the Evernote software more effectively. It discusses the various scenarios where you can use Evernote, how you can perform advanced searches, how to automate Evernote with IFTTT, and encryption among other things.

My favorite part though is at the end where the author shares 99 creative uses of Evernote. For instance, since Evernote can encrypt text, you can also consider using the software as an online Password manager.

The Evernote bible is available as a free download on Amazon today. You can read it on your computer, mobile phone or the Kindle, if you have one. [via Computer Books]

---

This story, Download the Evernote Bible for Free Today!, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 25/11/2012 under Evernote, Offers, Internet.

Track the Browser Size with Google Analytics

To contact us Click HERE

Google Analytics reports the “screen resolution” of the visitor’s computer but skips the other important metric which is the size of the browser window. These two numbers will be approximately similar if the browser window is kept in maximized state but not otherwise. →

Take a look at the example below. The screen resolution of the desktop is 1920×1080 (this is the number recorded by Google Analytics) but the actual browser window size (where your website is displayed) is a little over 900×600 pixels.

Google Analytics displays the Screen Resolution and not the actual Browser Size of the visitor.

The screen resolution is a less-useful metric and what you really need to know is the actual size (or range) of the browser window of your visitors. This data can be easily gathered through Google Analytics – simply copy-paste the following code snippet just before the closing </body> tag of your website template:

<script type="text/javascript">
 var width  = window.innerWidth  || document.body.clientWidth;
 var height = window.innerHeight || document.body.clientHeight;

 width  = Math.round(width/100)*100;
 height = Math.round(height/100)*100;

 var size = width + "x" + height;
 _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Browser Size', 'Range', size]);
</script>

It calculates the actual height and width of the browser window and then rounds off these numbers to the nearest 100. For instance, a browser size of 985×1190 pixels is recorded as 1000×1200 pixels. You can then access this data in Google Analytics through Content -> Events -> Overview and then choose “Browse Size” as the Events Category.

Once you know the popular “ranges,” you can update the site layout and placement accordingly so that visitors can see all the important elements on your pages Above the Fold without having to use the scroll bar.

Also see: Getting Started with Responsive Web Design

---

This story, Track the Browser Size with Google Analytics, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 26/11/2012 under Google Analytics, Web Design, Internet.

Gmail's New Interface for Composing Messages

To contact us Click HERE
There are many tricks that let you compose a Gmail message in a new window: you can press "Shift" while clicking the "Compose" button, use the "Shift+c" shortcut or click the "pop-out" icon if you've already started to compose a message. Composing a message in a new window lets you use Gmail's search feature, read other messages and even write multiple messages at a time.

Gmail's engineers spent a lot time improving this feature, minimizing page loading time and making sure that the original message is preserved, but few people use it.
Now Google tries to bring this feature to everyone by opening a chat-like panel inside Gmail's interface when you compose a new message. It's a feature currently tested by Google that will be rolled out in the coming months.

"The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger). This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later."


The new interface also brings a feature from Yahoo Mail: recipient boxes that can be removed or dragged and dropped to other fields ("to:", "cc:", "bcc:"). There's a new icon that shows text formatting features, an icon for attachments and a "+" icon for embedding photos, links, emoticons and Google Calendar events.


Google also improved the interface for replying, but it looks like you'll still reply inline by default. "The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation - replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets."

To try the new interface, open Gmail, click the "Compose" button and look for the "new compose experience" link right next to the "Labels" button. If you can't find it, you'll have to wait until it's added to your account. For now, you can switch to the old interface if you don't like the changes. Some features are not yet available in the new interface: inserting emoticons and event invitations, adding labels to outgoing messages, canned responses.

Google tried to streamline the "compose" window, so many advanced features will be more difficult to find. You'll have to click different icons to find text formatting options, add events or spell check your text. To send mail from another address, you'll have to "click into the 'To' field, then click the 'From' link to select which address you'd like to send mail from". Gmail is suddenly more difficult to use, but the interface looks better.


{ Thanks, Ben. }

How to Open Any Mail in Gmail's New Panels

To contact us Click HERE
If you've enabled Gmail's new interface for composing messages, there's a simple way to open any Gmail message in the chat-like panels:

1. open the message

2. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=

For example, replace:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a111c6f50b9084

with:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox?compose=13a111c6f50b9084


Gmail actually creates a new message with the same content and saves it as a draft. That's the reason why you can edit the message. When you no longer need the message, click the "close" button. You may need to delete the messages from the "drafts" label.

You can open multiple messages using the same trick. After using the instructions above:

3. open a new Gmail message

4. edit the URL from your browser's address bar. Replace ?compose= with & and the last slash (/) from the URL with ?compose=.

Google's Improved Word Translator

To contact us Click HERE
Google Translate is great for translating long texts, but it's also useful for translating words and expressions. The main difference is that words can have multiple meanings and Google Translate will usually show more than one translation.

Now it's easier to select the right translation because Google shows if they're common and groups synonyms. Another improvement is that Google displays a list of reverse translations for each candidate, so you can pick the most appropriate word. "Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations," explains Google.

For example, the French word "fort" has a lot meanings, so it's hard to pick between "loud", "strong", "heavy", especially if you don't know English. Google's reverse translations are helpful and it's nice to know that "strong" is the most common translation.


Unfortunately, the new features are only available if you're translating from English or into English.

Gmail's New Interface for Composing Messages

To contact us Click HERE
There are many tricks that let you compose a Gmail message in a new window: you can press "Shift" while clicking the "Compose" button, use the "Shift+c" shortcut or click the "pop-out" icon if you've already started to compose a message. Composing a message in a new window lets you use Gmail's search feature, read other messages and even write multiple messages at a time.

Gmail's engineers spent a lot time improving this feature, minimizing page loading time and making sure that the original message is preserved, but few people use it.
Now Google tries to bring this feature to everyone by opening a chat-like panel inside Gmail's interface when you compose a new message. It's a feature currently tested by Google that will be rolled out in the coming months.

"The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger). This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later."


The new interface also brings a feature from Yahoo Mail: recipient boxes that can be removed or dragged and dropped to other fields ("to:", "cc:", "bcc:"). There's a new icon that shows text formatting features, an icon for attachments and a "+" icon for embedding photos, links, emoticons and Google Calendar events.


Google also improved the interface for replying, but it looks like you'll still reply inline by default. "The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation - replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets."

To try the new interface, open Gmail, click the "Compose" button and look for the "new compose experience" link right next to the "Labels" button. If you can't find it, you'll have to wait until it's added to your account. For now, you can switch to the old interface if you don't like the changes. Some features are not yet available in the new interface: inserting emoticons and event invitations, adding labels to outgoing messages, canned responses.

Google tried to streamline the "compose" window, so many advanced features will be more difficult to find. You'll have to click different icons to find text formatting options, add events or spell check your text. To send mail from another address, you'll have to "click into the 'To' field, then click the 'From' link to select which address you'd like to send mail from". Gmail is suddenly more difficult to use, but the interface looks better.


{ Thanks, Ben. }